Live blogging the 2011 Home Run Derby

Rickie Weeks is my pick to win the derby (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

Some thoughts in a timeline style, easy writing, on the 2011 Home Run Derby. Will mix in some tweets and feel free to ask questions, I will answer. I am picking Rickie Weeks to win tonight, going with the underdog. That bat is so fast it makes Jenna Jameson look like a nun.

5:37: And the night is off to a rough, yet hilarious start… My hatred for baseball mascots might only be trumped by Troy Renck of the Denver Post.

@TroyRenck: Dinger is here…really?

@TroyRenck: How he got through airport security is a miracle of Kirk Gibson in 1988 proportions…

5:50: I know people who follow baseball, a notoriously slow sport, might also play poker but watching the World Series of Poker in real time, live? You have got to be kidding me. Doesn’t the final table usually take like 12 hours to complete? Hours of deal, bet, fold, deal, bet, fold, fold, fold, etc sounds like about as much fun as watching The Real Housewives of Detroit County. Actually, that might be a lot of fun.

5:54: OK, the soccer commercial on ESPN, genius (how come I have trouble spelling genius?).

6:14: How long until Twitter gives me some sort of error message? With the players tweeting during the derby it is going to on overload tonight.

6:19: Now here’s an idea – why isn’t Sam Fuld in the field? He should be trying to make every grab. Put a few of the best OF defenders on the grass and take away home runs for every catch a trio of guys from the opposite league makes.

6:21: Gonzalez’s first contact goes about two feet. I know Fenway is hitter friendly, but, c’mon.

6:22: The immediate home run distance in the crowd is great. Will we see one travel 500 feet tonight?

6:32: Now THOSE are some slick shoes (sported by Holliday). If I wore those outside the house the first person under the age of 25 would die laughing.

6:34:

@NotCoachTito: Peter Gammons is about to tweet that Adrian Gonzalez is hitting too many home runs for a lead-off man.

6:38: Did you just snow on me? So good.

6:43: 459 feet by Cano. He hit that ball harder than Casey An…probably still too soon.

6:46: All that time spent perfecting his beard and Papi obviously slipped when doing his ‘stache. What? He shaved like that intentionally?

6:47: FOUR HUNDRED AND SEVENTY TWO FEET by Cano. Will we see 500?

6:50:

@MattZakrowski: These kids in the outfield are going to have terrible UZRs by the end of this.

6:56: *Insert funny comment about girls being afraid of a baseball* That girl in the OF had it lined up and ducked just as the ball landed right behind her.

7:15: Looks like the massive negative run differential for the Dodgers is carrying over to Kemp’s turn in the derby. Somehow he will hit a negative number of home runs.

Adrian Gonzalez

7:18:

@DamonBruce: Matt Kemp’s #HRDerby apparently went to Jamie in the divorce settlement.

7:25: Was that an Astros fan that just dropped that ball that hit him square in his mitt? Fitting.

7:34:

@LoMoMarlins: 4 those who care, Im sitting alone in a bar watching the #HRDerby, crying & Tweeting. The waitress keeps asking “r u sure everythings ok?”

7:35: The AL is like the big brother that is just plain better at everything you do. The NL is Eli Manning and the AL is Peyton Manning.

7:37: Aaaand Twitter is down.

7:38: It’s official; my pick of Weeks to win is now a failure. The good news is that 75% of everyone is out too as pretty much everyone was picking Bautista to win.

7:40: Twitter is worth like eleventy billion dollars and they cannot figure out that they need more servers and/or bandwidth. Their IT Operations team should be ashamed. When was the last time you couldn’t connect to any Google service?

7:44: How was that blast only 455 feet? When the camera man completely loses the flight of the ball you know it was crushed like a cheeseburger in front of Fielder’s locker.

7:46: I might have missed it earlier, but I am guessing “projected distance” is like the “true distance” calculated on hittrackeronline.com? Meaning how far the ball would fly if there weren’t bleachers for the ball to land on.

7:56: You know you have pull when you can say “what’s up with this music” and the DJ immediately changes it up.

7:57: And isn’t that Rhianna singing? Should Matt Kemp be jealous?

8:00: I went to 7-Eleven today because it is 7/11 and they were giving out free Slurpees. They “ran out of free Slurpee cups” and I had to pay. What kind of scam is that? Then I find out the Slurpee cups were only 7.11 ounces or just over a half of a can of soda. I would have been MORE pissed if I had fought that crowd for a Slurpee so small only Ken Rosenthal would have been satisfied with its size.

8:04: I think I picked the wrong second baseman.

8:07: There is another round after this one? Both the dunk contest and the home run derby need to read up on American’s attention span. The Internet has made it so everyone is bored after about 45 seconds, much less three hours of home runs.

8:09: I just searched Google News for 2011 Home Run Derby photos and the first link is titled, and I quote: “Home Run Derby 2011: Matt Kemp Sucks”.

And this commercial break is sponsored by Spill the Beans:

8:25: “UptoWn” in right field at Chase Field. Get it? Uptown…Upton…UptoWn…Justin Upton. I see what you did there! You aren’t sneaking that morsel of cleverness past me!

8:30:

@DavidOrtiz: Show me the money National League!

8:32: Oh my! Kemp has pretty eyes.

8:33: GET AWAY FROM MY KEYBOARD!!

8:34: Sorry, my wife took control while I was in the bathroom.

8:42: Guy jumps in the pool, catches the ball and does NOT spill his beer. That is by far the highlight of the night.

Prince put on a show (Rick Wilking / Reuters)

8:46: Isn’t there some farfetched tale of Mickey Mantle hitting a ball 500 feet and another of Josh Gibson crushing one like 600 feet. Please, and Jim Thorpe could fly. If these guys can’t hit one 500 feet than a drunken Mantle couldn’t either. And Gibson wasn’t hitting one of those beaten to hell, soft as pillows baseballs 600 feet. It’s like the story my brother kept telling last week about a fish he caught. Initially it was about 18 inches long and by the end of our stay it was up to 30 inches.

8:50: And on queue…

@MLB (with Reggie Jackson at the keyboard): Reggie: The power of The Prince was something to see in person, I’d pay to see it. Not since Mickey McCovey Stargell Kingman & Dick Allen

Sorry, these guys today are bigger, better and much stronger and none of those guys crushed 470 foot home runs.

(that ought to spark some debate!)

8:53: At this point I couldn’t care less who wins this thing. My attention span was spent by 6:15. Here we are nearly 3 hours after this shin-dig started and we still don’t have a winner. There is a reason I don’t watch Yankees v Red Sox games; my attention span doesn’t allow it. The playoffs are a strain on my ability to focus. I would find so much more joy if Cano just started to lay down some bunts to get this over with before 9.

8:55: Uh-oh, Kruk utters the fantom word “clutch”. Let’s see if Cano clutches up and wins!

9:00:

@OldHossRadbourn: With the next pitch, this Derby will have gone on longer than the 1890s.

9:02: Josh Hamilton ruined all future home run derbies for me.

9:04: Cano wins it. I am spent. I need some fast moving, short sequences film of some sort. Or just a Mountain Dew.