Baseball Update

There are three commercials that TigerBlog cannot stand, and they seem to be on every break of every show that TB watches these days.

The first two are for insurance, and they're both actually part of a series of commercials, all of which TB hates.

The first is from Geico, where the first part of the commercial plays out some trite expression and then the guys with the little guitars make a bad pun, like "people who save with Geico are happier than a camel on Wednesday" or something.

Then there's the "like a good neighbor State Farm is there" ones, where the people are in some sort of situation and they sing the jingle and the State Farm person comes and saves the day, while the people without State Farm are left with some other jingle that doesn't help them.

Both were clever the first time. Both are just over-the-top tedious now.

Even worse are the Kentucky Fried Chicken "we ate the bones" commercials. While you were eating, did you not notice there were no bones? Plus, in 2013, 99% of all chicken eaten is boneless chicken, even though it often is better with the bones, especially on a grill.

Anyway, all of those commercials are hellish to TB.

Perhaps, though, that's part of the point.

TB's favorite commercial of the last year or so was the one where the guy walks into the convenience store with the ski mask on and the clerk says he doesn't want any trouble. Now that's a great commercial.

Except if you ask 100 people what that commercial was for, how many will say Volkswagen? If you ask about the other three, everyone will get it right.

TB was bouncing through the channels last night when he came across all three of those commercials in about a 30-second span. Each time he would change the channel, there would be another one.

Eventually, he stumbled upon the Mets-Diamondbacks game, just in time to see a batter named "Young" who was at the plate for the Mets.

TB hasn't watched an entire inning of baseball on TV this season, and he doubts he will watch much more between now and the end of the year. Like most people (or not), TB has watched way more of Major League Lacrosse on television than he has Major League Baseball this season.

Anyway, when TB saw "Young," he immediately thought that the Mets had somehow gotten Chris Young (the other Chris Young). Then he found out it was actually Eric Young Jr., and he couldn't believe it.

Just last week, TB was talking about how he'd really feel old when the son or daughter of a former Princeton athlete that he covered shows up as an athlete here, and now here was Eric Young Jr.

Okay, it's not quite the same thing. But it was still a bit freaky.

Eric Young was a football and baseball star at Rutgers back when TB was covering Rutgers for the newspaper. He went on to a long career in the Majors, where he played for basically every team.

Rutgers baseball was one of TB's favorite teams to cover back then. Fred Hill Sr., still the Scarlet Knights coach, is one of the nicest and most sincere people TB has met in college athletics, and his teams were always very successful. Hill took RU to five NCAA tournaments in the eight or so years TB was covering them.

Young (Sr.) was one of several future Major Leaguers that TB covered, or saw play against Princeton. He once saw Penn's Doug Glanville, for instance, hit three triples in a game at Clarke Field, something that isn't easy to do.

TigerBlog is sort of rooting for the Pittsburgh Pirates this year. After all, it's been awhile since the team has even had a winning record, let alone made the postseason.

As always, he'd like to see the Braves do well and the Yankees do poorly.

For the most part, he roots for Princeton's two Major Leaguers, Ross Ohlendorf and Will Venable.

Ohlendorf has been moved to the Washington Nationals' bullpen, and he doesn't have a huge body of work so far this year. Ohlendorf made one really good start, beating the Rockies, and has now made two relief appearances.

In his three games, Ohlendorf is 1-0 with a 2.13 ERA and a 0.87 WHIP, which stands for walks + hits per innings pitched.

As for Venable, he's finding himself in the middle of baseball's most balanced division, the NL West, where only 3.5 games separate first from last. The AL East has eight games between first and last; the other four divisions are all 10.5 games or way more.

Venable's Padres were expected to be one of the worst teams in baseball this year, but they are three games away from .500, where they've hovered all year. They are also only 2.5 games out of first.

As for Venable, he is hitting .221, but with 10 home runs (best on the team), 29 RBIs and nine stolen bases (second on the team). He's also one of the top defensive outfielders in the National League.

So TB can root for San Diego and Washington. And to make sure the Yankees fade away.

And that'll be about it, baseball-wise for this year.