I’ll Own Up To It — It’s All My Fault

You know there were 11 different Mariners sent to the plate that came up empty yesterday. No hits, no walks, and no runners reaching on error. A perfect game. A perfect game that I didn’t even know happened until this morning when watching highlights on ESPN before church this morning. And yet… I feel responsible.

Yesterday, I threw my wife a surprise party for her 28th Birthday. That meant cleaning the house and making dinner and getting all the little particulars taken care of that she normally handles.

I made a couple of attempts to turn on the game and list to Rick Rizz but my laptop was acting weird and apparently it knew that I really wouldn’t want to have listened to my team put up the triple goose egg.

But prior to all of this. Yesterday morning I hate a conversation with myself. Yep, one of those good ol’ heart to heart talks, Harrison to Harrison. You may recall past occassions when I have typed these out.

I don’t remember the full conversation between myself and I. I was pretty focused on a series of tweets between myself and others pertaining to Justin Smoak. But, that’s not important.

I was stepping into the  shower and I was focused, then I had this single thought. This thought is what I believe directly contributed to yesterday’s 21st perfect game and the moment in which we have all been waiting to happen for the past 3 years.

“Despite everything — the sturggles of Smoak, Montero’s slow start and Ackley not quite taking off like we had thought– I actually have a small bit of faith in this team. It’s no longer the feeling of being worried that everynight might be a perfect game or even a no hitter.”

Yeah, that’s right. I thought we were past this crap. Yeah, sure there was some fluky line drives that got caught. Yeah, sure, there was luck involved. But there always is with a perfect game. That’s part of the fun or … in this case.. torture.

The Mariners are a line drive hitting team. From Mike Carp and Franklin Gutierrez, each on the disabled list right now, to Jesus Montero and Dustin Ackley. There is home run power that is associated with that but we hit balls hard. Just not necessarily over the fence.

There is luck that is always involved in this game. When you keep the ball inside the fence you can count on weird things happening. Sometimes a ball should be a ground ball down the line is an out or other times it’s a triple — an even worse scenerio an inside the park home run– but it’s all a matter of timing, and of course luck.

It’s too bad that it was just the 11 guys on the field that blew the game. It was also the one jerk that didn’t even watch the game that claimed “we were past this”. Sorry guys, this one’s my bad.