Opening Day
As is the custom, I attended opening day at Dodger Stadium yesterday. The game's contours were miserably familiar: the visiting team that I root for takes a big lead early and blows it late. Last year, the Giants took a 5-0 lead in the first inning and gradually lost it, step-by-step, until the Dodgers won the game in the 9th. Yesterday, the Braves scored 4 in the first and 4 more in the 5th to go up 8-1. I mean, the Braves have won something like 500 division titles in a row, right? They can't blow a 7 run lead, can they? Anyone who knows how I write, and everyone who knows my horrid history with the Dodgers already know the answer to those questions: of course they can.
The Braves gave back their 4 runs in the 5th, leaving the game as uncomfortably (and as familiarly) close as they found it at the top of the inning. They went on to score 2 more in the 7th and 1 more in the 8th to make it 11-5, but even that wasn't the end, was it? As an aside, the Braves thought it was a good strategy all game long to continue to pitch to Jeff Kent, one of the 2 actual players on the Dodgers roster. My friends and I were aghast as at-bat after at-bat, Kent would come to the plate with runners on, and instead of walking him (or, our preferred method, plunking him in the back or something, thereby saving 3 pitches), the idiot Braves would serve up some ridiculously decent pitch for him to prove his merit once again. Macho is one thing, but stupid is stupid. Especially since Olmedo Saenz, who batted after Kent, went 0-4 in his first 4 trips to the plate, with 3 strikeouts. There is no reason in the world to pitch to Kent. Ever. With this lineup, Kent should have ended the season with no official at-bats, having been walked 500 times or so.
To return to the narrative, the Dodgers scored 3 runs (naturally) in the 8th and blanked the Braves in the top of the 9th to make the game 11-8 going to the bottom of the inning. I couldn't take any more, so I left. As I was walking to the car, I kept hearing cheer after cheer, and heard somebody say that the game was tied. Well, of course it was, I thought--I'd seen this game repeatedly for about the last 20 years. I kept waiting for my buddy to call me to let me know in what retarded way the Braves had let the "losers in Blue" steal the game, but he never did. I got home to find out that the Dodgers had indeed fallen short, 11-10. You can go a whole season without seeing that many runs scored in a game again; that much bad pitching and brain damaged management, combined with the 3 or 4 fielding errors we saw, leads me to safely say that neither of these teams is going to be fighting for any pennants any time soon.
(Best moment of the game? Hands down, when the new Dodgers pitching coach Rick Honeycutt visited the mound to talk to his pitcher and give him some pearl of wisdom, who thereupon gave up a home run on the very next pitch. Way to pump him up, Rick!)
The Braves gave back their 4 runs in the 5th, leaving the game as uncomfortably (and as familiarly) close as they found it at the top of the inning. They went on to score 2 more in the 7th and 1 more in the 8th to make it 11-5, but even that wasn't the end, was it? As an aside, the Braves thought it was a good strategy all game long to continue to pitch to Jeff Kent, one of the 2 actual players on the Dodgers roster. My friends and I were aghast as at-bat after at-bat, Kent would come to the plate with runners on, and instead of walking him (or, our preferred method, plunking him in the back or something, thereby saving 3 pitches), the idiot Braves would serve up some ridiculously decent pitch for him to prove his merit once again. Macho is one thing, but stupid is stupid. Especially since Olmedo Saenz, who batted after Kent, went 0-4 in his first 4 trips to the plate, with 3 strikeouts. There is no reason in the world to pitch to Kent. Ever. With this lineup, Kent should have ended the season with no official at-bats, having been walked 500 times or so.
To return to the narrative, the Dodgers scored 3 runs (naturally) in the 8th and blanked the Braves in the top of the 9th to make the game 11-8 going to the bottom of the inning. I couldn't take any more, so I left. As I was walking to the car, I kept hearing cheer after cheer, and heard somebody say that the game was tied. Well, of course it was, I thought--I'd seen this game repeatedly for about the last 20 years. I kept waiting for my buddy to call me to let me know in what retarded way the Braves had let the "losers in Blue" steal the game, but he never did. I got home to find out that the Dodgers had indeed fallen short, 11-10. You can go a whole season without seeing that many runs scored in a game again; that much bad pitching and brain damaged management, combined with the 3 or 4 fielding errors we saw, leads me to safely say that neither of these teams is going to be fighting for any pennants any time soon.
(Best moment of the game? Hands down, when the new Dodgers pitching coach Rick Honeycutt visited the mound to talk to his pitcher and give him some pearl of wisdom, who thereupon gave up a home run on the very next pitch. Way to pump him up, Rick!)
posted by bryduck at 8:19 AM
5 Comments:
Very funny writing, Bryduck! I laughed out loud!
Love, GOM
See, bry, the thing is that you didn't factor in the whole Bravesness of it all. They either start very badly (0-10 in 1982) or very lucky (yesterday). Braves karma is strong too. It's why they have only won one World Series in their 13 year run. It's all Deion and the stupid choppers fault. Hope followed by despair followed by hope followed by despair. Bleh.
So, my karma was warring with Braves' karma? That must be why it stopped raining just in time to get the game going--that kind of psychic mess has to be played out immediately. Of course, it seems that my karma alone is so strong that it was nearly able to overcome an entire organization's . . .
Were there runners on base when the Dodgers' pitching coach spoke to his young charge? Maybe his instructions were to clear the bases.
Hmm, maybe you're on to something there. Maybe it's not a lack of baseball skills, but rather a lack of communication skills that's at fault here. That could also explain the Braves' "Jeff Kent behavior". Perhaps the coach told all the pitchers to "Hit him hard" and they thought he said "pitch him hard".
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