{"id":424,"date":"2012-07-05T17:50:37","date_gmt":"2012-07-05T21:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/?p=424"},"modified":"2012-07-05T17:50:37","modified_gmt":"2012-07-05T21:50:37","slug":"424","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/?p=424","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Since it seems to be the most reliably relaxing spot to spend an off day these days, I was back at the ballpark on the Fourth to see Mets\/Phils.<\/p>\n

The announced temperature was 86 degrees when the first pitch was thrown.\u00a0 It rose into the low 90\u2019s as the afternoon went on.\u00a0 A blazing, unobstructed sun and a high level of humidity made it uncomfortable for many.\u00a0 I actually felt pretty good because I activated my heat resistance plan before walking into Citi Field.\u00a0 I chugged as much water as my body would hold during the 90 minutes prior to the game\u2019s start and then nursed cold beers at about half the rate I\u2019d consume them when the weather isn\u2019t hot.<\/p>\n

I sat up in the right field porch with Jackie from the Bronx and her family.\u00a0 Tickets were $30 a pop.\u00a0 Mets starter Chris Young was lights out until he hit the same seventh inning wall that plagued his outing ten days ago against the Yanks.<\/p>\n

Young\u2019s return from major shoulder surgery has been a pleasant surprise although his effectiveness seems to go away after six innings.\u00a0 Met manager Terry Collins likely knows this but continues to keep Young out there a few batters too many.\u00a0 On Wednesday,\u00a0 Young took a 2-nil lead into the seventh.\u00a0 He had thrown just 67 pitches through six.\u00a0 I would have pulled Young as soon as Juan Pierre singled to start the seventh.\u00a0 I told my seatmates that the first sign of trouble in the seventh was all I needed to make a change.\u00a0 But Collins allowed Young to remain in the game and the lanky right-hander proceeded to give up back-to-back homers to Utley and Ruiz.<\/p>\n

It turns out the Met bullpen got shellacked in the eighth and ninth, so who knows what would have happened if Young was yanked after the Pierre single.\u00a0 At the time, the long balls off Young felt like daggers.\u00a0 Cliff Lee got his first win of the season (spanning 14 starts) for the Phils and looked like the dominant Cliff Lee of yesteryear.\u00a0 Philly is nine games under break even and will need a big second half to get back into it.\u00a0 It\u2019ll help to get Ryan Howard back in a few weeks along with Doc Halladay.\u00a0 Don\u2019t be shocked if the Phils get red hot in August and September and make a run.<\/p>\n

Attendance for the holiday matinee was 28,687.\u00a0 The crowd the night before was 42,516.\u00a0 Why the difference?\u00a0 Tuesday night had a fireworks display after the game.\u00a0 It\u2019s funny how that works.\u00a0 The Tuesday night crowd was the largest in Citi Field history.\u00a0 The televised pictures of the upper deck corners revealed a completely packed house just prior to the fireworks display.<\/p>\n

-Times sportswriters Ken Belson and Jere Longman have been merciless in their mockery of US track and field\u2019s handling of the third place dead heat between US sprinters Jeneba Tarmoh and Allyson Felix but I don\u2019t get the fuss.\u00a0 Lacking formal protocol to settle a tie when a spot on the Olympic team is at stake, USATF was forced to find a solution.\u00a0 What they came up with was fair.\u00a0 Unless one of the two parties objected, there would be a run-off.\u00a0 This country\u2019s governing body for track and field acted swiftly and decisively and produced a remedy to a problem it had never been faced with.\u00a0 Both Belson and Longman had lots of fun taking shots at USATF but neither advanced a better idea.\u00a0 In the end, Tarmoh conceded the final 100 meter roster spot to Felix.\u00a0 There was sour grapes bubbling beneath the surface as Tarmoh accepted and then rejected the run-off.\u00a0 She certainly must have felt emboldened in her bitterness by Belson and Longman\u2019s rip-jobs on the USATF.\u00a0 Personally, I find it difficult to understand how current technology allows for the conclusion that two moving objects cross a finish line at precisely the same time.\u00a0 But once that declaration is made, it seems to me that ties of this type should be broken by additional competition.\u00a0 Had Tarmoh been defeated in the run-off, she would have at least gone down fighting.\u00a0 Her problem is not with the USATF.\u00a0 It\u2019s with her inability to accept the odd circumstances associated with technology\u2019s determination that her torso crossed the line at exactly the moment Felix\u2019s did in the final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since it seems to be the most reliably relaxing spot to spend an off day these days, I was back at the ballpark on the Fourth to see Mets\/Phils. The announced temperature was 86 degrees when the first pitch was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[81,80],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s28tEv-424","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":425,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions\/425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}