What a bizarre game we saw at Jacobs Field Tuesday night. I've never seen a game like this one, but then I've only been watching baseball for about 45 years. Some of the weird plays and events that reminded me why baseball rules:
- A guy who was in a 1 for 23 slump coming into the game hit two home runs in his last two at-bats accounting for all five Indians runs.
- An Oakland batter was called out for interference with the catcher on a bunted ball in front of the plate. (The catcher interfering with the batter is a rare call, but much more common than this)
- About one third of the stadium lights went out in the sixth inning, causing a 21 minute delay.
- Indians manager Eric Wedge had a disagreement with the umpire's version of the strike zone, and got thrown out of the game without coming out of the dugout. He then proceeded to get his money's worth on the field and in the ump's face, demonstrating his flair for theatrics, and managing to get the crowd into the game for the first time. The embarrassing gathering of 21,000 had been comatose through the first six innings, doing a remarkable imitation of Indians batters to that point.
- The Indians made three errors, all in the early innings, none of which figured in the scoring for Oakland. This was mostly because the Indians defense also turned five double plays to minimize the damage.
- The last of the double plays came in the ninth, and saw closer Bob Wickman stumble over toward first base trying to cover the bag, throw himself into the path of the relay throw, smothering the ball while colliding with the batter, who failed to touch first base as a result of the collision. As the injured batter lay on the ground, Wickman calmly picked up the ball, and stepped on first to complete the double play.
- Pitcher Kevin Millwood, who leads the AL in ERA and in lowest run support, looked like he was in for another tough loss. He got through the top of the 7th, and saw the Indians tie the game to get him off the hook for the loss, but it seemed unlikely that he would come back out for the 8th with a pitch count already in the 90's. But he gutted it out, and Broussard gave him a win with his second homer with two outs in the 8th.
- Meanwhile, the Yankees scored 17 runs, and didn't gain any ground on the Indians. Heh.
Posted by dan at September 14, 2005 02:05 AM