I Don't Believe What I Just Saw

[billroper]

I saw the start of tonight's Cardinals / Rangers game six of the World Series before we left for dinner and was gratified to see that Garcia got out of a nasty jam giving up only one run. By the time we got back to the car, the Cardinals were still (and again) trailing by one run.

We got home and I watched the Cardinals tie it up 4-4, leaving runners all over the base paths. There are sabermetric studies that say that clutch hitting is mostly a matter of luck. Sadly, the Cardinals had been having a shortage of hitting of any kind since game three and absolutely no clutch hitting in game five or game six, it seemed.

Lance Lynn promptly cacked up back-to-back gopher balls in the top of the seventh to the first two hitters. I was disgusted. The Rangers scored another run before the inning was over. When the Cards failed to score in the bottom of the seventh, I decided that it was a good time to clean out the corrosion in the battery compartment of my guitar that had shut down the pickup at OVFF in the middle of the Pegasus Nominees Concert. I got daisy_knotwise to toss the cotton balls down from upstairs, where she'd taken Katie and Julie for a bath, I grabbed the tweezers and the isopropanol from the basement studio, and then went to work swabbing blue-green crud out of the compartment with wetted cotton balls and alcohol.

About a dozen cotton balls later, I was done. Allen Craig hit a solo home run in the bottom of the eighth to cut the Rangers' lead to two runs, but Feliz was coming in to pitch the ninth, so nothing good was likely to happen.

In the meantime, I grabbed the amplifier, plugged in the guitar, got a tremendous peal of feedback that caused Julie to sit straight up from being almost asleep ("What was that?!"), and then adjusted things and verified that the guitar was now working properly. I sat back in the chair, noodling on the unplugged guitar, shifting between C9 and Asus2.

As I said above, nothing good was likely to happen. Until it did. Pujols doubled off the wall with one out, Berkman walked, Craig was retired for the second out, and then David Freese improbably tripled off the right field wall with two strikes on him to tie the game.

And then Molina made the third out and we headed off to the tenth inning, where Motte gave up a two-run dinger to Josh Hamilton. Ack! Here we were again.

Off to the bottom of the tenth. Descalso singled off Darren Oliver. Jay blooped a single to left that reminded me of the Texas ninth in game two, where the Cardinals lost in an inning that including a similar unreachable single. Out of position players, La Russa had to send up Lohse to bunt the runners over, which he did. Then Theriot grounded out, scoring Descalso from third, but leaving Jay on second with two outs. Pujols was walked intentionally, because not putting the winning run on base apparently doesn't apply when pitching to him. :) And then Berkman singled home the tying run with two strikes on him as the Cardinals came back from a two-run deficit for the second inning in a row. Craig grounded out and we headed to the eleventh.

And in came Jake Westbrook. Buck and McCarver announced that when Westbrook was pitching well, he would get a lot of ground balls. Fly out, single, fly out, ground out. Yeah, not pitching all that well, but well enough so that the Cardinals weren't facing another deficit going to the bottom of the eleventh.

I played more C9 and Asus2.

And then David Freese came up to lead off the bottom of the eleventh. And he hit the ball past the center field fence for the game winning home run.

And there was much rejoicing in St. Louis. The Cardinals had won, 10-9, and were the first team in World Series history to come back twice from two-run deficits in the ninth inning or later and the first to score in the eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh innings.

And we get to play game seven tomorrow.

Who'da thunk it?

I may watch the entire game with my guitar in my lap, playing C9 and Asus2. :)

Comments

[msminlr.livejournal.com]

I don't blame you AT ALL!

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

C9 would be a C with a D on the B string, right?

And Asus2...um An A with a B on the A string?

I'm merely trying to figure out the technique, you understand, in case I ever need to help the Cardinals come back from a two-run deficit in the ninth inning. :-) (If it will even work with an octave mandolin instead of a guitar--it might be like trying to run a lawnmower on diesel.)

[billroper]

The C9 is right. (Or, at least, that's what I call it.)

The Asus2 is an A with a B on the B string. I suppose you could play it the other way around with the B bass note, but that's not usually the way I see it done.

And as far as the octave mandolin -- hey, it's worth a try! :)

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

So why do you call it an Asus2 instead of an A9?

(FWIW I would call them both 9ths because they both have the out-of-chord note just over an octave above the lowest tonic. But I am both pretty methodical *and* not very musically trained, so sometimes musicians and I stare at each other blankly over things like this.)

It is reassuring to think that the octave mandolin might have similar powers :-)

[billroper]

You know, that's a darned fine question and I realized that I didn't know the answer. :)

Understand that my music theory is weak (unlike quadrivium), but I conclude that the difference is that the thing I call C9 contains (counting down from the fifth string) C,E,G,D,E. This contains all of the normal complement of notes in a C chord plus the ninth.

Asus2 contains A,E,A,B,E. C# is conspicuously absent and I think that is what makes the difference.

Mary's mileage may vary.

I also found this convenient web page that convinced me that I hadn't just made up the wrong name for the chord when I went to check just now. :)

(And looking again just now, I see that what I'm calling C9 is really Cadd9, because a real C9 contains C,E,G,Bb, and D. Oh, well. Time to fix the chord sheets...)

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Oh. Thank you for explaining.

That will make it easier for me to work out what the occasional sus2 chord is on the octave mandolin.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

A suspended chord is missing the third (so it's neither major nor minor). Why suspended chords that add one full step above the tonic are called sus2 and not sus9 I have no idea, but it's the convention. A9 would contain A, B, C#, and E.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I thought chords missing their thirds were power chords? Are they also suspended?

[archiver-tim.livejournal.com]

I tuned into that game late. Like bottom of the ninth, two outs, two strikes, Rangers one pitch away from winning the World Series. Cardinals come back to tie the game. Stayed to watch most of the rest. Again bottom of tenth, two outs, two strikes. Could again be one pitch away from winning the World Series. Cardinals come back to tie the game. Okay, the ones who beat The Tigers don't have to win this thing. I am now behind the Cardinals. (Converted More from a who cares stance than a follow the AL Champion).