K's

[mellificent]

We went to a baseball game Saturday night, and it's probably the only game we'll go to all year (although we still watch on TV all the time), but boy, did we pick a gem of a game to go to. The funny thing is that it didn't feel that much like a gem, and I'm not sure why. If we hadn't been sitting where we could see the strikeout count, I'm not sure I would have even noticed how many Pirates were going down. The starting pitcher struck out 14, and I think there were 17, altogether. And Bud Norris (who? yeah, I said Bud Norris) had a single and a double of his own, besides the 14 K's, so he had a really good day, overall. One reason it didn't feel too utterly gem-like was that it started off badly - the first batter tripled, and the second one homered, so we were down 2-0 before a lot of people ever got to their seats. And I think probably the other reason was because it was Bud Norris, and not some guy that anybody's much in awe of, normally. I've seen a 14-strikeout game before, but that one was Nolan Ryan, and it was 1986 and the Astros were on the verge of winning the division - I'm pretty sure it was the day before they clinched, and also the day before Mike Scott's no-hitter - and the atmosphere was really, really electric. This one just didn't feel much like that. But Bud pulled his shit together after the bad start, obviously, and the Astros battled back and scored three runs late, so the crowd got back into it, and the Astros won, and life was good. Especially for this guy named Bud.