It seemed that the elements were set up to work against Skorch. I was all set, with custom graphics even!, to use Santana's start on June 8th in a certain thematic direction. What happens? Power gets knocked out at my Hopkins-based compound, and I'm left scrambling for alternatives since I can't be sure I'll be able to access my secret files and notes. What a lousy super-villain I am, I don't even have a backup generator. You can very well bet that will be rectified on my Christmas wish-list, and the head of my contractor will roll.

Mother Nature, prodded by the metaphorical shotgun in the back of secret technology developed by NASA and the AMS, threw together a hell of a storm. It was one that knocked out the power sufficiently leaving me in doubt as to whether or not I would be able to give you the game recap that the government doesn't want you to see! Well, I can work around that, you fiends, but for last night I had to make alternate plans to watch the game. It was in the form of an impromptu Batling get-together at the Bulldog with (in order of appearance) HooliganKat, Mmmarkiep, Donnalove and AJ, Billhedrick, and Heraldguy.

Yes, Mother Nature had made things difficult for me to attend to my appointment, but I'm sure the Diamondbacks wish that she'd tried a little harder to disrupt their game last night, retractable roof or no. Johan Santana pitched a 4-hit, complete game shutout while getting lop-sided run support, courtesy of Arizona's newest softball pitcher, Claudio "Contractually obligated to give up a run per inning" Vargas. Santana came a 9th-inning popout away from fitting Royce Clayton with his very own golden sombrero, who'd struck out in his previous three at bats.

Vargas, who most recently had been pitching batting practice to Nationals opponents, was making his first start as a D-Back, and I imagine that Bob Melvin was less than impressed with his newest pitcher. Vargas gave up 6 runs in 5 innings, 2 of them thanks to a Freedom Jones homerun, and even let Santana get a hit and later score a run. Santana now has a career .300 batting average and has to be wondering what's so damn hard about it. Things didn't get much better for their pitching as the next two Arizona pitchers, Matt Herges and Mike "No relation to Donnalove" Koplove gave up 4 more.

The gathering at the Bulldog for the most part lasted until the final out. Mother Nature provided a great evening meant to be enjoyed outside, but our dedication to the team came through well. One in our ranks had to leave early, but that's forgivable. HooliganKat meanwhile earned herself the night's gold star for having the correct answer to the AFLAC trivia question. It was also noted firsthand that Heraldguy does look a lot like Terry Mulholland, and it led to speculation that it's really Heraldguy pitching on the days when it looks like Mulholland couldn't get zombie Ty Cobb's re-animated corpse out (I'm working on it!).

When I returned to the compound electricity still hadn't been restored. After leaving myself a post-it note on the fridge to have my contractor tossed into the moat with the alligators, I went to bed figuring I'd have to make sure I woke myself up without an alarm in time to get to work an hour early (on my birthday no less) to do my best to provide some of the much-missed Batgirl-style sass. Thankfully, this was one time where Mother Nature couldn't thwart my plans, and it's mission accomplished.