Baseball is grand.
My wife reads books all the time. I only read books that pertain to baseball during summer.
I tell my wife that baseball is the never ending book. Full of characters and plot lines.
Here are a few.
Yesterday, RA Dickey and Gio Gonzalez pitched against each other.
Both led the National League with 12 wins. It was the first time since 1959 that two opposing pitchers leading the National League in wins after the All Star break had faced each other.
Who knew?
53 years, and the last duo to face off against each other for trivia buffs were Lew Burdette and Sam Jones.
Mike Trout has scored in 11 straight games. Only two 'recent' rookies have done that.
Albert Pujols in 2001 scored in 13 straight games. In 1984, Dan Gladden scored in 11 straight.
If your team has a rookie pitcher, you can actually hope that he throws vs. the Yankees.
Although the Yankees have a wonderful record, they are 5-9 vs. rookie pitchers.
The Yankees are on a streak of their own though, scoring at least three runs in 42 straight games.
The good pitching will beat good hitting folks have nothing on the Yankees.
Yesterday, the matchup between Mark Buehrle vs. Paul Maholm shaped up to be a gift for getaway day for the two teams.
Buehrle and Maholm are two of the quickest workers in the game.
Game time was 2:18
It could have been even quicker. Buehrle and his relievers only threw 95 pitches.
24 pitches over three innings by Miami relievers.
But Carlos Marmol, relieving Maholm in the ninth threw 26 pitches in his one inning.
A little surprising that Buehrle did not win. Only Ferguson Jenkins has won more games over the last 50 years in Chicago, than Buehrle.
Justin Verlander, Ryan Vogelsong, and Jordan Zimmerman are the only three pitchers to throw at least six innings in all their starts this year.
Verlander is one inning short of averaging eight innings pitched over his last six starts.
After a game in which Aroldis Chapman closed out a game with three strike outs and half of his pitches over 100 mph, a player was heard to say about the lefty, "He's as crafty as Randy Johnson."
Before Cody Ross had six rbi from the third spot in the order the other night, the Red Sox only had 38 rbi from that spot all year.
To put that in perspective, 101 hitters in baseball have more rbi than 38.
Brandon Inge has 40.