Chris Reitsma's cousins are dorks

So this past weekend, I made a trip out to Seattle, Washington for a weekend of some fun with friends, in a city that I've never been to before. Naturally, being the manly, baseball-loving man that I am, I prearranged an evening for my two friends and I to take an evening out to Safeco Field, to watch some Seattle Mariners baseball. Luck would have it, they would be taking on the mighty New York Yankees that evening.

Despite the fact that I firmly believe that AL baseball is inferior to NL baseball, I can't discriminate in my ultimate goal to eventually make my way to every single major league ballpark in America. Besides, with Jose Vidro serving as the DH for the Mariners, it's not like they've got a premier bat to hit in place of the pitcher.

Safeco Field is a beautiful ballpark, with nice big seats, a huge variety of eateries, albeit a little exploitative towards their Asian audience, but with good Northwestern Red Hook brew, and a park specialty in their Garlic-Salt French Fries.

Matt DeSalvo vs. Miguel Batista - prior to the game, I had to give the nudge to Seattle's starter, against the untested rookie. And after the first inning, it looked like it would be a ball game, as Batista left the first unscathed, and the Mariners were only hindered by a double-play, by the King of GIDP, Jose Vidro. There is nobody to feel sorrier for than Suzuki Ichiro, because he always gets on base; Safeco made a good point to point out Ichiro's 42 consecutive steals, and the reason for that is simple - if Ichiro doesn't get of that first bag, then there's a high probability that Vidro is going to slap down one of his trademark GIDPs.

Anyway, I made the dubious mistake to seek food in the top of the 2nd inning, because it was then that Batista had a meltdown and allowed the Yankees to score five runs. He would allow two more runs, before being lifted for Eric O'Flaherty, who admirably pitched 4.2 innings of scoreless ball.

But the real story began in the bottom of the 8th inning, when the Mariners made another call to the bullpen. Out comes ...

Chris Reitsma.

Time out.

I am from Atlanta. I cheer for the Atlanta Braves. Two years ago, John Smoltz made the critical shift from dominant closer back to being a dominant starting pitcher. To fill the void that Smoltz left in the tail end of the bullpen, the Braves acquired seemingly effective former-Milwaukee closer, in Dan Kolb.

Well, that didn't last long.

Kolb(b) became notorious for walking the first batter he faced in every save situation, and subsequently blew 165 save opportunities in a 162-game season. By mid-season he had a major fallout with the Atlanta organization, and was pretty much kicked out. For the remainder of the 2005 season, the Braves put together a sloppy closer-by-committee, which was helmed by the unreliable Chris Reitsma. This forced the starters to go deeper into games, and forced the offense to provide enough run support to build a hefty cushion for the suspect bullpen to protect towards the ends of the games. By the time the season ended, trade-deadline acquisition Kyle Farnsworth proved to be reliable enough to go 10/10 on save chances in the remainder of the regular season. Ironically, it was Reitsma who led the team in saves with 15. As a whole, the team generated a paltry 38 saves. To put it in perspective, Washington Nationals closer, Chad Cordero put up 47 saves, by himself. In the end, Farnsworth proved to be crap, and gave up a grand-slam and a game-tying homer to the Houston Astros in that season's NLDS, who ended up winning in 18-innings off of a walk-off homerun from Joey Devine. The humiliation of sucking so much was obviously too much for Farnsworth who immediately bolted at the end of the year to become Mariano Rivera's jock-sniffer in the Inferior League.

So that left Chris Reitsma by default, for the closing duties in the 2006 season. That, didn't last long either, as he was inconsistent, unreliable, and I have vivid memories of him blowing a gigantic lead in Wrigley Field against the fucking Cubs. Yet another committee-bullpen arose, featuring losers such as Mike Remlinger, Ken Ray, Jorge Sosa, Chad Paronto, and Macay McBBride, to blow saves until Bob Wickman was acquired at the trade-deadline to actually bring some stability to the bullpen.

Resume Game.

So the bottom line is that Chris Reistma sucks. So Chris Reitsma is called out of the bullpen, and it takes me no time at all to start hurling the obscenities and taunts from the upper deck, since I'm sure he'll be able to hear me from 300 feet away. While I was jeering, there were four individuals that were cheering. Are they serious? Cheering for... Chris Reitsma?

Anyway, I kept up the insults, even as he let two base runners get on. Eventually, they looked back at me and attempted to get me to shut up. Why the hell should I?

"He's my cousin!"

Chris Reitsma's cousin.

I was cheering for the Mariners the entire game, but after hearing that, there was nothing more I wanted to see than to see a Yankee, ANY Yankee to tee off on Reitsma, just to prove a point. I jeered and taunted, until they asked me what my beef was with Reitsma - I spun my Braves cap around my head, so they could see the Atlanta A, and I yelled to them,

"I'm from ATLANTA - he's going to give up six home runs!!"

And to this, they had no more response. Apparently, they realize that I have a first-hand memory to his total sucktitude, and they had no more argument - they made some comment about how I was drunk (far from it), and turned their backs to me and proceeded to attempt to concentrate on the game, while I began to hurl my insults towards them instead.

"If you're his COUSIN, how come your seats suck so much???" I seriously thought player family got somewhat better seats than the upper deck.

"I see you're wearing his jersey!!!" They were wearing blank Seattle Mariners away jerseys with no names or numbers on it.

Unfortunately for me, despite allowing two base runners, Reitsma managed to get out of the inning, and surprisingly even striking out Alex Rodriguez to end the inning. The alleged cousins had no rebuttal, despite the free hits they earned by their so-called cousin getting out of the jam.

The rest of the game was relatively uneventful, but was redeemed in the end, when Mariano Rivera delivered the cutter to Jose Vidro who promptly grounded it to Derek Jeter who ended the game with the GIDP. Yankees win, 7-2.