And after the rains departed, they played. Starting at 11 PM after all but 5,000 fans had departed, and not finishing until well after I had gone to sleep. It’s all good, though.
John Thomson, who had been struggling mightily (and whose starts always seem to come on rainy days) gave the Braves six strong innings, allowing only three hits and one run. Alfonseca, Reitsma, and Gryboski each pitched an inning to finish it. A five-run lead? Sounds like the best time for Gryboski to me.
Drew hit a two-run homer in the third, an inning in which the Braves got three runs to take control of the game. (After four, it was already 5-1.) Nick Green, another guy who needed a good game, had three hits, including a double. Andruw had two, also including a double, and Charles Thomas joined the two-hit parade and is now hitting .357. Still feeling frisky, Julio hit a triple.
Bad news in that Johnny Estrada left the game in the third after getting hit by a pitch. The game story insinuates that it was payback for Drew’s homer, but Chipper, not Estrada, hit after Drew. I assume he’ll be ready to go tonight.
Chipper swung at the first pitch, so Penny didn’t have much of a chance to deck him. The Estrada HBP didn’t look like headhunting to me, although it did look like it hurt like a SOB. The ump saw it differently, warning both benches, which brought McKeon out for an extended shouting match.
Cox is still going nuts with the rally-killing offensive strategies, especially with Green, who got hits on the three occasions Bobby actually let him swing.
I agree, didn’t look like he intentially hit Estrada. From the sounds of it though that must have hurt like hell.
Again I agree, whats up with bunting all of the time when you get a base runner. Bobby should know that you only get 27 outs.
Maybe Bobby’s as sick of all the double plays as I am.
It is very hard to tell when a player gets plunked, but it looked intentional to me. The catcher set up to the inside and barely made an effort to go to the position where the ball would have been had it not hit Johnny. There was no one on base so it is hard to determine if he was just lazy. There also appeared to be no loss of balance by the pitcher to indicate it went anywhere but where the Penny intended. In any event the warning is stupid and only hurt the Braves. That negated our opportunity to really punish Penny. Intentional or not, I think payback would have been coming. McKeon should have been thanking the ump. I suspect he was putting on a show to minimize a fine.
O.K. — So I’m gone for a week, to Pittsburgh. Before leaving I watched the horrendous blowup against the Marlins on Tuesday last. I then see them manage to win a series against Baltimore in the boxscores. I actually go to a Pirates game last night and see that the Braves and Marlins were still in a rain delay when I left the park at 10.
I get home and read that we almost traded Ortiz and Andruw, the Braves beat the Marlins in the dead of the night, and we’re back to 3 1/2 games out.
I kinda feel like I got on a spaceship for what seemed like minutes, only to learn on my return that I had been gone a lifetime. Or something like that.
By the way, the rumors are true; PNC Park is down-right bee-you-tee-ful.
I know what your saying. I too had tuned out for the last week or so, but since I’ve returned:
– The Braves have added two players I have never in my life heard of, Sam McConnell and Charles Thomas. Even their names make them sound like just random guys.
– I TiVoed Sunday’s Orioles game only to turn it off in disgust after Jesse Garcia’s inept defense nearly singlehandedly put the Braves in 7-0 hole. Of course I was quite surprised when I turned on ESPNews later that night.
– I heard that they were trying to move two of my favorite players in Andruw and Ortiz. That was a bit of an eye opener.
– And of course last night’s game, where I left work at 6:30 (Pacific), went to dinner, stopped to get a haircut, and still caught the last six innings of the game.
A very strange week, but it’s been a very strange season.
The great thing about being at this game was
(a) we had covered seats and
(b) after the rain delay, we got to move up to the eighth row behind the Braves dugout.