French Save the Day

Can that possibly be right? Well, kinda.

On Saturday, the Dodgers pulled on their orange jerseys and bounded over the white chalk foul lines to start another baseball season.

By the time the game was over, they would have crawled under the foul lines if they could.

The season opener against the hated Mets was a loss, 12-1.

At least, I think it is. When I asked D.G. to confirm, he fingered his moustache and said "Twelve sounds high, but I stopped counting after the sixth run in the first."

Our starting and relief pitching was terrific, but our bats just never got hot-- despite a great showing in the batting cages before the game--and our defense was just plain lousy.

How lousy? It was saved by a Frenchman, that's how lousy.

Our starting first baseman--a returning player--was afraid of the ball. On the first putout attempt at first, he side-stepped a perfect throw by the pitcher, matador style, and weakly stuck his glove out to catch the ball. He missed, and the ball and our belief in his manliness sailed into foul territory. On the second putout attempt at first, he slapped at the ball and dropped it. On the next putout attempt at first, an out was recorded...because "El scaredo gatto" had been exiled to center field by D.G. and replaced by a first year kid, a frenchman (seriously, the kid's dad is from France) named Philipe who was magnificent. There were no errors at first for the rest of the game.

Who gets saved by the French? Well, this kid did and on top of that, he was so afraid of the ball at the plate that he actually threw the bat down and jumped out of the batter's box to get away from the ball...and it was a strike! Even the girl on our team who is very small took good swings at the plate but jusssssst missed connecting.

You know who loved the French? Ben Franklin that's who. So in honor of him I say you can't count on anything in life other than death, taxes...and the D-Boys having a new first baseman come our next game Thursday.