Sleep

Here’s another sign of my advanced middle age. After watching the White Sox play four games on the West Coast, I felt like a zombie all day Monday and made sure to be in bed before eleven. With Carlos Rodon on the mound against the Mariners, you just never know. Lo and behold, I get up this morning and what do I find? Rodon went five shutout innings, with Michael Kopech and Jose Ruiz chipping in with another four in a 6-0 win. Now, I want to see if Rodon makes his next scheduled start. He’s been injured so often in his six-plus seasons with the Sox I can never tell if he’s waiting for the pain to subside between pitches or he’s just fidgety on the mound. Either way, the game took 3:23 to play. Ah, sleep. I’m rested enough to wonder how long baseball can keep going along this path. The Mariners got three hits and struck out fifteen times. Maybe it was the four walks they managed that dragged the game out so long, but I doubt it. Strikeouts are not merely collateral damage in pursuit of launch angle. They threaten to be the end of baseball as we know it. That said, I almost wish I’d stayed up long enough to see Kopech record five strikeouts in two innings. On the season, he has eight punchouts in four innings. Nice, but pastime threatening.