June 08, 2004
Puka Shells
Lou Piniella tried to shake Jerome Williams by getting him to remove his puka shell necklace during today’s game. Nice gamesmanship, but pretty tough from a human perspective, given that Williams wears the shells to honor his dead mother.
It didn’t matter. Williams, suitably pissed off, pitched a real gem, and the Giants won going away. Bonus runs were provided by the Devil Rays defense, which allowed Michael Tucker to score on a weak throw back to the infield (once the throw was lobbed, Tucker just took off for home — great baserunning), and which failed to cover third with the Bonds Shift on and Grissom taking off on the 3-2 pitch to Bonds. Grissom just rounded second and kept on going to third, since it was being covered only by Ghost Fielders.
On the TV broadcast, Krukow and Kuiper kept saying nice things about The Trop. I don’t get it. Everybody hates the Trop. Even Ken Korach. I suspect their response was more of the, “Oh! It’s not as hideously awful as we were led to believe!” variety, but I’m not entirely sure.
In any event, it looks like the artificial turf at The Trop is shedding something fierce. Ugly, ugly stadium. And oh so empty, even for one of the majors’ top-drawing teams. Maybe they were all hung over from the Lightning celebrations yesterday.
