It's a fiendish plot - Angels 8; Orioles 4

I blame the recent success of the Angels (all two games of it) on Matt Welch. Somehow I believe he engineered the recent slide which caused perrenial pessimists like me to lose faith. It was in that moment of weakness that he swooped in with his devilish plan to separate me from 50 of my hard earned dollars. Rob McMillin is an unwitting accomplice, as he wrote the post that led to the following exchange:

Matt: Maybe I'm easy to please, but a World Series, a Division Championship, and a likely second consecutive Division Championship (plus a decent shot at the Series), all while assembling (and not squandering) baseball's best minor league system, doesn't really strike me as a bad job.

Me: When? 2006 and 2007? Because they sure aren't winning it this year.

Matt: Seitz, put your money where your pessimism is -- fitty cash dollar bills. I say we win, you bet on the rookie rotation, Scott Hatteberg and Jay Payton. Deal?

Just another case of me letting my mouth write a check my butt.....well, I actually can cash this one, because it's not that much money. Regardless, it will be $50 well spent if the Angels actually pull this out.

So he calls me out. I, of course, can't back down*, and now here we are. And of course, true to form, right after giving up on them, the Angels take the first two from an admittedly reeling Orioles team *AND* the A's lose for a change.

Lackey narrowly averted the Lackey inning tonight, and apparently the bug was still in the mound area, because Bedard caught it in the bottom of the fifth, allowing the Angels to score six times. And just as I was exchanging emails with Stephen Smith, badmouthing Cabrera and talking about how he really isn't any better than Izturis (that was me doing that, not him), all things considered, the OC delivered a big hit and Ztu made two of the three outs in the inning. Bigmouth strikes again.

So I hope you're happy, Matt. It's a good thing this won't be decided until October, or else this would be cutting into my golf budget.

Sometime this week I'll write something about the NHL signings, but I'm waiting to see what the Kings end up doing. I like Demitra, but I want Palffy back. Although if the Simon Gagne for Mike Cammalleri rumors are true, I'll learn to live without Ziggy. I'll give it another day or two to shake out.

*Kind of reminds of a hockey game I played in many years ago (yes, there was organized sreet hockey in Southern California once upon a time). We had a UCR team, and we were over our heads in the division in which we were playing. In one game, we just couldn't get anything going. We finally got an odd man rush, only to have the ref, who was probably in his mid-fifties, get in the way of my line-mate and good friend, ruining the two on one. Apparently refs don't like to be called out on this type of thing. On the next face off, I, clearly pissed off, walked up to him and said "Could you please try to stay out of the way next time?" To his credit, he gave me an out, saying "you're not talking to me are you?" The idiot that I am, I responded "Yeah I am!".

I spent the next 8 minutes in the penalty box. But dammit, my honor was at stake! I did score a goal within about 45 seconds of leaving the box, so maybe I just needed the rest.