Every sport has its fair share of weird things that can happen, however, possibly baseball is the best example, at least from North American sports.
First off, I watched the Angels at Yankees. The second game of the season for the Angels at Yankee Stadium. Both John Lackey and Roger Clemens were pitching great a great game. Clemens was coming off a win in Minnesota where he retired the last 15 batters he faced. In the end, both Lackey and Clemens went 8 giving up five hits and one run each. However Lackey struck out 11, tying a career high.
Two former Montreal Expos started in the lineup for the Angels, Orlando Cabrera, and Vladimir Guerrero. Maicer Izturis, brother of Cesar, came into the game, pinch hitting for catcher Jeff Mathis. The fourth and final former Expo, Juan Rivera is still on the 60 day DL with a broken left lower leg that he broke playing winter ball in Venezuela.
The game went on to extra innings, where the Angels won it by getting a run in in the top of the 13th. Howie Kendrick doubled, and the next batter, Jose Molina reached on fielding and throwing errors by Miguel Cairo. The latter caused by the former. The throwing error is what enabled Kendrick to get the go ahead run. With batters on first and third in the bottom of the 13th, the Yankees could not capitalise. Miguel Cairo made up for his errors, by getting his second hit of the day, and then his second stolen base. However, as I believe Joe Girardi put it, it is a team game, the Yankees had other chances to score, and did not. Derek Jeter ended the game by grounding into a force out up the middle, which Orlando Cabrera fielded, and made the force out on his own.
So all in all a good game. I raise the point about how weird plays or occurences happen in baseball, as it was a very well pitched game by the starters, and then it goes to extra innings, and an unearned run is the difference. Also in the bottom of the 7th, Jorge Posada was picked off at second, as he had a fairly large lead, probably eager to score on a base hit. The pickoff was 1-6, Lackey to Cabrera. Surprisingly also the first pickoff for the Angels this year. For the stat nuts, the Diamondbacks, and Tigers are tied with 10 pickoffs this season.
Elsewhere, I watched some of the Giants at St.Louis game, and tuned in in the seventh when it was tied 3-3. With one out I saw Mark Sweeney reach on a throwing error by Aaron Miles, that he should have had, as he had time, but his throw to first was too high. Aaron went on to make two more errors in that half of the inning, making three errors for him. On the first error the Giants went ahead 4-3. Although that would have only been the second out, so the run would have scored anyway (from third). With two out, Miles was credited with a fielding error as the ball hit by Randy Winn got past him when he should have fielded it. That caused two runs to come in, making it 6-3. Dave Roberts was the second out, sac bunting Mark Sweeney to second. On the play, which could have been a safety squeeze, Guillermo Rodriguez who was at third should have scored, but did not. The baserunning was reminiscent of Jeff Suppan in game three of the World Series as one announcer noted, when Suppan got hung up at third and got out in the process when David Ortiz threw from first. Although Rodriguez didn't cause an out. Miles' final error was another throwing one, where the ball kind of just dropped off, so Pujols' could not catch it cleanly. Randy Winn scored on that error, making it 7-4. As I started watching I was thinking I may be in for another extra inning game, but instead the Giants scored four runs, three of which were unearned. So I stopped watching, but the Cardinals ended up making a game of it, scoring three times in the bottom of the 8th. That was as close as they'd get though, losing by a final score of 7-6.
In the Yankees game, Melky Cabrera struck out 5 times, which has only ever been done four other times, from what I understand, in Yankees history. I am not criticizing Cabrera, or Miles, just commenting on how it wasn't exactly a great game for either.
So, just another day in Major League Baseball in the books. With some things out of the ordinary happening. Nothing too exceptional or noteworthy, as I said, just another day.
In the meantime, the Dodgers played their home games from 1958 to 1961 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, a gargantuan football and track-and-field stadium that had been built to host the 1932 Summer Olympics. The Coliseum's dimensions were not optimal for baseball, and the only way to fit a diamond into the oval-shaped stadium was to lay the third-base line along the short axis of the oval, and the first-base line along the long axis. See picture. This resulted in a left-field fence that was only some 250 feet from home plate, and a 40-foot screen was erected to prevent home runs from becoming too easy to hit. Still, the 1958 season saw 182 home runs hit to left field in the Coliseum, while only 3 were hit to center field and 8 to right field. Dodgers outfielder Wally Moon, newly acquired for the 1959 season, became adept at launching lazy fly balls over the screen, which became known as "Moon shots."
