The title of this blog entry has been changed from the original, because my two oldest kids have been calling each other "stupid" and "ugly" for about a week straight, so I just raised the price of using those two words in our home from free to dessert. A parent should require more creativity in the use of language in their households. So in order to have some ice cream myself, let's just say there that there was a bit of "seaweedity" a lot of "asparagusiness" at yesterday's A's-Angels game. Not in the quality of play--both teams pitched well, played solid defense, and put up some good at-bats. It's just that--well, you have to see for yourself:

In the first inning, this pitch got almost too far inside on Vladimir Guerrero, and nearly hit him.

The umpires, thinking that this might be retaliation for a pitch on Friday night that plunked Kurt Suzuki and the pitch last week that broke Bobby Crosby's hand, immediately warned both benches that any further at-batter-throwing would be cause for pitcher and managerial ejection.

Which is just seaweed, I think. The A's have pitched Vlad with fastball off the plate inside on at least 50% of all the pitches they throw to him ever since he joined the Angels. And it's not because they want to hit him with it, it's because he swings at those seaweed things 75% of the time. It's the best way to get him out. And so the A's miss location by six inches inside one time, and John Lackey gets all huffy about it after the game? Ridiculous. I'd be happy to take all those six-inch misses back, if the Angels will take back every time the A's miss that pitch six inches in the other direction. But they won't do that, will they? They'd have to give back three of the four home runs Vlad hit this weekend, and probably 75% of all the other homers he's ever hit off the A's.

John Lackey is my least favorite player in all of baseball right now. He's a good pitcher, but he's an immature hothead and seaweed and on top of that, he's extremely asparagusy:

And he was followed by a succession of even more good, but asparagusy pitchers. I don't even want to know what Scot Shields is doing here:

Then Shields is followed by Francisco Rodriguez, who not only has the most asparagusy stance out of the stretch of anyone in baseball except perhaps Mike Mussina, he also projectile expectorates all over the field:

Add to all of this the fact that I have been attending A's-Angels games since my first game back in 1974, and I have never--not once--witnessed the A's beat the Angels in person. Even Ryan Armbrust's presence as a Nebraskan good-luck charm for Dan Johnson, who made a great catch and hit a home run (no need to second-guess further, Rob, Ryan's all the explanation you need), could not overcome my supreme A's-Angels jinxiness. Is it any wonder that the Catfish Stew crew who attended the game ended up looking so asparagusy themselves after witnessing this kind of thing? Dip these guys in something, please!