Our guest post from over at Out of Left Field will serve as today’s lede:

Thursday, August 16, 2007

LYNX: SOME THINGS ARE BETTER LEFT UNSAID

Hang last night’s loss (boxscore, play-by-play) entirely on ottawalynxblog.com: Talking about a no-hitter during the game? What were they thinking? In fact,
John Ennis (4-4, 3.39 ERA) was perfect through six, losing that on a contentious walk to Jacob Ellsbury to lead off the seventh. Early in the count, Ellsbury hit a slow roller down the first base line which was then fielded cleanly. Unfortunately, in the eyes of the umpire, the ball had been fouled off at the plate, giving Ellsbury a new life. There were a few questionable calls made at home plate, but when you’ve got a perfect game going, and then a no-hitter through seven, how can you argue with a guy’s strike zone?

For the record, Ennis went seven innings, with one walk and nine Ks. Not bad, final result notwithstanding. The man we hate to love, Ed Rogers, stuck it to his former team once again, scoring what would prove to be the winning run in the 11th. We wonder how much latitude John Russell had with Ennis last night - was 96 pitches pretty much the limit for John? And would we have lifted Brennan King for a pinch runner when he was on second with one out in the bottom of the ninth? Maybe - even though we’ll concede that it’s unlikely that Carlos Leon would have scored on the Gookie Dawkins single. Ah well…, woulda, coulda, shoulda.

In what should prove to be an interesting feat, tonight sees Matt Childers (7-2, 5.11 ERA) taking on a mineral (2-1, 7.04).

Clearly, we’re running out of steam here. Neate’s vacation can’t end soon enough.

[Photo credit: Z. Kiiffner]

Posted by ottawalynxblog at 12:15 PM 0 comments     Links to this post

***********************************************************************************************************

It’s later.

Just a couple of quick things to add.  First up - Ed Rogers.  Ed, be careful OK?  As I noted in the guest blog at OoLF, you’re a player we hate to love, but we can learn, you know?  Don’t push it.  Having said that - the man is a true gentleman both off and on the field.  In the bottom of the ninth, Brennan King had to scramble back to third when John Russell put up the “stop” sign.  Brennan stumbled awkardly and looked to be favoring an ankle as he got back to bag.  Ed reached him before John, called “time-out” to the umpire and then helped support Brennan’s weight for him.   Classy, classy guy.

Ed, joking around with the guys in the Lynx dugout.

Another classy guy, Lou Collier, appears in an article at the Minor League Beat blog.  Lou’s the second former Lynx player to be featured there in the last year (Brandon Marsters being the first).  A nice article giving a lot more depth than I provided in my profile of Lou earlier this year, and if I’m not mistaken, it also features some photos from blogtographer Patrick Shanks.