Comment of the Day: Heresy!
This morning in ATH I said:
Ian Kinsler starts the game with a leadoff homer and ends it with a walkoff. Pretty neat! Not so neat that he did it off of a knuckleball, of course — Karma’s gonna kick him in the jewels for that somehow — but I suppose he’s riding pretty high today, anyway.
Reader GregE shows the limitations of box score divination, however, with this comment:
Kinsler hit the walkoff off of the knuckleball’s 85 mph fastball pretty much down the middle of the plate.
So, it would seem this is not a simple instance of a hitter disrespecting the flutterball. It’s an instance of R.A. Dickey losing faith in the very wellspring of his power. “When was I not there for you?” I hear the knuckleball whisper. “Why would you forsake the guile which has always aided you in your journeys in exchange for an illusion of power? A power which has betrayed you time and again?”
Team: Minnesota Twins
Player: R.A. Dickey
Transaction: Placed on 15-Day DL, (soul).
And props to Dickey for owning up to his failures.
http://blogs2.startribune.com/blogs/christensen/
With four reporters huddled around him, Dickey continued his tortured analysis.
“But in that situation, you’ve got a base open at first, everything played to me living or dying with the knuckleball the whole night,” he said. ”That’s what I should have done and it was my fault.”