6.03.01 ROCHESTER RED WINGS vs LOUISVILLE RIVERBATS
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First things first: Yesterday in Oakland Josh Towers threw seven shut-out innings for the Orioles in his second major league start. Of his first-ever big-league victory, the dispassionate Towers commented, “It’s always nice to go out there and not give up any runs. Especially against a team like Oakland.” Like he’s been doing it all his life.
Towers’ replacement in Rochester, 24-year-old righty Rick Bauer, today suggested that he ain’t exactly chopped liver either, holding the first-place (still) Louisville RiverBats to two runs over seven innings in a game in which the Red Wings desperately needed him to eat up some innings, coming as it did after two days of rain delays and extra innings had left both teams’ bullpens in tatters.
Decked out in totally cool circa 1929 uniforms for Turn Back the Clock Day, the Red Wings managed, for a game at least, to turn back the clock to a day when they didn’t completely suck, and actually notched a victory in front of the home crowd. Some signs of life: with two RBIs on a single and a home run, Calvin Pickering’s bat is at long last starting to heat up; Wady Almonte went 3-for-4 and for the first time all season finds himself comfortably above the Mendoza line; sure-handed center fielder Darnell McDonald had two hits and has raised his average 45 points in the short time he’s been here.
Rob hadn’t told me that his team now boasts Wilton “Corky” Guerrero atop its line-up, brother of All-Star Vladimir, so nicknamed by his Dodger teammates a few years ago when a broken bat blew his cover (not that it’d helped any). I wanted badly to yell “We know who you are, Corky! Check that bat, blue!” when he came to the plate to open the game, but as it turns out, the presence of one’s wife when combined with the absence of any of one’s obnoxious friends is a surprisingly powerful deterrent to solo heckling. Maybe next time.
Chad Paronto, still awful out of the pen, tried to give the game away in the ninth when Louisville’s bad-ass left fielder Adam Dunn (why isn’t he in Cincinnati? Deion’s terrible!) tagged him for a two-run homer, but Jorge Julio was able to come in and finish the job for Bauer. Red Wings win! Red Wings win!
FINAL SCORE: RED WINGS 5, RIVERBATS 4
FOOD CONSUMED: Part of the Turn Back the Clock Day promotion was dollar hots, so we ate a bunch of those, even though they were the crappy Zweigle’s ones. No dollar beers though, sadly.