 |
| Not pictures, but extremely present: all of the grunting |
As we tuned in on a lovely Sunday afternoon after having played a good deal of catch in the yard and also having just tasted the summer's first cherries from our own little tree (quite a day!), the hope here was to avoid the series sweep (bearing firmly in mind once more that all such series tallies, as noted in our previous entry, are fake [though emotionally real {and what else do we have but our feelings}]). Little did we expect that Robbie Ray would make a plausible run at a no-hitter! The only Ray to reach base at all through six was Yandy Díaz, who walked in the first, and then it was Yandy Díaz again with one out in the seventh who doubled off the tippy top of the wall/a grasping fan's grabbing hands (they grab all they can). Curse you, Yandy Díaz! But not really: Yandy Díaz is a likable player; I have no problem with Yandy Díaz. I have never attended a no-hitter, nor even watched one from start to finish on tv, but my thoughts very much turned to this game right here from the the 2003 season (the season I attended in full): a ten-inning, complete game shutout in which Roy Halladay lost a no hitter against the Tigers with two outs in the eighth on a Kevin Witt drive that Vernon Wells couldn't get to. I have a vivid memory of Vernon trying to run that down, and yet I could never have told you that it was Bobby Kielty (pinch hitting for Reed Johnson) who knocked in Eric Hinske for the winning run in the bottom of the tenth off of Fernando Rodney, nor could I have told you that Nate Cornejo actually through nine shut-out innings for his part as well. Both starting pitchers going nine innings was of course remarkable on the day it happened, but it seems all the more wild today, doesn't it? Much has changed! And yet in fairness it has been literally eighteen years, which is more than enough time for much to change.
All-Star Break!
KS
No comments:
Post a Comment