So Long Solano!

 Oh. Dear. Dog. Jesus Flores has hurt himself, so the Nationals have called up Jhonatan Solano -- who's played maybe four games for Syracuse since coming off the DL. 

They're going through catchers like Gatorade in this heat.

The upside? TMo12 (Tyler Moore) is back.

Quick Update

Last night's scuttlebutt:
Corey Brown once more not in line-up; probably being called up. That has now been confirmed. Corey joined the Nats in Miami for their game against the Marlins.

Another unsubstantiated rumor: Chris Marrero is close to being ready to come back from his injury and will possibly be in Syracuse as part of his rehab process. It will be good to see him again.

Additional Pix from Saturday's Presidential Race

Ever known a politician to pass up a photo-op?
Me either.
As promised, TV Stevie's photos of the Racing Presidents.

OK, not a Prez, but James Skelton, 3rd catcher for the team.
In a red jersey, prompting TV Stevie's gleeful, "Red Skelton!"
I guess you need to be of a certain age to get it. I got it.

Putting to bed all rumors that
Scooch and Pops are the same person

An Enjoyable Presidential Race

The Racing Presidents are in town for the holiday weekend.

These characters are from the Washington Nationals, but they are not mascots. The Nats' mascot is Screech, a bald eagle. The presidents --  George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt -- are just great fun.

And they're off! (Entering stadium from old bullpen)

I thought Teddy had won, but according to the stadium announcer,
the winner was "George, by a nose."

The Presidents were very active: running through the stands, getting involved in the between-innings promotions, and dancing with Scooch & Pops during the 7th inning.They were an entertaining distraction from a less-than-riveting game.

Teddy Roosevelt

Abe Lincoln

George Washington

I didn't take any decent shots of Tom Jefferson, although he's probably my favorite US President (based on the perfectly silly reason that I loved his character in the musical "1776".) TV Stevie took a lot more photos that he's promised to share with me. 

And oh yeah. There was a baseball game happening during all of this. 

• Corey Brown was player of Friday's game (as Sandee & I voted)
• We voted for Carlos Rivero as Saturday's player of the game. He started a seventh inning rally that at least got the Chiefs on the board so the score was no longer a humiliating 9-0.
• The jersey raffle featured Brad Peacock's Throwback Thursday jersey.

Other things we've noticed that are different this year:

• No MLB scoreboard in right field. Perhaps the proliferation of smart phones makes it obsolete?
• The ushers have been staying a lot later.

Final score: 9-6. Good effort by the Chiefs, but no cigar.

Co-rey! Co-rey! - - But No One Chanted

Another beautiful night at the ball park.

During the singing of the National Anthem, TV Stevie pointed out someone in the first row wearing a very vulgar T-Shirt. I did take a photo of it, but because this is a family blog, I won't post it.

Mere moments later, security and the ushers converged in front of us. The young man in question was asked to reverse his shirt, change his shirt, or leave the stadium. The security person to whom I spoke said he'd been getting a lot of calls from women who were offended by the shirt -- which was quite offensive. He told the young man that he had ties in his pocket and would be happy to arrest him and have the park police escort him off the premises. He then mused if the young man actually considered his mother or sisters in that light.

Leaving the stadium
to clean up his act.

There were two broken bats in tonight's game.

I didn't score the entire game because I took time out to eat a burger (which was very good) and a bit later, some popcorn.

It was a good game until John Lannan got tired. Then things went downhill fast. 

Corey Brown had a streak going -- home runs in consecutive games. The count was four going into tonight's game. Someone behind us asked Maven: "Did you see it? It's history in the making!" To which Maven replied, "If it's in the making no one has ever seen it." 

We really wanted to Corey to continue his streak when he came to bat in the 4th. The bases were load. That would have been a lovely time to hit a homer. But alas, it was not to be. He struck out.

Fortunately, there were more innings, and in the 8th,  Corey set a new franchise record tonight: home runs in 5 consecutive games. 

Annoyance of the game: the camera operators always show the fans in Section 208 on the scoreboard. Why? They aren't nearly as cool as we are.

But it's fun to watch the fans, especially kids, see themselves on the big screen. 

Best thing about tonight's game:

There was a father with two boys sitting in section 107. The older boy was an absolute scream to watch. 

He would also pose like a pitcher, with the ball in his glove behind his back. Unfortunately, I didn't get a shot of that. I told his father that the kid was great.

They're Baaaaack

The Chiefs are back home in Alliance Bank Stadium . . . without Carlos Maldonado, who is still in Washington.

Just a few quick notes on tonight's game against the Columbus Clippers (which the Chiefs won 13-4):

• Throwback Thursday Jerseys
• Jhonatan Solano is off the DL and caught tonight's game.
• Jason Michaels is on the restricted list.
• Matt Chico (a pitcher from last year) is playing in the Can-Am League
• Matt Antonelli was picked up by the Yankees and assigned to Scranton Wilkes-Barre, so we may see more of him. His Throwback Thursday jersey from last year was raffled off tonight.
• The scoreboard operators have finally settled on a spelling of Xavier Paul's first name.
• Problems with the sound system tonight: no audio on the commercials or music between innings.
• Carlos Rivero's Lambinitis seems to have abated.
• The Columbus uniforms were very odd tonight: gray top, tan bottoms.

Gray top, tan bottom

I saw my cousin's wife early on in the game. We spoke for a moment, but she was with someone who had a baby and they were worried about sitting in the first row behind the dugout (as well they should have), so they were going up higher. But the whole gang appeared to be there, and several stayed down front:

The scoreboard operators have started outlining the numbers, which make them easier to read. They're also having a lot of fun with the board's capabilities.

The Chiefs bats were hot tonight. There were two home runs. Everything else were singles, doubles, and one triple. 

When it came time to vote for player of the game, it was a toss up between Corey Brown and Seth Bynum. They each had three hits: a home run and a single in common, but Corey Brown's incredible triple in the 7th inning outweighed Seth Bynum's double in the 3rd.

Radio Games

Intersting to listen to the games on the radio.  Not the same as being there, by any means, but the announcers do provide some insider information that we aren't privy to while watching a game.

Chiefs won tonight!  Took the Toledo MudHens 8 to 5 and it was touch and go - made for exciting listening.  I wonder sometimes if my neighbors can hear my hoots, cheers and whistles - and if so, if they wonder what we are up to ;)  We are avid baseball fans - makes sense to me!

Brad Eldred (sigh), former Chief's player, now plays for Toledo.  Bottom of the 9th (Toledo at bat), two outs, score 8-5 in our favor - enter Brad Eldred - also known as "Big Country" (and very appropriate, I might add)...the announcer said "the worst Big Country can do is make it 8-6.  WELL, thanks to Josh Wilkie, Big Country went down with three strikes.  YOU'RE OUT!!!!!  It's okay, Molly and I will always have a soft spot for you BC ;)

Speaking of Josh Wilkie (have I mentioned before that he is my favorite pitcher?  and that I have one of his hats that he wore all season?)  Anyway, JW has pitched in 15 games so far this season and has a 321 era.  He's walked 4 and struck out 12 to date.  The strike stats changed tonight!  According to the announcer Josh is "one of the most releable pitchers in the bull pen" - I concur!!  YEAH JOSH WILKIE!!!!!

So let's talk about Corey Brown for a minute...Molly's all time fav (hehe, wink, wink).  The Chiefs have had 5 intentional walks on the year and the interesting thing about that is...they have ALL been on Corey Brown!!  Corey has a 1.76 ground out to fly out ratio, that being conducive to double plays.  Ha!  The MudHens just couldn't take that chance - and rightly so!! 

Looking forward to getting back out to the ball park on Thursday.  Gonna have to frame my Carlos Maldonado posters in my office or something.  If he ever comes back to us, we'll bring them out again.  Happily, I might add.  Oh how I miss Carlos!!  I wonder if he misses us?  I did message Carlos and congratulated him on being called up to the bigs and mentioned that his Syracuse fan club misses him already.  He responded with "hear it thanks greet the fans love them."  Oh, Carlos, we love you, too!  Right Molly??

No!!!! (Good luck, Carlos!)

Carlos Maldonado has been called up to the Mothership.
It goes like this:

The Washingon Nationals' primary catcher Wilson Ramos tore his ACL the other day, making  Jesus Flores the primary catcher for the Nats, and the Nats in need of a backup catcher.

Jhonatan Solano (Syracuse's former primary catcher) is on the DL, and has been for a while, which makes Carlos Maldonado Syracuse's primary catcher (and which makes Molly & Sandee very happy campers). Jeff Howell, the backup catcher from Harrisburg, was sent to Syracuse as backup catcher.

When Ramos injured himself, the primary catcher for the Harrisburg Senators, Sandy Leon, was sent to Washington. And he injured himself during his first game last night (sprained ankle?).

So Washington called up Carlos Maldonado.

(I don't know what's going on with Harrisburg.)

YAY CARLOS!!!!

Please be good to him, Washington.

Weekend Update - 207 Style

Rochester came to town on Friday for a four-game stand against the Chiefs. I attended games on Friday night and Sunday afternoon. Sandee attended Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I won't be at tomorrow's game, but Sandee probably will be. It's a noon start and I don't have enough vacation time left to attend.

We debuted the Carlos Maldonado Fan Club on Friday night, but because of circumstances beyond our control, we couldn't wave our posters until late in the game. We don't know if Carlos saw them or not. He didn't play on Saturday. We know he saw them today. He acknowledged us the second time he came to bat. I hope we haven't embarrassed him too badly.

When I get to the stadium early enough to catch the starting line-ups, I've started officially scoring the games. If we're late, as we were today (bottom of the first), then I merely take notes.

Friday, I was on time. I did manage a few notes while scoring the game:

• The scoreboard operator keeps experimenting with different color combos. Some are better than other. 
• The games on the scoreboard are cute, but if you attend regularly and the same quizzes keep showing up, it gets kind of boring. I will say that the sales force has done a fabulous job finding ways of selling sponsorships on the scoreboard. There are some pretty creative things going on. 
• The Taco Bell K-Man now has a Taco Bell logo on his page on the scoreboard.
• Xavier Paul's name keeps changing from Xavier to Zavier to Xavier, possibly inning-by-inning. The only spelling we haven' seen is Javier.
• There was some fun with Clete Thomas (a Red Wing). Instead of his photo, the scoreboard operator put up a picture of cleats. 
• Carlos Rivero had a major case of Lambinitis. An embarrassingly major case.
• I didn't buy any tickets for the Corey Brown Throwback Thursday Jersey Raffle.
• Pops was able to toss t-shirts to the upper deck.
• Photos of the stadium on the new scoreboard are from last season -- or older. The painted horse was removed for this season, replaced by a Welcome to Chiefsville sign, but the photos during the between innings-games all show the horse.

This sign replaced the painted horse.

In the first four innings, Rochester broke three bats. Maple.

Today was Mother's Day and the Chiefs gave free manicures and 5-minute chair massages to all Mom's. I don't have fingernails, so I didn't do the mani, but I definitely got my massage. Because of that and the fact that we didn't arrive until the bottom of the 1st, I didn't score the game.

Observations:

• Cowbell Man (from Rochester) was nicely color-coordinated in shades of blue
• Someone must have spoken to Carlos Rivero or gave him a better athletic cup because there was no sign of Lambinitis. 
• Solano's Throwback Thursday was the jersey raffle today. TV Stevie bought tickets, but he didn't win.
• Carlos acknowledged our posters. It seemed to me that the dugout was hanging on the rails and the bullpen was watching us and the signs. I could also be blowing our impact out of proportion. We did not make it onto the scoreboard. Don't know if the TV cameras (the game was televised by TWC Sports) picked us up or not.

Oh, and TV Stevie chased down a Carlos Rivero foul ball for me. I got a baseball for Mother's Day. I am pleased.