SoCalSportsFan

Let's get this shit going already!

I'm so GLAD to see the Angels back in action.
Once the call was made to postpone the season, my thoughts of a great sports year went down the tube quickly, and to compound it I'm also a Ducks fan too, so I lost 2 sports in one fell swoop.
Based on what I personally have gone through since Tuesday morning (Bad (totalled) Car Accident I walked away from unharmed), I am grateful for EVERYDAY i see the sun when i wake up. So this Angels season for me takes upon a very special meaning to me.
If you want to know about my "Adventure" on Tuesday, I've posted it on my FB (you need to friends with me there) and Twitter Accounts. But I'm convinced my Guardian "Angels" were watching out for me on Tuesday!
#GoAngels #TheHaloWay

I'm so GLAD to see the Angels back in action.
Once the call was made to postpone the season, my thoughts of a great sports year went down the tube quickly, and to compound it I'm also a Ducks fan too, so I lost 2 sports in one fell swoop.
Based on what I personally have gone through since Tuesday morning (Bad (totalled) Car Accident I walked away from unharmed), I am grateful for EVERYDAY i see the sun when i wake up. So this Angels season for me takes upon a very special meaning to me.
If you want to know about my "Adventure" on Tuesday, I've posted it on my FB (you need to friends with me there) and Twitter Accounts. But I'm convinced my Guardian "Angels" were watching out for me on Tuesday!
#GoAngels #TheHaloWay

This just changed the whole momentum of the series. If this doesn’t happen I firmly believe we win Game 2. If we got past the White Sox we would have rolled over the Astros. 
 
God this still really bugs me. We win the series if it isn’t for this. No doubt in my mind.

I've always found Alex "very appealing" and she's one smart lady, who is very easy to look at. Whomever she's with, he's one very lucky fortunate guy!

It's a German name. It means 'she whose bosoms defy gravity'.

She's a cutie, always liked her

how fortunate we are to have her

Don’t you wish all women only gained in the right places? 

This was one heck of a Gameday Thread. So many in one accord, pulling for what was an amazing night in Angels baseball this season. 

I'd rather see Tori Hunter as bench coach. 
 

Obligatory

The curtain falls on the Big Brain Brad Show. 
Factors? $430 million center fielder minus 90 losses equals time to move on. 
Meanwhile in Thousand Oaks, I think I heard some loud chuckles echoing across the landscape.

I think this is one of those opportunities to remind people that if there's one thing that'll save a heart attack victim's life, it's an AED.  
The survival rates of cardiac arrests outside the hospital are grim - about 5%.  Add CPR, it's much better, but still not good.   
(Cardiac arrests - the heart has, effectively, stopped - victim is unconscious.  Heart attacks are due to blockages, victim is usually awake and in pain - give 'em an aspirin to chew, and call EMS.  If they become unconscious, start CPR/AED.)
CPR + AED before EMS arrives can triple the chances of survival.  
If you're the only responder, call 9-1-1, get the AED if you know where it is, and apply it. 
If there's more than one person, call 9-1-1, start CPR, and send someone to get the AED and prepare it for use. 
They're 'automated' - duh - they have pictures and will literally tell you what to do - you don't have to be trained (although it's much better if you are.) 
 
If you come upon a scene where 9-1-1 has been called, CPR is being delivered, all those gawking bystanders should scatter and find an AED - minutes, even seconds count  
While I'm at it, another person I know had a stroke last night - learn and understand FAST:
Facial Drooping Arm weakness Speech difficulty Time to call EMS

The Angels offense will only go as far as the leadoff hitter batting in front of Trout takes it.

The Joe Sheehan Newsletter Vol. 11, No. 54 July 13, 2019   I don’t really believe in anything.   I was raised Catholic. I don’t remember faith being a big part of our home life, but I know my being an altar boy at Good Shepherd made Nana happy. I know I got a good, safe education at the school across from that church, and then in four years at Regis. I can just about pinpoint the moment I began to fall away from whatever faith I had, a conversation with a parish priest that didn’t go well when I was...12, maybe 13. From that point on, church was an obligation tacked on to my education. Theology classes in high school didn’t help, reinforcing my belief that this big book of stories was just a big book of stories.    It was, perhaps, this break from religious faith that made it easy for me to adopt a stathead approach to sports. Chemistry? Momentum? Clutch? These were beliefs, and they fell apart when you used facts and data to get at the truth of them. By the time I graduated from USC, I was both an agnostic, in a Pascal’s Wager way, and a fervent devotee to the idea that all answers were found in facts and data. Facts and data were the foundation on which we built Baseball Prospectus. Around that time, I got married in a church, but the ceremony and the location didn’t mean anything to me; it was about the girl in the dress with the smile.   My ex-wife liked to say that everything happens for a reason, and I didn’t buy that, either. There’s no grand plan, just individuals acting in their own self-interest, with a healthy dollop of randomness thrown in. She and I didn’t meet because of fate, we met because my friends at a party needed a blender. We didn’t split up because it was meant to be, but because I was a selfish husband. There’s no plan that explains her losing her parents four years apart before she was 35, none that doesn’t force you to conclude that the planner is vicious and mean. Over the past 30 years, most everything I have seen and I have heard has reinforced what that seventh-grader thought as he left his meeting with Fr. Ryan -- this is all B.S.   As I approach 50, coming off a wretched few years wholly explained by human frailty, human venality, human fear, human evil, I see no grand plan, no guiding hand. I don’t really believe in anything. I know that which I can prove, and the rest is varying degrees of unknown, all of it determined by us, not some mythological deity or unseen force.   So I don’t know what do to with last night in Anaheim.   Eleven days after losing their friend and teammate suddenly, shockingly, the Los Angeles Angels played their first home game since his death. They stepped on to the field, every one of them, wearing Tyler Skaggs’ #45 jersey, the one he’d worn for years battling back from injuries, battling his command, battling for them. They watched Skaggs’s mother, Debbie, looking unimaginably young for such an awful task, step to the mound, scratch her son’s initials in the dirt, toe the rubber and deliver the kind of strike her boy should have been hurling.    If the story had ended there, if the next three hours had been filled with the kind of mundane baseball game, some 5-1 contest, that you forget even as the teams are walking off the field, that would have been enough. That would have been, if not closure, certainly catharsis, another step in the process of grieving a friend, a child, a teammate, a fan favorite.    I don’t know how to explain what happened next. There was SKAGGS 45 launching a two-run homer. SKAGGS 45 crossing the plate seven times in the first inning. SKAGGS 45 ranging to his left to make a diving stop, rising and throwing to first for the out.    SKAGGS 45 throwing a no-hitter.   After the game, the Angels came on to the field and put SKAGGS 45 on the mound one final time, laying their jerseys on the dirt he’d kicked so many times before. Watching them pay tribute to their friend, I thought about how the Mariners are bad and Mike Trout is good, how no-hitters are random and an 0-for-19 on balls in play is as much bad luck as anything else. I though, angrily, that no justifiable plan for the universe, no deity worth worship, inflicts this kind of pain on this many people, makes a mother bury her son.    It all seemed inadequate as an explanation of what I watched last night. Facts and data, my bedrock, don’t seem like enough right now. What happened last night will happen a handful of times in any baseball season, but that it happened last night, in that place, by those people, in front of that crowd, in the wake of this horrible event...is that coincidence? Is that just human strength, human skill, human passion, human good?   I don’t know.   I don’t really believe in anything. For the first time in a while, though, I think I understand the people who do.

I think we all echo those sediments about Tyler, Angel Oracle. 
For the last few years, and in particular with the passing of Tyler, I have had this sense that the Angels were a cursed franchise.  I remember when Adenhart was killed and what that did the organization.  Much of the media failed to mention guys like Valbuena when talking about the recent Angels who died way too young, but I considered the bat flipper an Angel as well when he passed.  And maybe I suffer from tunnel vision, because I do not follow the rest of MLB as nearly as close as I follow the Angels.  But, it seems to me we have an awful lot of players (current and former) who meet tragic ends, even more than other teams.  I could be wrong, but it seems that way to me.  In addition, the mountain of injuries that hit our organization is overwhelming.  It's so ludicrous we joke about how we should just have all our pitchers get TJ surgery so they can just get it out of the way.   For some reason, this organization has just felt a bit cursed or snake bit to me - plagued more so by tragedy and injuries than other organizations (not just baseball but any sport). 
The passing of Skaggs really shook my love for baseball. I've read about athletes dying before, and even ones on my favorite team.  But Skaggs hit me much harder than any other.  A lot harder.  I made a post about him on this very board just two hours before I read about his death.  I still get choked up thinking about it and him.  And I am not an emotional person at all. 
Every morning, like many of you I am sure, after I get up and make coffee I immediately pull up all the Angel's minor league clubs and read how they did the night before.  I live in Houston, so often times I crash before the games are complete and am unable to read about them at night.  But after Skaggs passed, I've had a hard time doing that.  Hell, I couldn't even go near baseball for about a week.  I would read to see how the team is doing, but I truly did not care if they won or lost.  Just recently, I've started prospect hounding a little more, but some times when I would look up stats on the angels mlb website, my eyes go immediately to the Skaggs stat line, and my stomach would sink a bit and I stopped caring again.  
But after last nights game, something is a bit different.  It's like, the universe or the baseball Gods, or whatever just told me that it is OK to care about baseball again.  And because the team probably had it best single day performance in every way on the very night they decided to honor Skaggs signals to me that this team can and will rise above all the tragedy, injuries, and other bullshit and accomplish something special.  I am not saying we will win the world series this year, but I feel this team is headed for great things pretty soon.  It may not be this year, but it will be soon.  It's almost like the Angels just broke their curse.  I do not know, maybe I am still a bit buzzed from the euphoria of our performance last night, but something tells me the curse is over. 

The Angels should sign John Lackey to a 24 hour contract , the next time the Stros. are in town. He knows what to do. 
 

Still trying to figure you why things like this happen! Similar to when Nick passed away I was in a "fog" for the next few days.

Crutch man is going to his ex girlfriends wedding