Rickety Rocketry
Clemens gets clobbered by
Pals he wore pinstripes with
One year ago.

Houston’s whole season has
Been disappointing; such
Underperformances
Ruin their show.

On Baseball Prospectus Radio last week, Will asked A’s beat writer Susan Slusser “what’s wrong with Barry Zito?” Today, Phil Rogers asks the same question on ESPN.com.

In both cases, I’m rather flabbergasted neither Slusser or Rogers mentioned the most obvious reason: Barry Zito changed his delivery this year from the stretch. He decided to stand more upright instead of hunched over to take pressure off his knee.

The first question to ask when troubleshooting a problem is, “what changed?” So if you ask Ken Arneson the Barry Zito question, my first guess is this: the new delivery didn’t work.

Why it didn’t work, I’m not an expert enough to say. But I think whatever other excuses you make (missing Rick Peterson, thinking too much, less deceptive changeup, loss of control, etc.) are probably cascading problems from the original one of changing his motion.

If Zito misses Rick Peterson, it’s probably because Peterson wouldn’t let Zito change his motion, and Curt Young did.

I heard that he’s gone back to the old style stretch delivery now, but I haven’t seen it yet. I hope it will help get the old Zito back. I’ll be watching tonight.

I returned from Sweden Wednesday night, went to bed, got up at 3am Thursday morning and noticed that I had tickets to Thursday night’s A’s-White Sox game. Oops, forgot about that.

I guess I could have tried to get rid of the tickets, but I also found upon returning that the police had found my stolen car while I was away. So instead of spending Thursday recovering from jet lag and trying to find some takers, I spent it working the police and insurance bureaucracies to get the car out of storage and to a repair shop. Fortunately, the car was in fine shape, except for a drained battery.

I didn’t want to let the tickets go to waste, so I decided to go to the game. Besides, I hadn’t seen so much as a baseball highlight in over three weeks. I needed some baseball.

The game started at 7pm, which is 4am Sweden time. I managed to get about a 20 minute nap before heading out to the Coliseum, which I hoped would be enough to get me through the game without falling asleep.

I arrived just in time to see the first pitch from the concourse, and by the time I reached my seat, Rich Harden had gotten three outs.

This was the best game I’ve ever seen Rich Harden pitch. He zipped through the batting order twice, facing the minimum through six. The best part was that he was doing it with ground outs instead of strikeouts. He was painting the corners, and keeping his pitches down in the zone. He ended up pitching eight innings, striking out only three, but getting 15 ground outs. He only threw 95 pitches. This was the Rich Harden that makes A’s fans drool. The game flew by.

Really, what if Rich Harden could pitch like that more often? Have there ever been any pitchers who throw 96-100 mph who were ground ball pitchers, not strikeout pitchers?

The A’s rode a Bobby Crosby double to a three-run rally in the 4th, and Eric Chavez homered in the next inning, and those were all the runs the A’s needed. Harden gave up a tip-your-hat-to-a-good-hitter homer to Magglio Ordonez in the 7th, but that was all.

I got my first look at Octavio Dotel in the ninth, and was satisfied with what I saw. He didn’t show much velocity in walking the first batter, hitting only 92 mph on the gun. I started thinking “Arthur Rhodes all over again”, because Rhodes showed up with the A’s not throwing as hard as advertised, too. Then Dotel started cranking it up to 95, and got the next three guys out.

The game was over in 2:02, and there wasn’t a happier guy in Oakland about that than me. I stayed awake for the whole game, collapsed into bed by 10pm, feeling in fine shape, except for a drained battery.

I was flipping through the Swedish TV channels one jet-lagged night, and ran across an imported American show I never watch, Once and Again. It only took a second to realize that if you want a lookalike, Billy Campbell will play Billy Beane in Moneyball, The Movie.

Jon Carroll channeled some Will Carroll in his column today.

Crossing the globe to visit relatives has its benefits, but relaxation isn’t among them. Planes, trains, buses, boats, and cars…moving from one relative’s town to the next, packing luggage, hauling luggage, unpacking luggage…when I get back to America, I’m going to need a vacation.

So an hour or two to pause and gather my thoughts here is quite welcome. Perhaps that’s why I like to blog: to relax, as mental therapy, a short respite from the sufferings of real life.

* * *

If Paul Simon had gone to Sweden instead of South Africa, would I be humming “Diamonds on the Seats of my SAAB” right now? Nah. To say those words and mean them would be to stop making sense.

Displaying luxury is the least Swedish thing you could possibly do. The Swedish Dream can be summed up in one word: “Lagom”. There’s no direct English translation for that word, but it’s an adjective that means “just the right amount or size, neither too much nor too little.”

Swedes don’t want the biggest house with the biggest cars and the most prestigious job with the biggest salary. They want a lagom house, with a lagom car, and a lagom job that pays a lagom salary. To be moderately successful is ideal; being a huge success is embarrassing. Have you ever heard a Swedish athlete brag?

* * *

Eastern philosophy holds that the path to enlightenment is to avoid desire, and thereby avoid suffering. Western philosophy holds that the path to enlightenment is to embrace desire despite the suffering that results. Swedish philosophy is a compromise: enlightenment through a moderation of desires and a moderation of suffering.

I’ve spent three years living in Sweden, but I have never been able to embrace that Swedish philosophy on a personal level. To me, it’s like preferring to hit a double over a home run. I want to either play hard, or not play at all. What’s that quote about hell being reserved for the neutral?

* * *

On this trip, I visited Köping, population 17,000, the town where I lived from the ages of 13-15. As an kid with American-sized dreams, Köping seemed like Satan’s Own Godforsaken Frozen Hellhole of Boredom. Your main choices in life seemed to be to (a) grow up and work at the local Volvo transmission factory, or (b) get the hell out of Köping.

I was baptized and confirmed in Köping’s 500-year-old Lutheran church, but it didn’t help me feel any closer to Heaven. Eventually, my prayers–please God, let my answer be (b)–were answered, and I got a chance to return home to America.

It’s been twenty-two years since I left Köping, and today, it’s the same as it ever was. The Volvo factory still dominates the town. The water is still flowing in the river downtown. The church is still the tallest building. There’s a McDonald’s now, though. That’s progress.

* * *

I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I had stayed in Köping. I probably would have had a lagom job and a lagom house and a lagom car and a lagom Swedish wife with lagom smart kids, and I would have let the days go by until one day I would have asked myself, “Where is my fabulous job?” And I would have asked myself, “Where is my large automobile?” And I would have said to myself, “This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful wife!”

I would have said to myself, “I have never been to Yankee Stadium” and I would have driven off in my car, taking that highway where it leads to, leaving a trail of broken hearts, suffering their lagom losses.

God knows Oakland needed Dotel.
But KC, with Beltran to sell,
Got just Buck, Wood and Teahen?
I’m really not seahen
Why Baird would want those personnel.

As prospects, they’re all second-tier.
How good they will be, it’s not clear.
The players they need
Are Olivo and Reed
But this just hasn’t been KC’s year.