5.2.02 ROCHESTER RED WINGS vs TOLEDO MUD HENS
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After losing three intensely fought, down-to-the-wire games in a row to the
Toledo Mud Hens, the Red Wings finally broke down and gave one away. Rochester
starter Mark Nussbeck gave up eight runs in five innings, and just when the
Wings started showing some life on offense, Allen McDill came on in the eighth
to give up five more in his one-third of an inning of work.
Like the Pirates-Dodgers game, this was another weekday afternoon affair,
and just like in Pittsburgh, I wondered if the term “businessman’s
special” shouldn’t be consigned to the anachronism pile, as businessmen
were again outnumbered by screaming, short-attention-spanned, bussed-in schoolchildren
by a ratio of about two thousand to one.
The scoreboard showed a plausible 56 degrees—it’s May now—and
a cutting wind accompanied by intermittent rain blew out from behind just
about wherever one sat in the ballpark, and though I was indeed dressed for
half I began to wish for a hooded sweatshirt like the one my Rochester friend
Andy is rarely seen without and which today seemed to adorn every other adult
spectator in the ballpark. All fifteen of them.
I moved around a bit and finally settled in down front, just to the infield
side of the Red Wings dugout, where the wind seemed too preoccupied with swirling
around to do any protracted damage. From there I got a good look at the Mud
Hens’ designated hitter, Derek Nicholson, and his terrific left-handed batting
stance. Cocked back on his tip-toes in a precarious rearward lean, it was
like you could actually see the potential energy trapped in his coiled body,
gauge and measure it. I mean, the guy looked like a mousetrap waiting to be
sprung.
The trap went off four times: a home run, a double, two singles, four RBIs.
FINAL SCORE: MUD HENS 13, RED WINGS 4
LIFE DURING WARTIME: (Sardonically now…) War? What war?