June 24, 2004
Drama
All told, it was a pretty good day to go see a game.
The game itself, an oddball 4 pm start (which I love — I don’t miss much work and I get home at a reasonable hour), was a sloppy affair punctuated by a spot of mild violence. But the Giants swept the Dodgers, which is a ton of fun.
To get the fight out of the way: No way that Gagne was aiming at Tucker. Then again, if I’m Tucker, after last night’s yelling match, I’m going at the first guy to put one in my ear-hole. Especially if it’s the enemy team’s star closer and it’s coming at me at 97 miles per hour.
The funny part about the fight is how much Gagne seemed to relish it. When Tucker began jawing at him, Gagne immediately responded verbally, began to walk toward Tucker, dropped his glove, tugged on his cap as if considering if he wanted to toss it down as well (he apparently prefers to fight with cap on — thereby avoiding embarrassing Randy Johnson-like incidents). Even as Tucker was being restrained, Gagne continued to march toward him. He was itching for a fight, I guess. Or just taunting the bear.
In any event, Gagne was in fine form. No, not as a pitcher — although his sequence against Dustin Mohr (70mph curve for called strike one, 70mph curve for called strike two, 97mph fastball for swinging strike three) was gorgeous. It was in his attitude after the incident. First, he jawed extensively with an umpire, seeming ready to get suspended in order to work out some rage issues. Guess he really got up on the wrong side of the bed. Then he tossed the baseball back over his shoulder. Finally, in the coup de grace, he doffed his cap to the crowd as he went into the dugout. Absolutely hilarious. I am starting to love Eric Gagne.
My favorite part of the game was probably the pitching of Wayne Franklin, the worst pitcher in baseball. Wayne Franklin, pitching with a seven-run lead, threw a four-pitch walk. On KTVU (I checked after returning home, because the TiVo got the game) Jon Miller continued blithely telling stories, filling time in a blow-out. But I was incensed — a four pitch walk with a seven run lead? That’s unforgivable.
So the next pitch comes, and it’s ball one. I am about to fire a poisonous blow-dart at Franklin when, apparently, Felipe Alou joins in my disgust, walks out of the dugout, and yanks Franklin from the middle of the at-bat. As he should have — if you can’t throw strikes with a seven-run lead, you need to be sent to the showers. Or the cornfield. Is it wrong for me to hope he gets released tomorrow?
When I saw the pitching match-up for this game, I was able to generate a fairly simple slogan: Tomko. Nomo. Oh, no! But it turned out that while Nomo was in current Nomo form (i.e., sporadically brilliant but generally awful), Tomko really pitched acceptably. If you can get six innings and one run out of the guy every time out there, you’d take that in a split second.
Final funny comment: statistically, Tom Martin (who replaced Gagne) had a strikeout today. And statistically Michael Tucker is the guy who struck out. But Tucker never faced Martin. Tucker had two strikes on him when he was ejected, so although Damon Minor was the cause of strike three, the strikeout is credited to Tucker. And apparently Martin gets credit for the strikeout rather than Gagne, on account of him actually making the out. Yet the two guys were never in the game at the same time. That’s baseball, I guess. Crazy and crazier.
Doff your cap to the crowd, Eric. Beautiful.
