Foamer Night

There’s something nicely symmetrical about 101. Tack it to a pitcher’s fastball and it’s the stuff of elite closers, in Billy Wagner territory. On the map it’s a stretch of near-coastal Western highway that is, in my mind, the gateway to some of the most sublime driving in the country. In Willard Scott’s hands, 101 is a miracle of human endurance.

In Astroville, 101 is a pop out to a left fielder, a ground out to third, and new heights of mediocrity. 101 losses rattles around like an empty soda can in the bed of an old pick-up truck. A loss like last night’s wasn’t without merit. JD Martinez hit a home run to right field, and Chris Johnson hit one to left. Every bit of confidence is an asset for these young players. Bud Norris pitched okay, then left the game with a threatening injury, and his season is likely over.

Francisco Cordero, pitching himself in the twilight of a big contract, shut down the young Astros easily, and the game set like the sun over the water.

As the Astros prepare to play this afternoon–another set against the Reds under cloudy skies–they look at their last game on the road this year. They’ll make the trip home, then make their own trips home, each of them, to study the map this off-season, searching for a choicer route.

The first inning of this game was as encouraging as any I can recall in weeks, with the Astros pelting stud Phillies ace Cole Hamels with singles and doubles, plating a run and loading the bases before the duds at the end of the lineup wrapped things up. J.D. Martinez spun on a Hamels change-up in his trademark style like the uncoiling of a dangerous spring; Clint Barmes rang a double; El Caballo nipped Hamels for a single. It was just one inning, there wasn’t a home run, only a run scored and it was very early yet. Nevertheless, there was a kind of clockwork motion of the lineup with baserunners ticking forward from base to base like a tuned up baseball machine.

From last night’s win over a healthy Roy Oswalt, to tonight’s win over bonafide ace (albeit a third fiddle one) Cole Hamels, this series against the Phillies has blown through as refreshing as a fall breeze. Now all we need is an actual fall breeze and we’re gold.

Hunter Pence continued his post-Houston tear with a home run off of a balustrade below the railroad tracks. Clint Barmes hit a homer of his own as a part of his fine night at the plate. Jason Bourgeois hit and ran the memory of Jordan Schafer away, for the evening at least.

Jay-Ayy Happ pitched well again, and again I don’t know how.

Cole’s Clues

Hamels starts off plenty of at bats with his change-up. Has a more quiet version of the low-90s fastball than Oswalt shows. Every Phillies starter seems to have the same 92 mph fastball, and they’re all pretty arrow straight, piercing their target with truth and clarity. But Cole will throw his change-up aggressively, an affront that befits his boarding school sneer.

Like all of the great pitchers, Hamels’ pitches work off of one another like an endless Escher drawing of confusion, so that after an 0-0 change-up, a straight low 90s fastball has grown thorns. Speed is one issue but not the only issue, but also there is the undetectable alchemy of pitching, in which one pitcher over another learns how to manipulate the illusion of speed and angle, with the wrist and arms. Of JA Happ I’ve said that it’s hard to tell the difference between his good days and his bad days, and that’s a way of saying that his pitches are not very dynamic. A pitcher like Hamels, on the other hand, passes electricity through his fingertips and into the pitch, so that it’s undeniable to witness how remarkable his “stuff” is. Stuff is a way of saying electricity.

The Hamels breaking pitch, a swirly curveball, is an afterthought, like the after dinner mint in the dish on the way out the door.

The Astros, for their part, spent the first four innings zip-lining Hamels’ pitches back into the outfield for singles, doubles, and even some more. The current ran both ways. Some great hits against an elite pitcher, and some stolen bases off of his meandering motion home, and five runs later they’re up by four runs in the fourth.

Hamels was run out of the game after five innings, which is about like killing off Bruce Willis’ character halfway through the latest Die Hard movie.

Sometimes baseball is really simple. In essence, for a hitter, there is the one idea: hit the worst pitch you see as hard as you can. Carlos Lee, El Caballo Viejo or Gordo or whichever unflattering adjective you’d like to append, is the most glaring example of a player who has lost the ability to complete that simple task with any regularity.

To that end, the most resounding image of El Caballo this year is the helpless chip of a meatball pitch–whether it be a hanging slider or an easy fastball right down the middle–that clearly should have been hit a long ways, especially by the big, expensive slugger in the middle of the lineup. Lee simply lacks whatever fast twitch muscle response or explosion of exertion that a hitter needs to punish the opposing pitcher’s weakest efforts. The effects of age are not obvious but subtle. Only over time does the millisecond of delay in Carlos Lee’s swings from last year to this year, and the year before to last, become a trend rather than an aberration. While 95 percent of this Astros team tries to calm the nerves of youth and bring order to the chaos of the young hitter’s overall presentation, Carlos Lee is among the few in the Houston stable attempting to patch together the fraying tapestry if his career’s worn through years.

The Monday evening game against the Philadelphia Philles–the gleaming pride of National League baseball with their fireman’s calendar of starting pitchers so strong and consistent that they’ve been able to weather any faltering in the lineup–is among those farcical late season match-ups that is the baseball equivalent of an MMA match between Ivan Drago and McLovin. An Astros victory will add up to little more than a feeble 2012 confidence booster, and a loss is just another affirmation of the pecking order in the league at the moment. That said, I’ll take the win, if only to recall that satisfying sense of order that follows a win even in a lost season.

Two of the runs that added up to the five-to-one victory came off of the bat of the aforementioned Carlos Lee. El Caballo rattled a hanging curveball from the still effective and very relaxed-seeming Roy Oswalt and tagged a few seats in the Crawford Boxes. For just a moment, when Lee jumped on that rare bad pitch, shades of the old Astros–those veteran teams of bad ball punishers and home run launchers and doubles demons–flickered across my mind’s eye. El Caballo rode the 360-foot track from home to home, astride a younger version of himself as he rode the game’s best graceful circuit.

Another rainy night in Pittsburgh: pitchers wore their sleeves and rain drops popped against the microphones for the second dreary night of baseball in a row. As foul balls fell into the nearly empty stands, this game between the Astros and the Pirates achieved a quietude that could be construed as either calmly Zen or deeply depressing, depending on your metaphysical tendencies. With so few fans in the stands even the mildest meditation met with interruption when the strange barks from the desperate Pittsburgh few were isolated and enhanced enough to jolt the peaceful Astro fan from a meditation on the nature of wins and losses.

In the middle of such a losing season, every pitch and every swing is self-contained; it exists within the controlled confines of the inconsequential, constrained by the boundaries of the mathematically impossible. The balance of the game, then, is not between wins and losses, but between the player and the audience. Because the results of the game are meaningless, only the witnessing of the event brings it to life. The baseball game only exists if I see it; its impact is momentary and fleeting, like the flicker of a late summer firefly in a dark field.

There’s beauty in the flicker, of course. Jimmy Paredes and his scrambles around the basepaths (see below), Jose Altuve cloaking a grin after flipping the ball across his body deep in the hole, Mark Melancon closing out a game with little incident like a pro. These are the micro-moments that flash and vaporize for those of us training our eyes on the empty evening meadow.

I’m not including Brett Myers on this list of friendly flickers because, frankly, I have no interest in what he does. An aberration in the plan and an unremarkable stylist, I’d rather watch the hitters he faces than focus on he himself. My Brett Myers show was over before it began, and he has done nothing to convince me to put it back on the air.

Tonight’s was a good win, against a division opponent in adverse and even tedious circumstances. To win a game with J.B. Shuck in the three-hole is itself a minor miracle. As night falls on the long day of this season, we could do worse than a quiet win to breathe the promise of the new dawn around the bend.

The Art of the Dart

Brett Myers could make an argument, but really Jimmy Paredes owned this 4 to 1 win. Three hits in four at bats, two runs scored, an RBI. Let’s take a look, step-by-step, at the art of the Dominican Dart.

Top 2: Paredes sprints hard to beat out the last half of what should have been an easy double play ball. The Dart then darted from 1st to home on a double by Humberto Quintero.

Top 4: Paredes beats out an infield single.

Top 7: After a long at bat full of foul balls, Paredes strikes a low fastball to right center for a single. Only a weird, wild, remarkable scoop, flip, and tag by Pirates pitcher Lincoln to catcher Doumit keeps the Dart from scoring on a safety squeeze by Brett Myers.

Top 9: Paredes drills a hard line drive towards the gap in left center field. Andrew McCutchen accelerated towards the ball improbably, then actually overran it and took the ball off of the heel of his hand. As it was, the Dart earned a pretty well-deserved double to elevate his status as the game’s only interesting player. Q drove the Dart home again. 4-1 lead, and that is your ballgame.

A Dream of Rain

In Texas, with the state’s widespread news of raging wild fires and long-term drought conditions, a good old-fashioned steady drizzle hovers perpetually in the distance like a mirage. Cold, dry gusts dropped the temperature at my house and across central Texas on Monday but spread aggressive fires in the Hill Country.

The sort of rain that fills the daydreams of Texans these days soaked the Steel Belt and horsed up the afternoon game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Houston Astros. After a gray delay, the game plodded along to the pops of fat rain drops on the FSN microphones as Jim Deshaies and Bill Brown talked about the effects of a delay on the hitters versus the pitchers. Deshaies concluded that a starting pitcher can get pumped no matter what, because it’s his big day no matter what, whereas the doldrums are more likely to lull the work-a-day position players into a drowsed state, like a little kid with heavy eyelids staring out the window wishing the rain would let up so he and his friends could play wiffle ball.

The unverifiable Deshaies theory seemed to describe the Astros hitters more deftly than those of the Pirates. In the bottom of the 2nd, starter Henry Sosa allowed a walk to Neil Walker and a double to the intermittent but still powerful Ryan Doumit. Only a fine spinning peg to home from third baseman Jimmy Paredes to get Walker saved a run.

Altuve’s Surprise

The sole exception to the Astros hitting doldrums was a triple from Jose Altuve in the top of the third. Against the ever-present right-hander James McDonald–who seems to my untrained eye to be the only starter the Pirates have, and whose middle name is Zell!–Altuve was able to power a deep fly ball towards Jose Tabata in right. Tabata, playing in against the small infielder, broke back towards the wall as if surprised at the sneak attack. In the scramble, he misjudged where the outfield wall was and bunny-hopped as the ball arrived, throwing himself off just enough to lose track of the ball and boot. I would imagine that Jose Altuve has shocked many an outfielder over the years with the aggressive trajectory of his hits in spite of the conservative measure of his stature.

Sosa, like his counterpart McDonald, enjoyed the usual mid-90s life on his fastball. The Sosa question, as ever (or at least for his six career starts), concerns the presence or absence of the dreaded “big inning.” Any pitcher must answer the same question, as any inning that isn’t a shutout inning could be considered big in some way. But some pitchers, with the smooth but wild Sosa among them, exude the sense that their good will be great and their bad will be putrid. Sosa pitches quite well most of the time. His WHIP is a respectable 1.2. In times of success, he allows the natural qualities of his fastball to dictate its use, allowing the gravity of its sink and break to carry it to the edges of the strike zone and up under the hands of right handed hitters. A pretty good breaking ball supports the very good fastball.

During the bad innings, like Sosa’s disproportionately damaging two-run fourth inning, the fastball flattens out and sails to the middle of the zone, where big league hitters hit it hard the other direction. A single by Andrew McCutchen (my favorite Pirate!) and a plunked Derrek Lee set the stage for Ryan Doumit and Josh Harrison to drive them home with solid line drives through the rain.

Only a bases loaded grounder back to the pitcher to start a shaky 1-2-3 double play would hold off a further Pirate advance in the inning. But the Astros hitters, in full application of the Deshaies theory, were unable to surmount the daunting one-run lead. A fine opposite field home run from Derrek Lee clattered into a damp and empty right field bleacher to increase the lead to two runs late.

Down three runs to one in the top of the ninth, the Astros threatened against closer Joel Hanrahan, whose mangy goatee dripped with precipitation. Carlos Lee walked and Jimmy Paredes singled. Matt Downs came through as a pinch hitter once more, dropping a single into shallow right field. Paredes, however, such an impressive young player in many regards, committed a youthful sin when he rounded second base aggressively despite the fact that the encumbered Caballo ahead of him had already slowed to an unsteady halt like an eighteen wheeler easing down a 6 percent grade. Paredes was cooked, and his out at second base was the second of the inning, and the threat ended with a J.B. Shuck flyball to left field.

Four straight losses in September don’t bode well for the fall conclusion to this 2011 season.

In the bottom of the fourth inning, the Astros constructed an edifice of run-scoring that would set a fine foundation for growth.

First, Jimmy Paredes took a walk. The Dominican Dart showed little sign of hitting with patience in the minor leagues, sporting a .300 on base percentage in more than 400 at bats in Corpus before his call-up. In around a hundred looks at the plate in the big leagues, hm, well, he’s about the same. But he walked in the 4th, and walking is good!

Paredes broke to steal second and Angel Sanchez completed the hit and run by poking a single past the diving third baseman. With Paredes on third and nobody out, Humberto “Q” Quintero check swung and nubbed a swinging bunt out in front of home plate. Pirates catcher Ryan Doumit fielded the ball and looked Paredes back to third before throwing Q out at first. The Dart, instead of settling for a trip back to third, broke for home plate as soon as Doumit turned his back, and scored easily when jurassic first baseman Garrett Jones hurled the ball towards Drayton in the owner’s box.

Jimmy ball! Paredes sees the baseball field as a matrix of opportunities, rather than a series of set pieces. With their abundance of fresh legs and lack of team power, Jimmy ball is their path.

Jordan Schafer got the memo. Before the Bucs could gather themselves, he dragged a perfect bunt to the right side to score Angel Sanchez walking. At this rate, with his power display, his poise, and his aggressiveness, the 24-year-old Schafer could prove to be a worthy starting center fielder for the next little while. I’ve liked all that he’s displayed so far.

The two runs that the Astros built in the 4th would prove enough to win, on the heels of JA Happ’s improbable excellence. To construct those two runs, they mixed a sturdy stucco made of speed, moxy, and a bit of luck. Spread that over a framework of strong pitching, and success may not be so fantastical a creature.

Houston may be suffering through a massive drought, but the Astros are swimming. J.D. Martinez won’t not hit behind our young fire starters, our starting pitchers, from Wandy to Sosa, have thrown well. Four straight wins and the young team feels like a young, dynamic team.

As Jose Altuve took his frenetic warm-up swings before his at bat in the fifth inning, I considered the stats they showed on screen. A fine average for the little guy, but just one home run? The powerfully built second baseman could surely muscle a few more out of the park. How about right now? I love to predict a home run, and I would like to say I predicted Altuve’s shot into the Crawford Boxes last night, the first run in what turned into a blowout. Pirates right-hander Charlie Morton’s sinker, though, so puzzling for right-handed hitters, quelled the optimism. How could Altuve get his hands through the zone quick enough to pull the ball? (And pulling the ball was his best shot at Minute Maid Park.) J.D. Martinez and Clint Barmes were each struck out by Morton’s easy rider of a fastball inside, that disappeared under the wrists at around the time the hitter thinks he should be hitting the ball.

With an out in the fifth, Morton threw another one to Altuve. He crooked his wrist and side-slung the sinker in. And it was in, but Altuve was also in, and the ball he hit dropped into the first few rows of the Crawford Boxes like a piece of candy into the upturned palms of a child. Like I said, I didn’t predict the home run. Instead, it was a response. In those few moments, beginning when I hoped for some life from Altuve’s power bat and concluding when his home run ball dropped into the seats, the Astros dismal record faded to the background. Hunter Pence’s remarkable run with the Phillies faded, too, and Lance Berkman’s hot start in St. Louis. The entirety of the baseball universe was contained within that moment. I stood up from the couch and raised my arms.

All was Altuve, the mighty mite.

Rarely in life do you get a chance to hit the figurative reset button and correct a wrong, but when the Rockies claimed Wandy Rodriguez off of waivers yesterday, they were basically begging Ed Wade to hit CTRL-ALT-DELETE on the original contract.

…

Instead of hitting CTRL-ALT-DELETE, Ed Wade is going to try and tinker around with some crappy virus scan software while his computer grinds to a paralyzing halt.

While this commentary from Sean Pendergast over at the Houston Press’ Hairballs got a good laugh out of me, I thought I’d offer my counter position.

Pendergast, a sports radio host on 1560 The Game (my new favorite radio station, BTW, and an intriguing entry given its relationship with Yahoo! Sports, one of the staid sports presences in the blogosphere/online baseball environment), has taken an extreme stance, to be sure, and I’m the type to avoid extreme stances. Pendergast admits himself that the Wandy deal is a really good deal, and that Wandy is a very good pitcher. To give that away for nothing valuable in return would seem the equivalent of throwing money away. It’s sort of the inverse of the Roy Oswalt situation that has left us paying his salary while he plays elsewhere. To hand over Wandy to the Rockies would be essentially handing them the savings outright. We may be rebuilding, but I don’t think that warrants literally handing over value to an opponent. Value is value, and given the cost savings the Astros will soon enjoy given that we’ll have no veterans left on the team, we can surely live with the Wandy price tag and its high value level.

I’m not arguing that it’s a great deal, as Wandy’s going to age and probably won’t be same pitcher in a few years. But to jettison the Wandy now with no return would be to a) ignore his trade value this winter, as obviously there is interest in the deal from other teams and b) show a short-sighted view of the potential of a young team to have a breakout year, in which a strong pitcher like Wandy can have a huge impact. Rebuilding does not mean blind demolition. It means getting younger value for your older players if you’re able to, and finding good value when you do keep on veterans.

Wandy is a great pitcher, with a pretty good contract in place. Whatever the state of the team, under few circumstances should such a player be shipped off as thought he was Carlos Silva.

This season is stamped in tin: there will be nothing after game number 162. (In fact, ‘Duk at Big League Stew confirmed that the Astros have been eliminated mathematically.) As Brett Myers gave up hit after hit in the bottom of the first inning, I couldn’t help but think that he was just making sure we Houston Astros fans didn’t get ahead of ourselves. For all of the excitement and mystery that the young Astros like Jimmy Paredes, J.D. Martinez, and Jose Altuve lend to the game, Myers was there to say: “Hold on, now, we’re still a godawful team. As a gentle reminder of my contract status and our position in the standings, I’m gonna huck some sad, lifeless sliders at the top of the strike zone to some of the game’s more dynamic young hitters. Aaaaaand…my work here is done.”

A thirty-seven run first inning sealed this one up early, and besides some nice Rockie-watching and a few J.D. shots, this game featured a mid-game drought to challenge the rainless wasteland that is the state of Texas currently. Only a Matt Downs nine iron home run in a too-little-too-late ninth inning ruffled the sails a sketch before the sad voyage came to an end.

Rockies Style

The Colorado Rockies are among the teams that I haven’t watched much despite hearing about them on a pretty regular basis. Fine players like Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez are hazy for me in terms of the cuts of their respective jibs. The odd little series under their fine Colorado skies is just the sort of taste of obscured talent to freshen up a tough season, and a tough loss.

CarGo impressed on Monday night, with a booming home run to right field off of a low Brett Myers breaking ball and another double to boot, is a big, imposing hitter, whose swing reminds me of Larry Walker’s in the that he stays low and meets the ball way out in front of the plate. It’s hard to believe the big fellow can run, too.

Tulowitzki was not in the height of his form, conversely. Perhaps the dramatic vistas over the rim of Coors Field mesmerized him, because he couldn’t see even the mediocre sliders last night. His power is apparent even when he swings violently and misses. His stance is kinetic, and impatient, as though he can’t wait to tear into something. I’ll admit, in a loss such as the Astros endured last night, I wouldn’t have minded seeing the best hitting shortstop in baseball send one a couple of four hundred feet closer to the Rockies.

Dexter Fowler, the rangy prospect slowly turning into a major leaguer, swings the bat like an exuberant Little Leaguer. I slot him firmly into the Jimmy Paredes style category. We’ll call them The Exuberants for now.

Todd Helton, the old grizzly, reminds me deeply of Will Clark in swing and aura. Clark felt, to me, like he was 39 every day of his career. Helton is actually 39, but he can still hit like Clark.

Jordan Schafer’s Astros Debut

In Jordan Schafer’s first at bat with the Astros, he rolled over a foul ball and struck out looking on a questionable high fastball. Not much to work with in terms of getting a sense of his style, but from the way he holds his hands close to the body, he suggests the composure of a slap hitter. In his second at bat, Schafer hit into a pretty standard double play grounder. A few more easy groundouts followed, and Schafer’s debut did little to take the sting out of the loss of Michael Bourn, who appeared in the highlights the other day crashing into the wall while making a fine catch in center field.

A Modest Jhoulys Chacin Scouting Report

I’ve never seen Jhoulys Chacin pitch before. He’s of the type that is praised by fantasy baseball bargain hunters for his strikeout rate and consistency under the radar, so I wasn’t surprised to watch him fool Astros hitters and present a steamer trunk full of above average stuff.

The most visible article is his hard sinker, a 92-93 mph heavy ball that he was able to start at the bottom of the strike zone, so that by the time it arrived at home plate it was around shin level and unhittable. He complemented the hard stuff with a tough straight change-up. But the sinker is the bread and butter. Sinker ballers with such drastic action on their fastballs have a certain leeway that pitchers with straighter heat don’t. Seattle Mariner Felix Hernandez is probably the prime example of the sinker ballers cushion. His control, while certainly above average, is hardly Maddux-esque. Instead he lets the natural–and insane–movement on his pitches do the the hard work, essentially starting his best pitches around the middle of the strike zone and letting them dart around like he was releasing baby seals back into the wild.

Astrosphere (aka links from the online Astros community):

Someone is Coming Up at Astros County, on who will be pitching this Thursday

The work of a young Marvin Zindler, crime photographey at Bill McCurdy’s Pecan Park Eagle

Carlos Lee: Elite Defender? at Crawfish Boxes

I tuned in to Milo Hamilton and Dave Raymond on the radio while driving back from a weekend at the ranch. There’s not a better way to acclimate to civilized society than baseball on the radio. I came in when the game was tied at 4 and headed into the deep innings, promising a tight game to keep me alert at the wheel–in stark contrast to my dog, who was passed out in the back seat having spent half of the weekend ill-advisedly barking down a palomino horse and the other half dodging the nips of a native Jack Russell Terrier.

Milo Hamilton, whatever his shortcomings as a broadcaster these days, is a master of the emotionally compelling baseball narrative. Early in my listening experience, for example, Milo reminded his audience of Henry Sosa’s proclivity for four-run starts just like the one he tallied on Sunday. That makes three in a row for the consistent young pitcher, and while I didn’t see or even hear much of his start, Sosa seemed to have once again wobbled early before righting the ship for a few more solid innings. Milo told me that story succinctly and with humor, highlighting the quirk in a tone of voice that reminded me of the familiar weirdness of baseball, which we are regularly reminded is a series of probabilities acted out on a board, even as we marvel at its strange inconsistencies.

I’d have also liked to see a couple of J.D. Martinez’s three hits and two runs batted in, though I did have the misfortune, once I settled back in at the house, to witness his utter failure in scoring even one run with the bases loaded and just an out in the crucial bottom of the ninth. J.D. actually took a third strike, which in that situation was viscerally akin to just outright wetting oneself. The tie remained, and it was on to extra innings, which I was able to enjoy on the teevee with Jim Deshaies and Bill Brown until I fell asleep, all country tired on a Sunday afternoon, following the Kung Fu Panda’s two-run roundhouse to center field. The promise of an eleventh inning rally wasn’t enough to keep me–or the dog for that matter–awake.

So where do we stand this year? The Astros acquitted themselves respectively against the San Francisco Giants still in the hunt, adding a couple of wins to tally up a four-game streak before the loss on Sunday. Jordan Lyles and Wandy Rodriguez both pitched well, and there are hitters on this team who are doing their best to prove that they are pro hitters.

Lyles

With the pitch count restrictions befitting a prized prospect in this modern era of arm management, I was curious to see how the Astros would stay within the innings limits that were placed on Jordan Lyles, in the 170 innings range. Would he simply sit for the last weeks of the season? Would he get the hook after three innings every start? We now have the answer: he’ll be demoted, then called up to serve as a reliever, according to Brian McTaggart at Astros.com. Lyles has a starter’s repertoire, with his lively but not overpowering fastball, a sneaky change-up, and an improving curveball. But logic would dictate that good pitches for a starter would be good pitches for a reliever. As the whole relief thing will be a short-term project with a well-defined end point, I can’t imagine this odd late season stint will have much of an impact on Lyles’ career one way or the other.

Jose’s Odyssey

Saturday evening, I had just stepped inside for a glass of water to escape the searing country heat when I got a text message from my friend Half Boot. “Inside-the-parker by Altuve!” I grinned. Context was irrelevant. In my mind’s eye, away from cable teevee or the Internet, I could see young Altuve on his fantastic voyage, scampering through the crowded void of space: passing forming nebula, skirting seething black holes, and dancing around fast-moving comets while the forces of entropy seeking disorder and disarray attempt, that being the completion of baseball’s perfect circle, the completion of the orbital circuit.