7.23.00
LOS ANGELES DODGERS vs SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS
It's 10:30 at night and I'm one of about two hundred people waiting in a line that stretches a good thirty feet out the door of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, here at the Ontario Mills Consumerism Monument, about an hour's drive east of Dodger Stadium. What reason could I possibly have for being here, you might be inclined to ask. The same reason all these other people are here, I would reply: Darren Dreifort bought us all free donuts tonight by holding the San Francisco Giants to two hits and no runs over seven complete innings. Terry Adams and Jeff Shaw pitched in at the end, of course, but clearly, it is to Dreifort that all of us here at Krispy Kreme owe our boxes of hot, glazed gratitude, for his second dominating performance in a row, and for earning everyone who attended tonight's game half a dozen free donuts per ticket as part of a promotion whereby Dodger fans are rewarded for their team's rare home shut-outs. Three cheers for Darren Dreifort! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! Mmmmmmm, donuts!
And what a relief it was to be back in the timeless, graceful, sweeping embrace of Dodger Stadium after the visual and aural noise pollution of Bank One Ballpark. I know the only reason they exist is to accommodate the wishes of ESPN, but I gotta say, I love these five o'clock start times—day games in July in southern California are just too damned hot, and they sap the life out of players and crowd alike. Just yesterday I watched my wife and brother on TV as from Sean's Dugout Club seats they watched the Dodgers sleepwalk through a 5-2 loss. Today would be different: in the golden light of late afternoon Todd Hollandsworth sent Russ Ortiz's first pitch of the game sailing over the fence in left center field. Shawn Green tacked on a two-run homer a few minutes later, and the tone of the game was pretty much set.
The crowd of nearly 50,000 was boisterous throughout, showering arch-villain Barry Bonds with stadium-wide chants of “Barry sucks!” on numerous occasions over the course of the game. Bonds obliged by striking out in his first at-bat and twice flying out harmlessly; he managed a single in the fourth, but was stranded at third base when Dreifort struck out J. T. Snow to end the inning.
And Dreifort was awesome. He's long been touted as having “wicked stuff,” a slider rivaled only by Kevin Brown's in terms of “nastiness” (it's sometimes even been described as “filthy”), and at times over the last three seasons he's shown the requisite "flashes of brilliance." But he's never been terribly consistent, and those flashes have tended to come between long intervals of mediocrity. Still, the guy's gutsy as hell, as evidenced by his reaction two years ago when Andres Galarraga charged the mound on him: Dreifort just stood there, nonplussed, until Galarraga reached the hill and took a mighty swing at his head, whereupon Dreifort quickly ducked the punch and charged head-down straight into the plate-crowding oaf, knocking him flat on his ass.
It's too soon to tell if these two last starts are an indication that he's finally rounded a corner toward becoming the 20-game winner everyone's always expected, but that's okay. After losing the subsequent two games of their series with the Angels, the Dodgers took two of three from the Pirates, swept a two-game set with Colorado, and won two of their three games with the hated Giants. It almost looks as though they might make things interesting in the NL West over the next couple months.
FINAL SCORE: DODGERS 5, GIANTS 0
MEMORABLE HECKLE: Some forty-something bozo decked out in Giants gear next to us responded to late-inning ridicule from the seats above him by turning around and hollering, “Congratulations! You've got as much class as a bunch of Raider fans!” The look of idiotic self-satisfaction on his face as he turned back to the game rendered entirely unnecessary the rejoinder, “Congratulations! You're as smug and clueless as a 49ers fan!”
