6.20.01 LOS ANGELES DODGERS vs ARIZONA DIAMONDBACKS
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Dodgers win, finally, and I got to see a high-speed chase. If you’ve never seen one—this was my second—here’s how it happens. You’re plugging down the 10 freeway, as Joel and I were at probably a quarter after six this evening, when way up ahead on the other side of the divider you see flashing lights—lots of them. Then you hear the sirens. Then you see a van—I don’t know why, but it seems like a disproportionate number of these things involve vans—barrel past at roughly half again the speed of the traffic around it, followed immediately by a phalanx of highway patrol cars, maybe a dozen of them, lights ablaze and sirens wailing. You look up for confirmation of what you’ve just seen, and sure enough, a squadron of news and police helicopters circles overhead. If you’re with Joel, you flip the dial away from Dr. Laura to the nearest all-news, all-traffic, all-the-time radio station and learn that the pursuit has been going on for the better part of the afternoon, that the driver has at various times during the course of his odyssey brandished a gun and pointed it out the window of his vehicle, and that, according to the traffic guy in the KFWB chopper, “The suspect is extremely erratic and highly dangerous—he’s executed some maneuvers that, well, were literally indescribable.” Huh.
We met our friends Tim and Dave at the park. Real-life professional screenwriters, Tim and Dave are two seriously funny gentlemen, and their presence combined with that of resident sports iconoclast Joel (he’s the guy who, at age twelve, used to mock his jock brother’s playmate, Mark McGwire) made for a thoroughly entertaining evening. Among Tim and Dave’s concepts that I might be at liberty to discuss here (don’t worry guys, I won’t blow the lid off Vumpire) is one that imagines the Los Angeles Dodgers as preternaturally empowered superheroes, battling evil as they pursue a pennant. The baseball-team-as-comic-strip idea has since been lifted by the Texas Rangers, but Tim and Dave are guaranteed a leg up on their rivals by the inclusion in their scenario of an all-knowing, seldom-seen oracle—a role filled, of course, by the venerable Vin Scully—who helps guide his player-heroes at critical moments by sharing his boundless wisdom, cloaked, of course, in the form of impossibly cryptic anecdotes. So, you know, our saviors gather in the pressbox as the universe teeters on the brink of annihilation, seeking the clue that will enable them to foil the evil plot before them, and Vin, his gaze fixed on an invisible point on the horizon, begins to speak in that meltingly folksy way of his: “Well, all this reminds me of a game, oh, must’ve been many years ago now…in fact it was late August of 1962, right here at Dodger Stadium. On the mound for the visiting San Francisco Giants was Juan Marichal, and….”
There’s also the All-Ross Porter Team, the diabolical notion of which, if you’re at all familiar with the broadcasting style of the Dodgers’ number two man in the booth, should set you to giggling for the better part of an afternoon. Top candidates for the All-Ross Porter Team include Nomar Garciaparra, Frank Catalanotto, Andres Galarraga, Edgar Renteria, Eurebial Durazo, Mark Grudzielanek, Bobby Estalella, Magglio Ordoñez, Juan Encarnacion, Shigetoshi Hasegawa…beginning to get the picture? If not, imagine what Ross’s call on a 6-4-3 double-play involving the first three players listed above would sound like. They’d have to halt the game!
Anyway, here were the Dodgers, seven games back and falling fast. One chance to turn the tide and make up some ground on their division-leading rivals had slipped through their fingers, but tonight there was another, this time with Chan Ho Park on the mound. Park was awesome. He went seven innings, faltering only during a three-run fourth that was set up when Tom Goodwin badly misplayed a fly ball to center, giving the D’Backs a 3–2 lead. Shortly thereafter Goodwin would take a called third strike for the final out with runners on second and third. How that guy ended up with the words good and win in his name is something I will never understand.
When next Goodwin’s spot came up Jim Tracy mercifully sent in Marquis Grissom to bat for him, and the home run that followed earned them each a round of hearty applause.
The game remained tied at three until the dramatic bottom of the ninth. Rookie reliever Erik Sabel got Grissom to ground out, but then Hiram Bocachica reached on an infield single. After Bocachica went to third on a wild pitch that catcher Damian Miller had a bitch of a time retrieving from the backstop, it was decided to put Shawn Green aboard intentionally, which brought up Gary Sheffield. “Well, hell,” Diamondbacks manager Bob Brenly evidently thought, “might as well walk him, too.”
So, bases loaded, one out, Eric Karros at the plate. Those remaining among the crowd of 35,000 came to their feet. The first pitch, wide, a ball. A foul ball. A called strike, and another foul. Then: It hit him! As Karros crumpled in pain, a mighty cheer went up from the crowd! Hooray! Dodgers win!
Joel and I had to detour up to the 210 on the way home, as the high-speed chase had reached the out-of-gas, armed-standoff stage. The cops apparently sent a camera- and two-way-radio-equipped robot out to negotiate with the driver, but when it reached the window of the van the guy swung open his door and knocked the robot to the ground! I never did hear how it ended.
FINAL SCORE: DODGERS 4, DIAMONDBACKS 3
FOOD CONSUMED: The usual, again. This time the girl was cool and filled the whole second dipping well in the nachos tray with my extra cheese, instead of putting it in the separate, smaller plastic container that was mandated when the cheese-hoarding bastards at Fox took the reigns. Power to the people! Down with the cheese-hoarding bastards!