In his injury-shortened career as a Mets reliever, Bob Apodaca faced Biff Pocoroba three times. He got him to ground out, then intentionally walked him, then got him to line out. The Mets lost all three games. I don’t know what became of Biff Pocoroba after that, but this past Thursday night Bob Apodaca contributed to the continuing disenchantment of the world I marveled at as a child. All my life I have wondered about what is said during pitching mound conferences, but on Thursday my curiosity on the subject shriveled and died, thanks to a running patter of numbingly banal self-help-guru exhortations by Colorado Rockies’ pitching coach Bob Apodaca, who had been miked up for the game by Fox, part of the seemingly unstoppable trend on the part of networks toward bringing the TV viewer ever deeper “inside the game.” Besides the miking of players, coaches, umps and, soon, team owners, mascots, scouts, groundskeepers, and the toilet where Big Papi takes his ceremonial pregame dump, these “inside the game” ploys include among many other annoyances the sound-and-fury-signifying-nothing use of current players as analysts (e.g., Eric Byrnes), the loathsome, game-action obstructing in-game dugout managerial interview, and the on-scene misinformational stylings of rictus-grin Ken “The Rockies beat the Cubs in Round 1” Rosenthal. None of it pulls me further into the game. Luckily the game can’t be so easily autopsied by the brutish invisible corporate hands at the controls. Its beauty and joy and drama survive. Still, sometimes I wish I could return to a time when I didn’t know that meetings at the mound between pitching coaches and beleagured, unraveling pitchers resembled a one-on-one pep talk between a sales manager and an underperforming salesman in a conference room on the second floor of a nondescript building out by the Ikea and the Chilis on Route 73. The truth is I was never farther inside the game than when I had to imagine almost everything about it, when all I had were these cards and a few stats and an occasional soberly announced game on TV. And names. I had names. Sometimes they worked on me like a magic spell. I went inside the game saying Bob Apodaca . . . Biff Pocoroba. Bob Apodaca . . . Biff Pocoroba. Bob Apodaca . . . Biff Pocoroba.
Anyway, lineups for tonight’s game (FOX, 6:35 MT):
Red Sox
J. Ellsbury, cf
D. Pedroia, 2b
D. Ortiz, 1b
M. Ramirez, lf
M. Lowell, 3b
J.D. Drew, rf
J. Varitek, c
J. Lugo, ss
D. Matsuzaka, p
Rockies
K. Matsui, 2b
T. Tulowitzki, ss
M. Holliday, lf
T. Helton, 1b
G. Atkins, 3b
B. Hawpe, rf
Y. Torrealba, c
C. Sullivan, cf
J. Fogg, p
Cardboard Gods 