It was the Giants & Dodgers. The two teams have a long storied history of playing against each other. Giants had won the night before. Down the road, the Angels just announced they had acquired the slugging first baseman Mark Teixeira from Atlanta for their first baseman Casey Kotchman and pitching prospect Stephen Marek. A 5.4 earthquake rocked the southland just hours before the game. These were sign strange things were to come.
The game proved to be a pitching dual until the 6th inning between Matt Cain and Jason Johnson. The Dodgers would break the game open by scoring two runs. One would not come without controversy.
With James Loney at first base, Casey Blake hit Cain’s 2-2 pitch down the left-field line. Fred Lewis bobbled the grounder deep in left field. The ball deflected out of his glove and bounced atop of leftfield wall/padding along the base line. Lewis recovered the ball (without fan interference) and fired it to shortstop Omar Vizquel, who relayed it home. Bengie Molina tagged out Loney, at home.
The umpires huddled together, joined by Bruce Bochy and the entire Giant infield. After they convened it was ruled that Lewis had deflected the ball out of play. This awarded the runners two bases after the infraction. So Loney was waved home while Blake went to third. The inning continued instead of a third out. Still replay is a bad idea for baseball.
The call, good or bad, Cain followed his outstanding four-hit shutout against Washington last Thursday with another stellar performance. The most frustrating thing is to watch Cain continue get rack up losses while he continues to perform well. For the last year and a half, Cain has remained within the two or three pitchers with the worst run support. Cain continues to overachieve and never complains about the lack of run support. He just digs in deeper. This shows what exemplary person he is.
Alex Hinshaw provided yet another solid eighth inning.
Tonight is the rubber match…. Giants, Jonathan Sanchez (8 – 6) 4.46 vs.
Dodgers, Chad Billingsley (10 – 9) 3.26
Let’s go Giants. Beat LA!
Photo Credit: by artolog - http://www.flickr.com/photos/artolog/2492621852/
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