8.23.00 LOS ANGELES DODGERS vs MONTREAL EXPOS
Before we get started here, it’s worth pointing out the precise moment
at which the Dodgers’ season officially ended. It occurred just before
ten o’clock, Pacific Daylight-Savings Time, back on the night of August
9. The Dodgers had trailed the Cubs 4–3 for much of a closely-fought
game, but Dave Hansen evened things up in the eighth with a pinch-hit home
run. The end came in the ninth though, when Shawn Green led off with a double
to right off Cubs’ reliever Tim Worrell. The Cubs followed by intentionally
walking Gary Sheffield. With the game tied then, no outs, and Todd Hundley
at the plate, a palpable wave of nausea crept over the Los Angeles basin.
Because all 40,000 people at Chavez Ravine, Ross Porter in the booth, me lying
on the couch at home, and countless others listening to the game across the
southland were all thinking one thing. The only thing. The incredibly, painfully
fucking obvious thing. And we all knew that there was just no way that
Davey Johnson was going to tell Hundley to bunt.
And of course, he didn’t. Hundley swung at three pitches, and missed
them all. As if on cue, Eric Karros then hit the sacrifice fly that would’ve
scored Green from third had Hundley been able to advance him, and instead
of walking off the field in triumph, the Dodgers were forced to put the game
in the hands of Adrian Beltre, who could only manage a limp grounder for the
third out. That Jeff Shaw would go on to walk in the go-ahead run in the top
of the tenth for the Cubs hardly mattered. The Dodgers were in the midst of
a season-killing tailspin, and the latent, unspoken, willfully ignored truth
at the core of the team’s impotence had been irretrievably exposed. The
Dodgers, and more specifically Davey Johnson, were done.
Sigh.
So really, the only reason I went out to the yard tonight, for this meeting between the dead-in-the-water Dodgers and the never-in-the-water-to-begin-with Montreal Expos, was to see at Vladimir Guerrero. And wouldn’t you know it, I arrived to discover that Guerrero was a scratch for the night, the victim of some strained muscle or other. Why was I here again?
You’ll forgive me another digression, I hope. My father-in-law, a barrel-chested,
seventy-year-old career Marine, has been to exactly one baseball game in his
entire life. It was 1962, he was stationed at Camp Pendleton, a friend with
a new Corvette invited him to come along to L.A. for a Dodgers game, and Gilbert,
not too hot on baseball but perhaps enticed by the prospect of an evening
out, accepted. Sandy Koufax no-hit the Mets that night, and he’s never
had reason to go back.
Even before I’d heard that story, the hope of seeing a no-hitter has
been something that I’ve brought with me to every ballgame I’ve
ever attended. To the slightly anal extent that no matter how early in the
game it happens, upon the first hit a pitcher gives up, I consciously think
to myself, there goes the no-hitter. I know—I might as well be
Bob Costas or something, but what can I say? I’m stuck with it. The upshot
of all this being that when Kevin Brown came out tonight and retired the first
three Expos batters in order, I could not help but privately (if somewhat
mockingly) remark to myself that hey, Brown’s got a perfect game going
here.
Likewise, after the one-two-three second inning, while other folks were still
filing in with their hot dogs and getting settled, I was thinking, lookit
that—still perfect! Ditto the third and fourth, by which time it
was gradually dawning on people that there were a whole lot of zeroes accumulating
on the scoreboard, and that the Expos were still batting in neat, scorecard-friendly
sets of three. The Dodgers scored three runs in the bottom of the fourth,
and after again making quick work of the Expos in the top of the fifth, Brown
walked to the plate to lead off the bottom of the frame to the accompaniment
of some rather excited applause. A perfect game, through five innings! Only
two balls had even made it out of the infield! The stars looked to be lining
up: Brown was cruising, the Expos were a bad team made worse by injuries,
and we were past the half-way point in the game. Maybe it wasn’t such
a bad idea to come out tonight after all.
What then do you suppose Kevin Brown would decide to do, leading off the
fifth inning of his perfect game in progress, a game which the Dodgers already
led, 3–0? Do you suppose he’d just go up there and look at three
pitches and sit back down in order to get back to work as quickly as possible?
Or maybe that he’d just swing at the first thing he thought he could
get a piece of, and lazily run out his harmless grounder? Do you suppose he’d
do something that actually made sense? If so, you’re as much a damned
fool as I am.
Brown, through some miracle of logic that artificial intelligence programmers centuries hence will still have trouble duplicating, decided to bunt. Not only did he decide to bunt, but he decided to bunt the Kevin Brown way, which is to say, pardon my French, like a fucking retard. Any seven-year-old Little Leaguer in the country can show you the proper way to hold the bat when bunting: you anchor the bat in your leading hand, and with the other you make a little notch with your thumb and index finger upon which the barrel of the bat rests, protecting your hand from getting hit. Kevin Brown, on the other hand, grabs the bat like a tube of salami, presenting all four fingers of his throwing hand to the opposing pitcher like a big, fat, one-hundred-and-five-million-dollar target. Once already this season, back in April against the Mets, this strategy earned him a broken finger. And sure enough, first pitch from the Expos’ Mike Thurman, Brown stuck his hand out there and got the great big knuckle sandwich he deserved.
Astonishingly, the umpire awarded him first base, as if he’d done something
other than simply placed his hand in the path of a perfectly well-thrown pitch.
Coaches, trainers rushed onto the field to examine the damage, but Brown,
obstinate meathead that he is, insisted on staying in the game.
He actually made it through the sixth inning with his perfect game intact, but by the seventh the swelling had taken over. A Peter Bergeron single broke up the no-hitter, and consecutive doubles by Jose Vidro and Lee Stevens meant that we wouldn’t even be getting any donuts for our trouble.
FINAL SCORE: DODGERS 5, EXPOS 1
MEMORABLE HECKLE: Christ, I can’t remember.
