{"id":98,"date":"2007-05-10T09:52:39","date_gmt":"2007-05-10T14:52:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/velcroblog.com\/?p=98"},"modified":"2007-05-10T10:00:59","modified_gmt":"2007-05-10T15:00:59","slug":"ill-drink-to-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/?p=98","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;ll Drink To That"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Who are these guys? Last year, if we were down by one in the fifth I would completely write the game off as a loss, and I was almost always right to do so. Now we can have two outs and an 0-2 count on Woodward in the bottom of the 9th, and I&#8217;ll still feel like we&#8217;ve got a chance. Last night&#8217;s Smoltz vs. Maddux game wasn&#8217;t exactly the nail-biting pitcher&#8217;s duel one might have expected, but they both looked good, and I loved seeing Smoltzie get the win. I wonder what his &#8220;surprise&#8221; for Maddux would have been, had Maddog not gotten a hit off of the first pitch he offered? I think the gag was pretty much canceled after that &#8212; maybe Smoltz later arranged to have Maddux&#8217;s hotel room bed short-sheeted to make up for it.<\/p>\n<p>Browsing through baseball articles this morning, I came across <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/sports\/baseball\/2007-05-09-clubhouse-alcohol-bans-list_N.htm\">this one<\/a>, about the clubs&#8217; alcohol policies following Josh Hancock&#8217;s death. It offers some cool insight into how much the various teams trust their players, and what kind of clubhouse atmosphere they have. Some of the more interesting listings:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Dry clubhouses<\/strong>: <\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Yankees and Mets (Probably because ballplayers can&#8217;t do anything anywhere ever in New York without getting taken to task in the press &#8212; and yet, somehow David Wells played there for four years. They must have banned alcohol after he left &#8212; possibly because of him. His story about pitching a perfect game while extremely hungover has always been an inspiration to me.)<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Baltimore (The Orioles don&#8217;t even deserve beer.)<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Florida (Half their players are underage anyway.)<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Washington (Drinking and severe depression really don&#8217;t mix well.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Beer available on tap<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Colorado (Of course &#8212; isn&#8217;t &#8220;Tap the Rockies&#8221; printed somewhere on their jerseys?)<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Philadelphia (The team psychologist actually recommended a tap to help them deal with their fans.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;Beer and wine available in the clubhouse&#8221;<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Chicago White Sox (This was the only team that specifically mentioned wine. I&#8217;m having a hard time picturing A.J. Pierzynski sitting in front of his locker sipping chardonnay from a wine glass.)<\/p>\n<p>So how about Atlanta? We&#8217;re listed as &#8220;beer available.&#8221; I&#8217;m sure David Wells is extremely relieved. Hopefully he&#8217;ll need quite a few of them after we&#8217;re done with him today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who are these guys? Last year, if we were down by one in the fifth I would completely write the game off as a loss, and I was almost always right to do so. Now we can have two outs and an 0-2 count on Woodward in the bottom of the 9th, and I&#8217;ll still [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[35,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}