Will Jim Leyland ride Phil Coke all the way to the World Series, only to lose again?
My foolproof predictions for the second half of the season:
+ Trying to score from first on a ground ball to the pitcher, Washington Nationals’ All-Star outfielder Bryce Harper trips on his ego rounding third, falls flat on his face, and is placed on the 50-day DL with a severe case of aggravated narcissism.
+ The drought-stricken Los Angeles Angels trade Mike Trout to the Boston Red Sox for Mike Carp, the entire cod fishery off the New England coast, and two Great Lakes to be named later. Dodgers fans smell something fishy and Red Sox Nation of course carps about it.
+ Derek Jeter is named Rookie of the Month for August when it is determined that the reconstituted Yankee captain is actually a cyborg and thus qualifies as a rookie.
+ If you are Rod Allen, you are looking to use this syntactic construction as often as possible and therefore you are going to set a new record with 132 mentions of the word “therefore” and 117 uses of the phrase “if you are…” in a single broadcast.
+ If, however, you are Mario Impemba, you will feel compelled to remind your audience at least once a game that the Tigers will have to score some runs to win the game.
+ The parents of Jhonny Peralta, Wily Peralta, and Welington Castillo will be ordered to attend remedial spelling classes.
+ The Tigers will lose the seventh game of the World Series when Jim Leyland chooses to let Phil Coke pitch to Yasiel Puig in the ninth inning of a tie game, and Puig homers to win it. Even in Cuba they always thirst for Coke.
roadwalker
With the Reds-Pirates on track to continue their usual relations with each other (19 hit batsmen in 10 games so far this year including 10 in a three game series in Pittsburgh) they will end up facing each other again in the NL Wild Card game. Several brawls and ejections later, the Reds will win when Vin Mazzaro forgets about winning and hits Shin-Soo Choo with the bases loaded to plunk in the winning run– and in the process erase Bob Moose’s 1972 wild pitch as the most bizarre ending to a playoff game between these two.
After the season, the World Wrestling Federation will recognize a good grudge match when they see it and will sign a pair of the Reds’ and Pirates’ most combustible players to do some tag team wrestling.