Idiots Write About Sports

Billy McMillon has 15 career home runs (13 heading into this season, two so far in 2004); none of them has ever been of the walk-off variety. So you would think that after he hit a three-run bottom-of-the-ninth homer to beat the Devil Rays yesterday that he must have been pretty happy about. You know, throw his arms up in the air, crack a smile as he’s rounding third — that sort of thing.

Well, look at this picture. If it weren’t for the throng of admiring teammates, you’d have thought that Billy Mac just hit a home run in the middle of some March split-squad game in Tempe for all the emotion he’s showing. (Or perhaps he’s just steeling himself for one of the stupidest traditions in baseball — the one where teammates jump on top of the poor sucker who just went yard. “He won the game for us!” they might as well shout. “Get him! Beat him about the neck and shoulders!”)

If anything, the picture doesn’t do McMillion’s sangfroid justice. Through the miracle of digital cable, I saw the postgame interview on Fox Sports Bay Area, and McMillion reacted like a guy who was being audited by the IRS, not quizzed by Ray Fosse about Danys Baez’s fastball.

“Have you ever seen me do cartwheels?” McMillion rhetorically asks the San Francisco Chronicle. “I just try to be humble.”

Apparently so.

That same Chronicle article also quotes Octavio Dotel and Curt Young as insisting that Dotel’s third appearance in as many days had nothing to do with giving up back-to-back home runs in the top of the ninth. Hard to say if they’re right. Dotel’s pitched on three consecutive days two other times this season, with neither stint ending in disaster. Between June 29 through July 1, Dotel faced the Angels three times, pitching a total of three innings and giving up three hits, but without giving up a run; two of those outings resulted in saves. Earlier this season, when Dotel toiled under the cruel yolk of Jimy Williams, he pitched three consecutive games on May 5-7, facing Pittsburgh twice and Atlanta once. His line: 2 2/3 IP, 2 hits, 1 save, no runs earned or otherwise.

So it’s not like Dotel hasn’t been able to pitch effectively with little rest. Then again, it’s a lot easier to do that in early May than in late August. Phil says, proceed with caution.