Everything looks nicer when you win. The girls are prettier. The cigars taste better. The trees are greener.
-- Billy Martin
A lot of strange things happened yesterday...
First of all, as you probably know, Scott Downs outduelled Jeremy Bonderman.
The Oakland A's beat the Angels and moved into first base because Francisco Rodriguez, irritated by an umpire's call, muffed the toss back from the catcher. Jason Kendall alertly dashed home from third with the go-ahead run. Oakland also unveiled their strategy for dealing with Vlad Guerrero - don't deal with him at all. Vlad was walked intentionally three times.
The Yankees unveiled their 14th starting pitcher of the 2005 season, Scott Proctor, and Hideo Nomo is still waiting in the wings. He did fine, but Embree, Rodriguez, and Sturtze coughed up the lead. The Yankees needed Derek Jeter (a go-ahead homer) and Mariano Rivera (saving Tom Gordon's butt) to pull this one out.
Rafael Palmeiro was back in uniform, but didn't play in Baltimore's win over Tampa Bay. There are people saying Palmeiro will never make it into the Hall of Fame now. Wanna bet? There are plenty of people who want to put Pete Rose in the Hall. Bloody hell, there are people who want to put Joe Jackson in the Hall of Fame. Palmeiro will certainly have his advocates. This generation of sportswriters may snub him, but twenty years from now... who knows? And he'll still have 3000 hits and 500 home runs.
Greg Maddux pitched his first complete game in more than a year to defeat St.Louis 11-4. Huh? Maddux says he's a six ining pitcher, now that he's pushing 40. They had a seven run lead. Dusty was talking about Maddux possibly retiring (Maddux says he'll be back.)
Maddux's old running mate, Tom Glavine, also pitched a fine game. But he lost anyway, which has happened a lot to Glavine since he left Atlanta. He lost when Carlos Beltran and Mike Cameron crashed into each other chasing David Ross' line drive, which ended up going for a triple. That would be the go-ahead run in the Padres 2-1 victory. Both Beltran and Cameron had to leave the game, Cameron with multiple facial fractures. Very disturbing scene.
Here's today's games:
AL
Chicago (Buehrle 13-4, 2.79) at Boston (Wells 9-5, 4.45) 7:05
Tampa Bay (Hendrickson 6-7, 6.77) at Cleveland (Westbrook 10-12, 4.46) 7:05
Texas (Young 9-7, 4.67) at New-York (Leiter 5-10, 6.17) 7:05
Toronto (Towers 8-9, 4.53) at Baltimore (Cabrera 8-10, 5.09) 7:35
Detroit (Johnson 7-9, 4.06) at Kansas=City (Lima 4-10, 6.84) 8:10
Minnesota (Santana 10-6, 3.68) at Oakland (Haren 10-7, 4.08) 10:05
Los=Angeles (Washburn 6-6, 3.28) at Seattle (Moyer 9-4, 4.29) 10:05
NL
St.Louis (Marquis 9-10, 4.24) at Chicago (Zambrano 8-5, 3.30) 2:20
Arizona (Vargas 5-6, 4.98) at Atlanta (Sosa 7-1, 2.36) 7:35
San Francisco (Lowry 7-11, 4.36) at Florida (Willis 15-7, 2.87) 7:35
Cincinnati (Hudson 3-5, 7.88) at Milwaukee (Capuano 12-7, 3.64) 8:05
Pittsburgh (Duke 5-0, 1.54) at Houston (Oswalt 14-9, 2.46) 8:05
Washington (Loaiza 6-8, 3.63) at Colorado (Wright 6-12, 5.85) 9:05
Philadelphia (Lieber 10-10, 5.00) at San Diego (Peavy 10-4, 3.11) 10:05
New York (Zambrano 6-9, 4.00) at Los Angeles (Weaver 10-8, 4.34)
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20050812030607477