Greinke is too good to be jinxed ~JoPo

[T-post Tom]

BTW, went to the game tonight and had a great time. However, the attendance was very disappointing. Even with the bad weather, Greinke's attempt to be the first pitcher to go seven starts with a 0.00 ERA deserved more support from Royals' fans. I will say that the few that showed up were very spirited and supportive of Greinke. He got a standing ovation when the first earned run was scored by the Jays. Anyway, here's JoPo:


Greinke is too good to be jinxed

A lot of stuff has happened to me in my sportswriting life. But I’ve never had to deal with the jinx before. Well, that’s not entirely true: I do have some kind of curse thing going with Tom Watson. I’ve never seen him win a golf tournament. I’ve seen him lose playoffs. I’ve seen his charges fall short. I’ve seen him struggle in countries over the world. I’ve never seen him win.

One year, I decided not to go to the U.S. Open at Olympia Fields, Ill., and Watson at age 52 had a magical first day and led the Open. I raced up to Chicago, took a train to the course, and got there just in time to watch Watson double bogey a hole and fall out of the tournament.

But this was a different kind of jinx, one that is much bigger than me. This week, I wrote the cover story for Sports Illustrated about Royals pitcher Zack Greinke. And while this was a thrilling thing being a part of the first Kansas City Sports Illustrated cover in almost six years, and the first Royals cover since David Cone in 1993 more than a few people mentioned the Sports Illustrated cover jinx.

“I cannot believe you would allow them to put Zack on the cover,” Tom wrote in.

“Please, please, please don’t jinx Zack,” Lisa wrote in.

“If he has a bad start, you might want to have some plane reservations for someplace far away, like Malaysia,” wrote Greg. “Or Mars.”

So it goes. A few years ago, Sports Illustrated writer Alex Wolff went back to look at the subject of every SI cover at the time there almost 2,500 and found that about 37 percent of them had some distinct and noticeable downswing. Now, I’ll tell you, I don’t believe in curses or jinxes or hexes or voodoo.

But that percentage, to be perfectly honest with you, is a bit higher than I would like.

The came Wednesday. You already know the situation. Zack Greinke went into Wednesday’s game with a 0.00 ERA. He had a chance to become the first pitcher in baseball history to go seven consecutive starts without giving up an earned run. And right away, he gave up a double to Toronto’s leadoff hitter Marco Scutaro.

The first “JINX!” e-mail came seconds after that.

Then Greinke struck out Aaron Hill. He struck out Alex Rios. This is something we have seen from Greinke all year he has been remarkable pretty much all the time, but he has been twice that good when runners have gotten into scoring position. Greinke says that last year, at some point, he started to figure out what kind of pitches he could throw to get big strikeouts. When he got Blue Jays cleanup hitter Vernon Wells into the hole no balls, two strikes it sure looked like Greinke had his man set up.

Greinke then threw a 96-mph fastball, just to wake up Wells, remind him who he was dealing with. And he threw the devastating pitch, the strikeout pitch, the slider that starts in the strike zone and then rushes down, like a cartoon character falling down stairs. Wells has a reputation for chasing those sorts of pitches. But this time, Wells held back.

Greinke’s next slider was hot on the outside corner of the plate. Wells ripped it to center field for a single. And that scored the first earned run off Greinke since last September.

“I hate you and Sports Illustrated!” was the first email.

“You jinxed our guy,” was the second.

“BOOOOO!” was the simple but eloquent message of the third.

Greinke finished off the inning with a strikeout. In the third, he gave up another earned run, this one on a double play ground ball. The world was collapsing. TWO EARNED RUNS from Greinke. The curse was very much on.

Only then, something funny happened. The Royals started scoring runs. Billy Butler had an amazing day four-for-four with four runs and four RBIs. He had what we affectionately call the “Billy Cycle,” a single, double and two home runs because, let’s face it, Billy is a terrific young hitter but that triple probably isn’t happening. Mark Teahen crushed his third opposite field homer of the season. The Royals scored 11 runs. And Greinke settled into his usual brilliance seven innings, two runs, eight strikeouts, sheer domination.

“Wouldn’t you take seven innings, two runs most days?” he was asked.

“I would ALWAYS take it,” he replied.

Of course he would. There is no curse. That’s because there’s nothing fluky about it. Greinke has great stuff. He has a great pitching mind. He has control.

“Did you think about the curse in that first inning?” he was asked.

“No,” he said. “I thought it was good hitting.”