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The good thing about Giants day games for me is I can schedule life-related things in the evening. The bad thing about Giants day games is that I have the ability to check out totally, ignoring baseball for a bit even after I get back home. And while I was rolling over those insolent Romans in a game of Civ, apparently Carlos Quentin was in a similar mood, and he broke Zack Greinke.
The video:
You can't tell from the video, but Zack Greinke broke his collarbone. Before we go on, a couple house rules of McCovey Chronicles:
1. Never laugh at injuries. Even to Dodgers. Even in a situation just like this. There's more fun to be had beating the Dodgers at full strength.
2. Mention the World Series titles as often as possible.
The last part comes into play as a reminder of the fragility of it all. And by "all," I mean "collarbones", but more specifically, the best laid plans of Sabes and men. The pachinko ball went down the right hole in 2010, but all it took was one stupid player doing stupid things in 2011 to ruin it all. And somehow the pachinko ball went down the right hole in the very next season.
Which isn't to say phew and wipe our brow because the Dodgers were just relegated to the Federal League. Losing Greinke for an extended amount of time doesn't eliminate them any more than Tim Lincecum turning into the worst pitcher in baseball eliminated the Giants last year. But an injury like this makes me think of all that good fortune. You spend all offseason thinking about teams, bitching about projections, debating roster moves, and then something like this happens. And in another month, another freak injury will happen to another team. If Rafael Furcal isn't injured, maybe he's 4-for-5 against Zito in Game 5.
Okay, maybe that injury was a little predictable.
The Dodgers' road to the playoffs got a little tougher on Thursday night, and it wasn't anything that would show up on preseason previews. It doesn't even fall into the baseball-is-weird category. A silverback sat on Zack Greinke, and now they're a worse team for a bit. Pretty sure none of us expected that.