"the thrill of victory… and the agony of defeat…"

FEAT OF CLAY
I went upstairs to put Kid Furious to bed, I believe, in the 5th inning—I was aware the O's had no hits, but I never expected the no-hitter to hold. It was all over by the time I checked back in. My personal jinx was negated by my not following the game, so Clay Buchholz and all of Red Sox Nation can send me their regards. Chad Finn's been gushing about Buchholz all season, and along with Ellsbury, they are probably the only two guys I considered untouchable at the deadline. Thankfully, it seems, so did Theo.

HOF pitcher, Oriole broadcaster and underwear model Jim Palmer liked what he saw early in last night's start...

So when, as the story goes, [Palmer] banged on the glass to the Red Sox radio booth in the third inning last night to inform Joe Castiglione that the 23-year-old on the mound for Boston reminded him of himself, it was confirmation enough that, yes, Clay Buchholz has the substance to match the hype.

Six innings later, Buchholz and Palmer had the same number of career no-hitters: one.

This kid already had a bright future, hopefully this doesn't blow expectations way to high. He's 23, and sure to hit some rough patches as he develops. No-hitters take an immense amount of luck to go with dominance, and I hope everybody, Buchholz included, keep things in perspective. The morons on the radio in Boston are surely calling for Buchholz to start the rest of the year...I hope they don't do it. Take care of this young arm, and the no-hitter in game number two hopefully won't be the highlight of his career.



CARR CRASH
Let me start by stipulating that I don't really care about college football. Never have. But I am a sports fan, and I could get behind the team that plays right around the corner from my house chasing a national title, if once since I lived here they didn't shoot their season in the foot in September. Except for last year, U-M has lost an early game every season, which in the stupid, playoff-less system, means for all intents and purposes, your title chances are over as soon as you lose. They've lost every bowl game, and every game against Ohio State since I've lived in Ann Arbor. Proof again, perhaps of my jinx power (or Lloyd Carr's ineptitude).

Was I watching yesterday's game? No, I was re-hanging my porch swing (which my fat ass had yanked from the ceiling last week). But from the porch, I can hear the crowd in the stadium, and I could tell things were not going well. When my next- door neighbor walked back from the game, I asked, "What's going on over there? it doesn't sound good."

"They lost. As soon as the kick was blocked, I walked out. I'm not even sure if the guy ran it back or not." (He didn't. But he almost did.)

Then my other neighbor returned, "I'm glad that kick got blocked, because Michigan didn't deserve to win. I'd've been embarrassed if they did. They got outplayed in every facet of the game right from the beginning."

As I said, I don't follow closely, but from my casual observations, Lloyd Carr is a fucking travesty. That loss is 100% on the coach. Bad coaching. Bad preparation. Bad motivation. No adjustments. His teams seem to constantly let bad teams hang around, he fails constantly to make adjustments, and yesterday a Division AA team came into Michigan Stadium and completely outclassed them.

This was supposed to be one of the cupcake games—Carr picked this opponent. Well, his sacrificial lamb just drove the nail into his coffin, and this game will be etched on his headstone.

If Michigan is smart, they'll bring a coach from the hills of North Carolina in to take over for Carr. Appalacian State head coach Jerry Moore can obviously flat-out coach and motivate his players. His team has college's longest winning streak at 14 games, has back-to-back Division I-AA titles, and he just lead his undersized, overmatched Bad News Bears into Yankee Stadium and beat the shit out of the Yankees.