The Angels are inventing new ways to lose. They completed their road trip through the American League West with one win and six losses. They started the trip with a one and a half game lead in the division. They head home in third place, two games behind the Texas Rangers, ironically the only team they beat on this trip, having been swept in a pair of back-to-back two game series against the Oakland Athletics and today the Seattle Mariners.
Benching a slumping Peter Bourjos also meant sacrificing the young prospect's centerfield glove and teaching an old dog his old tricks proved impossible with Torii Hunter creating an embarrassing walk-off pop-up for the M's. Embarrassing for the Angels, the Mariners are not too proud to beg for their W's and the sun-god heard their prayers. You have to figure that, like ancient tribes dancing for rain in the desert, Seattle tribes do a splashdance in the rain that they may see the sun again. Well, they got it and they benefited from it and now someone is going to have to teach them that the Earth actually revolves around that bright hot lightbulb in the sky before they build any temples in its honor with all that Boeing and Wachovia money centered up in the Pac-NorWex.
The papers all want to know what sunglasses you use Torii... don't throw your sponsors under the bus, and send the Safeco official scorekeeper a dozen roses for calling that simple flyball that eluded what should have been your casually outstretched glove a hit. Of course, Scott Downs, he on the receiving end of the L on a check-swing dribbler off the bat of Jack Cust and the two out "hit" that scored him from 3B, is no fan of the Safeco pencil and pad of paper. There go the goose eggs from his ERA, and don't look now but your team is closer to last place than to first.