A walk-off win
by James on Jul.11, 2008, under Major League Baseball
I love day games, especially when the weather is perfect, there’s a breeze, and the home team wins. I got all three yesterday but the last was in doubt until some late heroics helped the A’s to a 3-2 victory.
Greg Smith and R.A. Dickey matched up in this one and neither let a run cross the plate. The A’s bullpen surrendered a couple runs late in the game but the A’s used two solo homers by Jack Cust and pinch hitter Kurt Suzuki (whose came with 2 away) against Brandon Morrow to force extra innings, then Emil Brown ended it with his first walkoff homer in the bottom of the 11th.
In the midst of it all, Brad Ziegler threw another scoreless inning for the A’s, running his streak to 19 innings to begin his Major League career. He already set the Oakland record a few days ago but now he is 3 innings away from tying the American League mark held by Boston’s Dave Ferriss, who reached 22 innings in 1945. Here are just a few things that make this more special:
* he was let go by the Phillies organization a few years ago because they didn’t think he could make it and he was too old to be at such a low level (Low-A Batavia at the time)
* he was brought in by the A’s after a brief stint in the Independent League and pitched effectively as a starter, then he was approached with the idea of converting to a sidearm/submarine style before the start of the 2007 season and becoming a relief pitcher
* he has had two separate skull fractures from being hit in the head with a baseball. One was off the bat of Fred Lewis in the minors a few years ago while the other came in an accident in the off-season after a youth camp session (he was getting some throwing in and one of the kids that was talking to him reached in front of him for the ball, which deflected off the kid’s glove and hit him in the forehead)
* this season, in a combined 43 1/3 innings pitched in Triple-A and the Majors, he has allowed 1 earned run, good for an ERA of 0.21
So for him to not only reach the majors but pitch well enough to make it almost impossible to think of sending him back down, it’s really amazing. I’ve had the chance to talk to him a few times and he’s as nice a person as you could ask for. I guess there’s an extra sense of me pulling for him to succeed because of all that, plus I’ve had some contact with his family and sent prints to them with more going to him in the next few days. There’s definitely a personal rooting interest there.
For this game, I sat a few rows behind the first base dugout for most of it. Being closer than I was a couple weeks ago really helped, as did a change to the camera’s settings that got some higher-quality shots to work from (I’d used a normal setting before to make sure I’d have enough card space, but I realized I don’t need to worry about that). As a result, I think I got some of the best-looking shots of any game I’ve been to and I’m eager to see how much better I can do it with these settings in the minors.
