On Notice! (Diamondbacks vs. Marlins)

1. When Dan Uggla homers, the announcers say "His name is Dan Uggla!" I love the idea of personalized catchphrases for home runs. Jerry Howarth should reserve 'And there she goes!' for a player who has recently been left by his wife.

2. Diamondbacks reliever Jon Rauch has a really ugly neck tattoo, which begs the question, is there such thing as an attractive neck tattoo? It doesn't help when Rauch himself is 6'11 and looks kind of like a maniac.

3. It's no secret that the Marlins have the worst attendance in baseball, but since I don't often watch Florida games, the sparseness of their crowds strikes me. This afternoon's game is a bit of an aberration since it's a make-up game after a rainout, but still, there is NOBODY there. It's like one of those high school football title games that is played at the Rogers Centre --- even with a decent-sized crowd of 1000 people (which is more than decent for a Canadian high school football game), the place still looks cavernous. Does the concession staff has nightmares where they're walking through rows and rows of empty seats, in the Florida heat, carrying a heavy rack of food, and they just....can't.....find....anyone?

4. If you ever had any doubt that I was a hardcore baseball fan, the fact that I'm watching an Arizona-Florida game on a Wednesday afternoon should remove all doubt.

5. Florida plays Toronto this year in interleague, and I'm working one of the games. Ergo, I will check another team off my 'seen them play' list. Once I've got the Marlins accounted for, it's down to just the San Diego Padres. Oh, how I longed for the day that I could bask in the reflected glory of Scott Hairston. Someday. Someday.

6. Is this a good time to mention that I picked Arizona to win the National League pennant? The Snakes currently sit dead-last in the NL West with a 15-23 record. And they're losing today. Oops. In fairness to the D-Backs, they (and my fantasy team) have been badly hurt by Brandon Webb landing on the DL. But Webb's injury doesn't account for the fact that they're last or second-last in the majors in average, runs, RBIs, OBP and hits. In summation, this is a bad time to be an Arizona sports fan. The D-Backs suck, the Suns are on the downswing, the Coyotes might move...how bizarre is it that the Cardinals have by far the best situation of any team in town? This is literally the first time this has ever happened.

7. Fredi Gonzalez looks like a fan who won a "manage the team" contest at a fantasy camp.

8. Ok, hear me out...the Marlins don't actually exist. Their stadium looks like one of those early 90's NES baseball games where the crowd is represented as a monochromatic colour. They've won two World Series titles in spite of being by and large a horribly-run franchise, which I figure is baseball's way of appeasing the city of Miami for going along with the charade. 'Orestes Destrade' is actually the name of a piece of Linux code. No human being could actually have the last name of 'Uggla.' I've figured it out. The Marlins were a creation of MLB, various statisticians who claimed that a virtual team was a good way to measure various statistical phenomena against real-life performance, the Lawnmower Man, the saucer people and the Rand Corporation. The Diamondbacks are playing against a green-screen right now. This is the truth. I've done it. I've found the glitch in the Matrix. Hanley Ramirez just morphed into Agent Smith and is....COMING OUT OF THE TV AT ME! GGKGKGJANEPTUWNELKGGGHEFEKGKGHGRKGNDFKDFGPXZLLVQNBNEE!!!!