FOR THE LOVE OF SPOTTED COW! Here we go again with another wild ride at the World Baseball Classic, but this time it’s not your typical underdog story like that one I told about Michael-Vincent trying to beat me in a Kwik Trip hot dog eating contest. No sir, not on this day.
We’re talking Italy vs USA here and for those who didn’t catch the newsflash – the Americans got clocked out by these Italian boys with some serious major league talent! They called up their veteran righty Michael Lorenzen to do some pitching magic because let’s be real, you can’t just throw a guy into World Baseball Classic action without checking his passport first. I mean seriously though folks, it was like throwing Blake my buddy in the hot dog eating contest and not even telling him – he would’ve eaten them all by himself!
Now we know what they say about underdogs: never count out those guys with some Italian flavor! These boys came at us swinging (or maybe that’s just how Italians do it, I don’t know) for 8-0 before the Americans could so much as get a hit. Lorenzen was like the Culver’s ButterBun of pitchers – he mixed and matched his pitches till we were all shaking our heads going “what is this dude doing?” And then there’s that guy Kyle Teel, White Sox catcher extraordinaire who took to launching some home runs left and right – it was like Blake trying to get the last sausage at Kwik Trip before I could snag it!
But here’s where things go from wild to wacky: Team USA finished pool play 3-1 but their fortunes depend on another Italy-Mexico showdown. Because what better way to determine who goes home than a little game between those two winners? They say the best team loses when they’re not even playing each other, I guess this is just more of that classic American sports logic: “Let’s take away our own games and decide it all on a single matchup!”
And you know what gets my goat – these teams are clocking out left and right! Team USA gave up 11 runs to Mexico while Italy allowed six. Now when they say the game is as unpredictable as Michael-Vincent trying to find his way home from Kwik Trip after eating one too many ButterBuns, we’re talking about a real wild ride here folks!
But what’s truly baffling is that it took until the sixth inning for Team USA to score their first run. That’s some serious clocking out! By then Italy had already tacked on three more unearned runs – I guess you could say they were “serving up” those home runs like Culver’s serves up ButterBuns at breakfast time!
So here we are, folks, and our favorite team has got themselves in quite the pickle. Clocking out’s not what it used to be (oh wait that was a joke from my last column). Seriously though – when you’ve given up more outs than runs like these boys have done against Mexico and Italy, things could get real ugly.
Now we just gotta sit back and hope for a bit of good old fashioned American luck. Maybe they can rally behind Pete Crow-Armstrong’s three-run bomb in the ninth or maybe… well, who am I kidding? We’re in deep trouble here folks! All that matters now is Mexico vs Italy – so let’s all put on our thinking caps and figure out how to get Team USA back into this thing.
And remember when Geno Smith was traded for Zach Wilson because he wanted a new adventure like the time Michael-Vincent went back home after eating too many ButterBuns? Well, we’re about to find out if America can pull off another one of those daring moves – but instead of quarterbacking it’s baseball and this time with no Kwik Trip hot dogs in sight!
One-Ry Out.