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| Friday, September 29 | ||||||
| Daal, Lima fall short of history ESPN.com | ||||||
| Let's commence with the final Week in Review of the season ...
Wild pitches Box score line of the week Thankfully, Kerry Wood's start last Friday against the Cardinals wasn't his final start of the year. But it was sure his messiest of the year: 1 1/3 IP, 1 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 8 BB, 1 K, 1 WP, 70 pitches, 29 strikes. If you're thinking it's been a while since you saw a guy rack up twice as many walks as outs in an outing that long, you're right. Last pitcher to do it, according to the Elias Sports Bureau: Steve Adkins, in his big-league debut for the Yankees, on Sept. 12, 1990 (also 8 BB, 1 1/3 IP). Wood's review of his work: "Just one of those days."
You didn't see Bert Blyleven or Robin Roberts jetting to the scene of every Jose Lima start last week. You sure didn't see Bobby Bonds following Preston Wilson around the country just because his most dubious claim to fame was in jeopardy. But Brian Kingman is a different kind of guy. Obviously. Here was the Phillies' Omar Daal, on the verge of wresting away Kingman's 20-year reign as Baseball's Last 20-Game Loser. And there was Brian Kingman, jetting around America -- 9,000 miles' worth of jetting, we might add -- to be there for the historic occasion. The Phillies thought he was a publicity hound at worst or a nut at best. But Brian Kingman kept telling the honest truth: "I like my title. Kind of like Miss America." Well, his title lives. Miraculously, Omar Daal went to the mound twice with 19 losses -- both of them with Kingman in attendance -- and somehow didn't lose. And now, after his 10-4 win over the Cubs on Tuesday in Chicago, Daal is done for the year. Which means Kingman is alive and well. "The press kept asking me why I was there," he told Week in Review. "And I said I really think I can bring some psychic powers to prevent his losing. And I thought, 'These guys have got to be thinking, This guy's out of his mind.' " But let's think about what happened here: Before Kingman showed up, Daal was 3-19. He'd lost seven starts in a row. He hadn't even held a lead in a month. And then he avoids losing twice with Kingman in attendance -- his team's only two wins in a span of nine games? Man, the Phillies shouldn't be ripping him. They should hire him as pitching coach. "I'd do it," Kingman said. "But they don't mind if I carry a crystal ball around. Do they?" Hey, what the heck. Whatever. If Brian Kingman can have this effect on Omar Daal, he might be the most powerful man in the world. "Yeah, but only on trivial and unimportant things," he said. "So if you've got something trivial and insignificant, I can probably influence it." No problem there. Trivia and insignificance are our whole life. So it's sure great to have Brian Kingman, and his crazy little claim to fame, still alive and well as we lurch into the rest of the 21st century. Poison ivy of the week It isn't every week you see two inside-the-park homers at Wrigley Field in three days. In fact, according to SABR's David Vincent, it hasn't been any week since 1929. But it happened this week. On Sunday, Cubs rookie Corey Patterson managed to hit a ball to right that nudged itself under the padding in the right-field corner and disappear. Then, two days later, the Phillies' Kevin Jordan hit a ball to left that pulled an even more impressive disappearing act: It got swallowed up by the beloved Wrigley Field ivy, allowing Jordan to circle the bases -- with enough time to do it two or three times before a search party located the baseball. Now you'd think a team with ivy in its own park would train the local vines to swallow only home-team shots to the wall. But this is just one more indication of the mess the Cubs are in. "I never did understand why the Cubs didn't have a 'plant' coach on staff," quipped Phillies outfield witticist -- and former Cub -- Doug Glanville. "He could have trained the ivy to swallow players or eat baseballs on cue. I have to believe it has cost them many a ball game over the years. They could have hired such greats as Mike Ivie -- or even gone outside the sport with Cliff Branch. Kerry Wood should have been giving tips all along. I guess they don't really want to win." Gopherballer of the week Brian Kingman's record lives. And so does Bert Blyleven's. Jose Lima tried his best to join Blyleven in the 50-Gopherball Club. But Lima was able to serve up just one last homer Thursday in his final start of the year. So he finishes at 48. Nevertheless, he did bust past Robin Roberts' National League record of 46 -- a record that had held up for nearly half a century. And much like Kingman, Lima understands it's better to have a lousy claim to fame than none at all. "Everybody talks about Lima giving up all the home runs," he said Thursday. "I'm in the record book for something, though. It's not for drugs or stealing. It's for giving up home runs. Who cares? If I give up 50 next year and win 20 games, what does it matter?" Good point. And in the meantime, he said after passing Roberts with a dazzling three-gopherball inning last Friday, "In 2,000 years, they can say, 'Jose Lima still owns the record. 'My family can say, 'My dad or grandpa still owns the record.' " Only one question: Are the odds better of Lima's kids still being around to say that in 2,000 years -- or of that record holding up for 2,000 years? 22-run rule of the week In their final homestand of August, the Baltimore Orioles scored 18 runs in seven games. Thursday, in the midst of their last homestand of the season, the Orioles scored 23 runs in eight innings. Is this a bizarre sport, or what? Their 23-1 win over Toronto was the biggest margin of victory by any team in any game since Aug. 25, 1979, when a very different collection of Blue Jays lost a 24-2 game to the Angels. And this one included a truly goofy fourth inning, which included seven straight hits, two errors, 13 hitters and 10 runs -- every darned one of them unearned. They then scored five more runs in the fifth -- meaning they went through a 23-batter stretch in which they produced three times as many runs (15) as outs. And by the end of that inning, they led 21-1. But the rules required they play the last four innings anyway, for reasons even the Blue Jays couldn't understand. "They should have a mercy rule," said Toronto manager Jim Fregosi. Human trivia question of the week In the final game ever at Milwaukee's County Stadium, the Brewers rose to the occasion -- by getting exactly two hits. That was the bad news. The good news for the Raul Casanova Fan Club was that Casanova got both of them. "Well," he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Drew Olson, "it's good that I'll be remembered for something." Milestone of the week The Orioles kicked off that 23-1 win over Toronto by scoring on the sixth pitch of the game. Brady Anderson bombed it to right field for a leadoff homer. And it was also the 200th of his career. Since Anderson was playing right, that left him plenty of time to barter with the fans to get the baseball back. Asked by the Washington Post's Dave Sheinin what he finally had to offer for the ball, Anderson joked: "Three balls, a couple of bats and three paid nights at Cal's house." Farewells of the week Being the sentimentalists we are around here, we'll miss both of the ballparks that finally hosted their last game this week -- Milwaukee's County Stadium and Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium. But we get the feeling not even all of the participants in the official ceremonies are as sentimental about this as we are. The Beaver County Times' John Perrotto tracked down the man who got the first hit at Three Rivers, Richie Hebner, this week. "You know how some guys close bars?" Hebner mused. "Well, I close ballparks. Actually, I've closed some bars, too." Burglar of the week We reported earlier this month that Florida's Mike Lowell had broken Bob Uecker's prestigious record for most games in a career (298) without either a stolen base or a triple. Well, this just in: Uecker has seen this great mark unbroken -- because not only has Lowell stolen one base this month, he's swiped two of them. His second came last weekend in frigid Colorado, after Rockies starter John Wasdin stopped paying attention to him, for obvious reasons. "Mike's been on me for two years about letting him steal," said manager John Boles. "I never would let him. We have a green light, a red light and a check the bench. Mike's a check-the-bench guy." Unofficial splashdown of the week Last Saturday, Arizona's Luis Gonzalez joined Todd Hundley as the second visiting player to hit a home run into McCovey Cove. But Gonzalez was mystified that after his kerplunkage, the Giants didn't change the "Splash Hits" board in right field to record his wet and mighty blow. It remained at six, which is how many the home team has hit (all by splash king Barry Bonds). Told the Giants only tally up their own splash hits and that his and Hundley's homers don't count as official splashdowns, Gonzalez was appropriately outraged. "I'm going to go out there," he said, "and write a '2' next to the '6.' " Incidentally, the Valley Tribune's Ed Price reports that Gonzalez is the only player in the big leagues this year to hit a home run that landed in two bodies of water. He also has homered into the fabled pool in Phoenix. Trivia answer Jim Palmer (eight), Steve Carlton (six), Catfish Hunter (five), Tom Seaver (five), Ferguson Jenkins (five) and Roger Clemens (five). Jayson Stark is a senior writer at ESPN.com. Week in Review appears each Friday. | ALSO SEE Jayson Stark archive Stark: Year in Review | |||||
