Baseball In The Daytime: 6-28-07

It's nice to be joined on the HoG's baseball beat by budding Inter-web-com superstar Roy F. Almania. Nice, hell. It is a fucking honor. We all worship at the altar of Roy.

There's lots of ass-kissing of the Royals today, following their incredible sweep of the first place Anaheim Cherubs. Jorge de la Rosa scattered 10 hits over six shutout innings (how is that even possible?) and the bullpen pitched three perfect frames to make Mark Teahen's 3rd inning RBI single hold up. Frankly, I'm flabbergasted. It must be exasperating to be a KC fan, as the team seems to go on little spurts like this every season and beat up on baseball's heavyweights. Then you look at the standings and they're 80 games below .500.

Today in the bigs, four afternoon games delight housewives, students, retirees, shut-ins, coma victims, prison inmates, the chronically unemployable and guys like me who'd rather listen to baseball than actually produce at work. The first is the A's and Indians at 10:05 Mountain, on XM 181 and DTV 734. Joe Blanton gets the start for Oakland, while the Tribe's Paul Byrd tries to improve upon Fausto Carmona's immolation yesterday (eight earned in one inning of work). The Indians dropped a half-game out of first with their loss, as Detroit was rained out.

Also at 10, the Pirates and Marlins engage in a scrum in an empty football stadium. Working in front of friends and family today will be Zach Duke and Scott Olsen on XM 185 and DTV 735. I'd get into more analysis on this contest, but we've both got better things to do.

Those Detroit Tigers will try again to finish their series against the Rangers after yesterday's washout. The pitching matchup is still Millwood and Rogers, and Kenny still roasts a hell of a bird. 11:05 on XM 180 and DTV 736.

Up in the Great White North, a couple of teams that make their living on artificial turf have a go at it at 1:10. The Twins (with Carlos Silva) and Blue Jays (with A.J. Burnett) populate the playing surface at the Metrodome, and you can tune in on XM 179 and DTV 737.

Depending on where you live, this may also qualify as a day game: the Dodgers and the D'Backs will commence hostilities in the giant air-conditioned box in downtown Phoenix at 4:40. A couple of lefties will attempt to silence bats: The Unit comes off the DL versus Randy Wolf. Your channels are XM 186 and DTV 738. Enjoy!