Chronicles of the Lads

STAY TUNED
I had a busy and mostly fruitful sports weekend, followed by a busy day at work, so the Watch List Summary for pitchers will appear tomorrow, hopefully.

Bouncing back to Thursday for a sec ... Larry Young is a cretin. When Mike Scioscia went out to dispute Young's declaration that Cabrera was out at second on appeal, Young's words, clearly readable off his lips, were "He never tagged up." Mike was, understandably incredulous. Young insisted. "He never tagged up." Not "He left early." "He never tagged up."

Young saying The OC never tagged up makes him, as far as I'm concerned, a liar or a fool. Umpires make mistakes, and that's part of the game, but, wow. Just "wow" to that one.

Friday night brought us the adventures of the Incredible Sliding Vlad. He had every right to be out at second after admiring his near-homer, and had he been thrown out, probably should have been subjected to a fine of roughly $5 million.

But he made a hell of a slide and beat the tag. His mad dash to home on Bengie's sac bunt is one of the craziest things I've ever witnessed a human being do, and, somehow, he made it work with a hell of an incredible slide. It was one of the most delirious things I've ever seen.

Saturday morning was just a good old-fashioned ass-whupping by the Lads. Saturday night brought another ass-whupping, this time with UCLA the perpetrators and Rice the receivers. UCLA beat Rice just like Rice is supposed to be beaten when they play a team with a real program; it's bene awhile since UCLA beat up on people like that, so that was very welcome.

Sunday morning brought the Denver Broncos playing one of the worst offensive games I've ever seen an NFL team have. Jake Plummer looked bad, the offensive line opened up maybe two holes all day for their runners, and Ashley Lelie committed mistake after mistake, dropping passes and committing inexcusable offensive pass interference penalties. It was a horrible all-around effort by everyone except placekicker Jason Elam and ... oh, I don't know. Kyle Johnson, Jeb Putzier, and Rod Smith were okay. The defense was fine aside from a few big plays, but with no offensive support were put in difficult positions. They did a good job on the run, but had no pass rush on former Bronco reserve Gus Frerotte.

The pain -- it actually wasn't pain so much as this awe of "Wow, they really are playing this poorly" -- was well abated by the Angels power surge against Orlando Hernandez. Then Brandon McCarthy came in and demonstrated he should have been starting in the first place. If that seems somewhat familiar, it's because Livan Hernandez had no business starting over Kirk Rueter in Game 7 of the World Series. In both cases, the Angels made their opponents pay.

The sweep of the ChiSox was huge; I would have been lucky with splitting the six games we played against the multicolored Sox, but ending up 4-2 is a boon. With three games in Seattle, the Angels are poised to do no worse than 6-3 on the road trip, which would be excellent.