6.18.00 LOS ANGELES DODGERS vs ST LOUIS CARDINALS

My favorite bit of Mark McGwire lore concerns my friend Joel, who as a scrawny stoner 12-year-old whose older brother was a neighborhood playmate of the future Hall of Famer, routinely ridiculed his brother and Mac for playing catch in the street: “Man [imagine Jeff Spicoli speaking], you guys are wasting your time—sports are stupid!”

Until today my efforts to witness first-hand the spectacle of a McGwire home run had met with little success. Even though it was still early May when the Cardinals made their sole visit to Dodger Stadium in 1998, we had enough of an inkling that something extraordinary was in the offing that we made sure to get out to the yard; as it turned out, though, McGwire was nursing a sore back and sat out the whole series (only to homer in his first at-bat in the following series in San Francisco). In '99 we were treated to Fernando Tatis' freakish two-grand-slams-in-one-inning performance, but the best McGwire could muster was a bloop single to right to help set up the first of those. He would return later that summer to hit his first and second bombs at Dodger Stadium in one afternoon, but alas, I was out of town for that.

So I gotta admit, it was kind of cool—in the “okay, now I can say I've seen it” sense—when Mac came up with a man on in the first and hit a rare right-field blast off of Chan Ho Park. Cooler still, though, was how quickly Park recovered from his mistake, and how he went on to absolutely dominate the game, showing none of his usual tentativeness on the mound, trusting himself and notching strikeout after strikeout with straight-up fastballs, a total of nine Ks over seven innings. Great to see, especially considering that it was Park who surrendered the tandem slams to Tatis a year ago, the first time a pitcher had given up two of those in an inning since some fella did it in a Cubs-Pirates game in 1898 (tha's right: Eighteen Ninety-Eight).

It was a day for good baseball. Gary Sheffield made a great play in the third on a ball that Shawon Dunston bounced off the left-field fence, cleanly fielding the caroom and making a great throw to Adrian Beltre to catch Dunston when he tried to stretch it into a triple. In the bottom of the inning the Dodgers took advantage of some heads-up base-running by Mark Grudzielanek, a Sheffield sacrifice fly, and a three-run home run by Beltre to go ahead 6-2, and they led for the rest of the evening.

FINAL SCORE: DODGERS 6, CARDINALS 3

MEMORABLE HECKLE: Beltre had returned from the DL only a day before, and it was obvious that he was still nursing a sore hamstring when he lamely ran out a grounder to third in his first at-bat, testing the patience of a gentleman a few rows down, who yelled “C'mon Beltre—if you're not gonna run, get outta the game!” Said critic was effectively silenced an inning later when the young third baseman tagged Cardinal starter Darryl Kile for the aforementioned three-run homer. Nice to have you back, Adrian.

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