The Hammock Papers: Deal.

10 July 2012

Deal.

The Freight Train is the starting American League hurler in tonight's All Star Game ...

"They are in for a treat," said Texas All-Star second baseman Ian Kinsler. "Justin Verlander is what an ace is. The velocity he has on his fastball, and the way he commands it on both sides of the plate, makes it difficult in itself to face him.

"But then you add his secondary stuff on top of that," said Kinsler, who is 3-for-21 off Verlander in regular-season play. "He has one of the best curves in the game. He can spike it (in the dirt) or throw it for a strike. You forget about his change-up.

"When you get to two strikes, it's basically what he wants to put you away with, not necessarily what you want to hit."

Three other members of the NL lineup have never gotten a hit off Verlander. Overall, the NL lineup is 6-for-42 against him. One of those hits was a fly ball by Joey Votto that got lost in the sun.

For all these NL hitters who know little or nothing about how to deal with Verlander, Kinsler said, "I don't have any advice for them." He said that not because he didn't want to give away a secret. He said that because he truly didn't have anything he could tell them about how to hit Verlander.

Read the rest at The Freep.

Tonight's first pitch is at 7:30.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL