That Ball is Outa Here!

I was privileged to see Wilkin Ramirez' MLB debut tonight.  He kind of came in with a bang, you might say.  Although he struck out twice, he hit a 433 foot blast into the center-field shrubbery in his other at-bat of the night.  Not a bad way to come into the majors.  The excitement showed in his sprint around the bases and exuberant high fives afterward.  I'm happy for the kid.  It'll be nice to have such a good memory of his first game.  He may not be up here that long right now, so it'll give him a little token of his time in the bigs.

Justin Verlander pitched well again, but had another elevated pitch count, and could only complete six innings.  Then we had to see Brandon Lyon take the mound, and sure enough, he gave a up the long ball on the very first pitch.  He did mitigate after that, but geez.

The young drunkards were pretty funny tonight.  One spent a sum total of about 5 minutes in his seat the whole night.  The rest of the time, he was engaged in getting drinks for himself and the other three people who were with him.  Seriously.  The entire game.  I'm pretty sure you can drink for a lot cheaper than at the CoPa, if that's what you're into.   At the end of this game, this same guy is wondering why we're not batting in the bottom of the 9th.   I'd like to say that I'm kidding, but no.

Another guy was telling me how he spent most of last year partying with Dave Rozema, and what a great guy he is, and what a jerk Kirk Gibson is by comparison.  He's got Dave Rozema's number in his cell right now.  He said that Dave says he doesn't want the Tigers to win another World Series while he's still alive.  Wow, hateration from Dave Rozema.  Do not steal this man's '84 thunder.

Anyway, it was a beautiful night to be at the park.  On the way home, I was listening to Jim Price and Dan Dickerson.  Jim was fairly gushing about this '09 Tigers team, saying they know how to play the game, and are getting contributions from everyone, playing fundamentally sound.  Yezzir.