by Meriadoc

Last night I watched my team obliterate the Phillies 19-3. We broke our club record by hitting eight home runs in a single game.

This was essentially our B-team, with three outfielders fighting to keep their position on the team. One of them, Chris Parmelee, was making his Orioles debut and went 3-for-4 with two home runs.

Jeff Francouer, a Phillies outfielder, came in to pitch the last two innings, throwing the only scoreless inning they had.

One of their pitchers faked an injury just to get off the field and stop being shelled.

Another threw at someone because he just didn't want to be there anymore.

Players like Chase Utley became mutinous for the incompetent coaching staff leaving that outfielder in to rot on the mound.

And this was all one game!

Baseball is just a wild, unpredictable sports, even when you're like me and sit there, analyzing every little stat to get a pitcher, only to have that hitter with a .160/.302/.359 triple slash and an abysmal ISO blows it all up by hitting a grand slam anyway. Or you spend a day trying to actually evaluate a pitcher's value, looking at their ERA, ERA+, FIP, xFIP, and SIERA, and then maybe if you're crazy, trying to figure out pitching WAR, or even crazier, quantifying defensive worth.

And that's all well and good, but sometime you just wanna see "them big cocksuckers that can hit the fuckin’ ball out of the fuckin’ ballpark and you can’t make any goddamn mistakes.", because we all love to see players sock some dingers

Or how bout some defense, some Bo Jackson

Or Pillar this year?

http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/11493214/v75609783/must-c-catch-pillars-climbing-catch-robs-home-run

Or maybe you're like me. You're a hopeless romantic. You find all the quirks of baseball and the wacky things happen-- like Dock Ellis pitching a game while on an acid trip-- and love them for it. You love that you're watching sport that has been played constantly for nearly 150 years. You love the history. You love looking at it all in the context of historical events happening around it. You love that it's been a beacon of social change for decades, and you love to just see history sometimes. Maybe you're like me and you sit down every so often and watch 2131 and you cry when you see that banner drop from the warehouse.

Or maybe you hate it and find it boring. I know arguewithatree with let out an annoyed groan when she sees this was my pick, but even she's going to go with me to OPACY in a few weeks and will enjoy herself, because baseball is a social sport. There's power in walking up the stands and seeing the field with the crowd, sun on your face, beer and your hand and friends around you.

[Baseball] breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.

-Bart Giamatti

Shoutouts: givello thenewgreen flagamuffin Keibler eightbitsamurai coffeesp00ns _refugee_ Run_Train FishEggHat bfv Meriadoc lil briandmyers unsignedinteger ecib kleinbl00 insomniasexx OftenBen forwardslash grey mk b_b tacocat Quatrarius

Also especially shouting out ButterflyEffect, galen, flag, and lil, my resident baseball fans who I've chatted with about baseball many times before. So at the very least, we have the O's, Cards, NY (AL), and Jays represented here. Who else is a fan?