Buffalo

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Sunday afternoon, some left hand sidearm b'wana was throwing bullets for the Angels.  Lloyd, properly, set the Mariners up to punish said lefty by deploying Franklin Gutierrez and Nelson Cruz to counter.  

In some inning or other -- if you tell me you care, you can have the keys to the taco stand -- Guti and Cruz launched a pair of consecutive heat-seeking missiles, sandwiched around a $25M walk.  Felix was ahead in the game 1-0, AND runners at the corners, 1 out.  Croissant and marmalade.  mmmmmmm Felix and a lead.  No way to botch this one.

But something was going to happen, something wonderful:  Kyle Seager smoked a left-vs-left sac fly to right field ... and Robinson Cano, forgetting approximately 20 years' worth and 9,000 sac flies worth of Yankee Baseball, played the fly ball halfway up the line.  You know, just in case ... 

... um ...

Usually Dr. D would tell you kiddies to take out a #2 pencil.  Fill in the blank as to why Robinson Cano would play a 1-out SF by taking a "secondary lead" halfway up the 3B line.  However, as blanks go, Dr. D is drawing a lot of them lately.  He does know that if Lloyd McClendon doesn't get his players focused, somebody is going to get brained by a random infield toss into the dugout.  We doubt that Rick Griffin possesses Dr. Grumpy's field surgical skills.

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Random thought:  has a person like Edgar Martinez ever been deployed as hitting coach, 10 days before he took over as manager?  Just hypothetically, would you secure Joe DiMaggio's consent to be hitting coach by saying something like, "Knowing what we know now, we're considering a 3-mile-deep powerflush of the guy ahead of you in line?  It isn't like he's ever won anyway."  It wouldn't have to be THAT specific verbiage.  Just something to that EFFECT.

:: shrug ::

Would give you a Buffalo nickel to name some guy who was brought in as bench coach, hitting coach, or Dubble Bubble restocker shortly before being installed as manager.  Didn't George Steinbrenner and Charles O. Finley used to do stuff like that?