WSC 49: A no-no alert = Time for some action

w/: Sactown weed saturation + Oregon grocery monopoly trial + Judge chases Bonds

Next week West Coast Sojourn turns one year old. To commemorate the passing of time, here’s some old-man shit:

At its peak level of excitement, baseball remains our greatest sport. For example, take Saturday afternoon.

After glimpsing an alert on the ESPN crawl, I learned that 28 year-old Bowden Francis—a player I had not heard of— was flirting with a no-hitter. A quick channel flip dropped me in the middle of a narrative about a young Toronto man facing the most challenging day of his professional life.

The pressure compounds when a pitcher nears a no-hitter. The weight of history alone would be enough to unnerve me, even in our Pitch Count Privilege Era. In fact, it seems to me that before you even throw your eighth inning pitch, you’re having to tune out the historical nature of what you’re trying to do as well as concern that your rising pitch count will cause the manager to yank you from the game.

Before you even acknowledge your tiring right arm, the stress on your elbow.

It’s almost embarrassing that I knew that the Blue Jays only other no-no belonged to Dave Steib. It’s amazing what lives on in one’s brain, stored only for use in a sentence like the preceding sentence. Never to be spoken or even considered again.

Francis is a 6-5 kid from Florida who’s finally getting hot over his last few starts. But the visiting Anaheim Angels’ hitters were seeing his stuff for the third time now. The Angels knew what Francis’ fastball looked like and had talked on the bench about which pitch he tended to throw, situationally. Contemporary baseball wisdom says a relief pitcher is the preferred option in a 2-0 game.

Early in the eighth, Francis blew past the 100 pitches that are the standard for calling the bullpen. Respect for the accomplishment that is the no hitter kept this Florida Blue Jay in.

When Francis ran back out to the mound at the top of the ninth, the Toronto crowd was losing its shit. He hadn’t experienced anything like this kind of fan support.

And that’s when Anaheim left fielder Taylor Ward stroked his 17th home of the season. And the chapter closed on Bowden Francis. The 117 pitches that he threw in the 3-1 win were the most he had thrown in his career. In Wednesday’s 2-0 win over the Red Sox at Fenway Park, he took a no-hitter into the sixth inning.

Real human drama, an ongoing story from out of nowhere. Or, should I say, from the crawl?

Baseball rules.

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It’s easy to forget that the overwhelming majority of humanity still lives this way.

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The American media won’t say it, but our Presidential election is a vote about what White people want their lives to be like. The PoCs have made their preference clearly known…

Let me break format and say that I’m looking to rent a room in Northeast Los Angeles, as soon as October. If you know a sane someone whose situation fits, please me know.

If email’s more your jam, then that’s cool, too. I’m tidy, quiet, and good at making televised sports more compelling.

Now, for The Real Big 10:

10 PDX shoppers suffering through Fred Meyer strike

Through Tuesday more than 4,500 workers at 28 Portland-area Fred Meyers stores will be conducting an unfair labor practices strike, disrupting business for the city’s dominant shopping chain.
Oregon Public Broadcasting