The Loss Column — Baltimore Sports Blog and Community

I’ll be at my regular perch tonight in section 17, row A, seats 1-3. Feel free to stop by and say hello as we hope to ride Brian Burres past Bartolo Colon and all the way to Rebound City.

Also, tonight’s the night of that Pirates protest. I’ll make it a point to recap that tomorrow, but fire away in the comments if you gather any insight.

Aubrey Huff has hit for the cycle, joining Brooks Robinson and Cal Ripken as the only O’s to do it.

Hot damn.

Game’s tied now and I’m headed out the door, but…

Aubrey Huff hit for the cycle.

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (who, when they were the California Angels, were one of the coolest looking teams around) march into town tonight for the first of three, featuring scufflin’ Steve Trachsel against Kelvim Escobar.

While you contemplate the matchup, tune in to 1570 AM WNST (or go to wnst.net and click “listen live” in the upper left-hand corner) from 6-8 pm. Once again I’ll be a guest on Michael Popovec’s excellent sports radio extravaganza — tune the hell in!

Finally, congratulations to former Maryland boy D.J. Strawberry, who got picked up by the Phoenix Suns last night in the second round of the NBA draft. I would have to assume he’s got a decent chance to stick, too. Strawberry’s a great defender, an aspect of the game for which Phoenix isn’t exactly known. I can imagine D.J. as a late-game, help-protect-the-lead kind of guy.

And sweet lord what a seventh inning it has been. When Melvin Mora throws that ball away I’m thinking of a big inning, a meltdown, and a tough loss. I was already gearing myself up and figuring that, all things considered, it was OK.

Paul Shuey, of all people, had other ideas. He wriggled out of a bases-loaded jam by getting Alex Rodriguez to bounce into a DP — no small feat. Then the O’s came up and Kevin Millar drove in Nick Markakis…with a triple! Then Gibbons comes through, then Patterson wreaks havoc on the basepaths, then…well, then the rains came.

It looks like they’ll be starting up again soon. Six outs to a series sweep and a milestone moment in an otherwise troubled season. Knock on wood and all.

From the Department of Empathy, located about five hours west down I-70, comes interesting news indeed: long-suffering Pittsburgh Pirates fans are planning to protest their team this Saturday by walking out in the middle of the game.

Andy Chomos, one of the organizers, had this to say:

“We’re hoping that, at some point, there’s a response from the Pirates that season ticket holders can grab on to and use to make an informed decision whether or not to renew their season tickets next year,” he said. “If the Pirates make no commitment to improving the quality of play on the field, I don’t think season ticket holders or corporate sponsors should be required to make that commitment (to buy tickets).”

They’ve got a heady brew cooking over there, where the fortunes of their beloved club are even more troubling than what we face here. From what I can gather, this blog post seems to nicely sum up the average fan opinion. It’s also eerily similar to the things we read and heard around these parts last September.

I love a good boondoggle, so I’ll be keeping my eyes on this one. I’m also curious as to what kind of size and scope it’ll find relative to our own little moment in the sun last year. Will the Pirates protest hit all the major national outlets? Will they come anywhere close to the 15,000 they’d like? I doubt it, but you never know.

One thing’s for sure: it won’t be worth a damn thing in the end. And yet, it’s still completely worth doing.

(editor’s note: this is the latest installment of “So Yeah, Dood” — a semi-regular column devoted to something near and dear to many a sports fan’s heart: beer.)

One of the holy grails of the intermediate brewer is the achievement of brewing a beer that has good head retention. That is, the beer maintains an appropriate amount of foamy suds throughout the duration of the drink. Despite this, bartenders often spend inordinate amounts of time during their workday spilling off valuable foam into a drain, just to provide the drinker with what is supposedly more bang for the buck. What’s the point of having it at all if it takes up space in the glass that would otherwise be actual beer?

The short answer is that without it — despite getting more liquid — you aren’t getting everything you paid for. Head serves a purpose more important than looking good in advertising. Head acts as a diffuser for the aromas relatively locked and buried beneath the surface tension of the beer. Because we drink beers generally either ice-cold or at cellar temperatures (45-50 degrees), they don’t diffuse molecules into the air as readily as say, red wines or brandies that begin to smell intensely as they are warmed by the heat from our own hands conducted through the glass. That lack of diffusion leads inevitably to a reduction in flavor.

Beer’s aroma arises with the effervescence of the CO2 coming out of solution. You see it rising up from the bottom of the glass or bottle. Head prolongs and intensifies this diffusion, allowing more of the beer molecules to enter our noses. And yes, it looks good in advertising, and ultimately in a glass up close and personal.

Within the brewing process, factors ranging from how much alcohol the yeast produces and how much it settles out of solution, to the amount of unfermented sugars left in the beer all affect whether a beer will generate and retain head. How hoppy the beer is can also be a factor, as hops contain oils that can both help and hinder the process.

A well-poured beer in a clean glass should retain head for a while, leaving a lace pattern down the insides of the glass as the beer is consumed. Typically, with a pint glass, a good pour utilizes the standard “45-degrees-until-half-of-the-glass-is-full-and-then-straight-down-until-full” method. This ought to give the drinker about an inch or inch and a half of head that should slowly decrease until the beer is gone, allowing the drinker the chance to fully smell, taste, and hopefully enjoy the beer. (more…)

I laugh at fate - Erik Bedard is flat out the balls.

Honestly, can I say it better than that? Nope. Andrew in Rochester knows what’s up.

Tonight’s victory was big, big ,big. Not only did it ensure a series win over the hated Yankees, it ensured that Roger Clemens (cough*juicer*cough) would not win his milestone 350th game on our turf. When I wrote the title of the last post the idea in my head was that, maybe, the Orioles were facing the Yanks at a time when the two franchises were headed in opposite directions. That maybe the O’s were finally going up, and that this series could serve in microcosm as an example of things to come in the AL East.

Who knows if that’ll end up working out. I doubt any of us would be surprised if the Yankees pulled a playoff run out of their collective ass. But I do know this: listening to the game on the radio tonight, I heard a lot of O’s fans in the stands. I heard passion and I heard optimism. Nothing so strong that it’s time to make a declaration, but it was there.

It’s been a long time.

So let’s take stock for a moment. Dave Trembley is 5-3 so far, and there’s a palpable difference in the mood of the team. Andy MacPhail is settling in, and we have no reason to think that he’s not the real deal. Bedard and Guthrie are for real. Leo Mazzone is sticking around. Guys like Brandon Erbe, Nolan Reimold, Billy Rowell, Radhames Liz, and Garrett Olson are on their way.

And Brandon Fahey is finally back in the bigs.

Not so bad, huh?

Tonight’s the big one, as Erik Bedard takes the hill with a series win on the line against aging, bloated, increasingly ineffective, likely juicer Roger Clemens. Post comments here…

Meanwhile, if you haven’t seen it yet, there’s a whole host of news today.

– Cal Ripken made made some interesting comments, basically saying that the team needs some stability. Hard to argue with that.

– Miguel Tejada looks to be out of the lineup until August. I know I said we could use some time apart, but August?? Damn.

– Could there be a more satisfying headline than the one attached to this story?

– And finally, how cool is Leo Mazzone? Yesterday he said that he intends to retire as an Oriole, and in the process just came off as a genuinely inspiring, hard-nosed individual. I hope the new manager sees fit to keep this guy around.