Me and you and you and me. No matter how they toss the dice, it has to be. The only one for me is you, and you for me. So happy together. -The Turtles
Public Service Announcement: Ok, here we go! The New York Mets’ Johan Santana has thirty-seven punchados. The Kansas City Royals’ Zack Greinke has thirty-six punchados. The New York Mets’ Johann Santana sports a 0.70 earned run average. The Kansas City Royals’ Zack Greinke sports a 0.00 earned run average. Both have thrown through four starts. Both are making history.
I love this stuff. Not the Vorp. Not all that sabremetrics jazz. Not that. I love the historical context. The haberdashery storical context. The hard to ingnorical context. Like my main Aldous Huxley always says, “The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.” America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.
Johan Santana and Zack Greinke are marking time. From the time that the major leagues began keeping track of earned runs-nearly 100 years ago-through last season, only two major league pitchers had fashioned an ERA under 0.75 with at least thirty-six strikeouts in their first four starts of a season. Only Tom Cheney for the Washington Senators back ’63 and only Fernando Valenzuela for the Dodgers back in ’81. This game, it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again.
Public Spectacle:
Peace out homies. Six two and Even!