Jered Weaver and the Angels reach a 5-year, $85 million deal 

Major sports news in 2011 breaks more like an avalanche than like the smooth flowing waves of the pre-social media days. It starts with a small flurry of tweets and rumors that quickly progress into larger and more detailed blasts from other forums, Facebook, independent blogs, insider blogs, press blogs and then the full crescendo of completely confirmed new articles comes crashing down. And all of this occurs 24 hours or more before the official press conference, which these days serves more as an opportunity to get feelings and impressions about that which everyone already knows, takes place.

When this particular avalanche began, I was on my way back down the highways from Yosemite, ecstatic about the Angels perfectly timed sweep of the Orioles, contemplating everything I needed to do to get ready for Monday morning and it just didn’t register. But as the avalanche grew Sunday night? Well, have you ever seen a grown woman restraining herself with effort from turning cartwheels in the living room? Yeah, it was like that. If I thought I was excited about Angels news earlier in the day, well that was nothing compared to how I felt by evening time.

So, Jered Weaver is now an Angel until 2016, with a full no-trade clause to boot. *Cue happy dances and shouts of joy* I’m not going to say I never worried about him leaving the Angels, because as my blog will attest, that isn’t true. But the full no-trade clause confirms my long held suspicion, as my blog will also attest, that Weaver wants to stay in Anaheim as much as the fans and the organization want him to. Everything I’ve ever read about Weaver says he’s a Los Angeles/Orange County boy through and through. He grew up here. He went to college here. He still lives near his folks, who come to many of his games. I’ve gotten the impression from interview snippets that he’s known his fiancé and many of his best friends since high school or longer. He has been an Angel since day one, and although signing the initial contract with him after the draft took some doing, he never once indicated he wanted to look at playing anywhere else. This has always charmed me about him. I know I feel the same way about continuing to live in the same county I grew up in, near family and old friends. A lot of us do. It’s alI very human and relatable…and I hoped that a) I was reading between the lines correctly and b) this meant that if the front office didn’t muck things up, Weaver would work with them to stay in an Angels uniform.

I had my concerns. The Angels are known for being pennywise and pound foolish about contracts. Weaver’s agent Scott Boras is well known to prefer his clients to go through lucrative free agency bidding wars and players often like to test the free agency waters themselves to get an idea of what’s out there. But in the end, the hometown kid, who just happens to be one of the best pitchers currently in the game, stays with the hometown team that really appreciates and needs his killer stuff and all is right with my baseball world! I know many Angels fans were miffed when the organization didn’t make any trades in July. (Not me, because I didn’t see anyone out there who would make enough of a difference to the Angels to justify what we would probably have had to give up, but that was the subject of another blog post…) Now that we know what the front office had in mind instead, I hope this news makes up for any lingering disappointments on that front. 

Jerome Williams Notches a W 

I love Jerome Williams’s story of perseverance and dedication, making it back to Major League Baseball, but I was uncertain about starting him Sunday. It’s not like we have a lot of other options. But I thought his relief outing against Texas was inconclusive. No runs or walks, but two hits and he was behind in a few counts in the one inning he pitched. Clearly he deserved extra slack for his first inning back on the mound in the Majors but still, to me it was inconclusive. Well darned if he didn’t pitch a heck of game on Sunday! No walks, six strikeouts and only one earned run and six hits in seven innings to complete the Angels sweep of the O’s. That would have kept the Angels in the game even if the offense hadn’t shown up. Welcome to the rotation Mr. Williams! And if you keep pitching like this, I hope you stay a good long while! 

Yosemite Weekend 

As ecstatic as I was about the Weaver news and the Angels victory and the fact that the Angels bridged another game along the gap to first place (Thank you White Sox! I promise I loved you all the way up until sunset today. 😉 ), I was just too tired from having fun to post about it all until today. My husband’s family has a cabin in Yosemite, literally inside the national park on private land surrounded by federal land. Trust me, I know how lucky I am. Not only are my in laws absolutely lovely people, they have all of these wonderful toys. They are rebuilding the cabin this summer from the original 1920’s construction (you know, giving it a foundation and other modern frills, he he) so the family gathered en semi masse in the park this weekend to make a few decisions about the construction and play in Yosemite Valley. 

It was a fantastic weekend! We biked through Yosemite Valley and Wawona, hiked a few of the more popular trails (I’ve been on most of them at one point or another, but we were there with our young niece and nephew, so it was a minimal hiking, trail highlights kind of weekend. They’re good kids and did really, really well!) and goofed around together taking in the sheer breathtaking beauty of it all. One of the many things I have enjoyed about this blogging community is all of the fun details I have learned about other teams and also about life in other parts of the country. Yosemite definitely offers a non-traditional view of California, so I thought I would share a few photos. I posted about the trip in more detail here, and with more photos, if anyone is interested.