If you're a fan of the World's Strongest Man competition, make sure you note Roy Halladay's starts on your calendar.
The Strongman competitions are a staple of TSN's programming for rainouts, cancellations, and emergency programming when a game runs short. And no pitcher is likelier to make a game run short than Doc, who pitched a gem against KC's ace, Zack Greinke, last night. The game ended 3-1, but what was astonishing is that the game ended in 1 hour and 44 minutes, the shortest game for either team this year and a capitulation by the Royals so abject that Tony Pena resigned as the Royals' manager after the game.
While it was not the Royals' finest hour, one has to wonder about the timing of Pena's decision. The Royals were facing one of the very best pitchers in baseball, and while they couldn't do any lasting damage, at times they managed to hold their own and show their talent. They were dominated, but their own starter was dominant himself as Greinke mowed down the Jays in quick order after Hillenbrand's third-inning homer.
That's not to say that Pena's decision is necessarily the wrong one. Pena made a strategic decision in this contest so strange, so inexplicable, that perhaps it was a signal he had given up. We'll get to that in a minute.
I had the pleasure of attending this game with Coach Kent, Robert Dudek, and all three members of the NFH family (including baby Theo, who was utterly delightful company). Here are some of the thoughts we shared during the eyeblink that was this game...
TOP 1ST - DeJesus grounded to short; Berroa grounded to pitcher; Sweeney homered to center; Stairs flied out to left.
This inning is full of incident. On the second pitch of the ballgame, Adams makes a great play going right; down on his knees, up and firing in one motion to nail the fast David DeJesus. NFH, for one, called it a "Gold Glove play" and that's absolutely correct.
Halladay follows up by trying to field an Angel Berroa smash with his bare pitching hand; he throws him out but obviously hurt three fingers on his pitching hand. Coach : "Stupid. They have practices when you're ten years old, DEVOTED to not doing that."
Sweeney shuts us up by hitting a very loud and VERY long home run, to just about dead center.
TOP 2ND - Long grounded to pitcher; Brown singled to left; Teahen grounded into 6-4-3 double play.
Halladay fields Long's grounder as Coach shouts "Way to use the glove this time, Roy!"
BOTTOM 2ND - Hinske tripled to center; Wells popped out to second; Rios grounded to short; Adams walked; Huckaby singled to left, Hinske scored, Adams to second; Hudson flied out to left.
Hinske hammers one off the wall in deep right-center, DeJesus goes clattering headfirst into the wall, and instantly I'm channeling Jerry Coleman : "Winfield heads back... He leaps... His HEAD hits the WALL... It's rolling back towards second base!... This is a terrible thing for the Padres..."
BOTTOM 3RD - Catalanotto singled to right center; Koskie grounded to pitcher, F Catalanotto to second; Hillenbrand homered to left, Catalanotto scored; Hinske singled to right; Wells popped to second; Rios singled to center, Hinske thrown out at third by DeJesus.
Theo's favorite part may have been Hillenbrand's homer - the crows goes nuts and he gets to watch people acting silly. I look over at Robert - he can't help it, no matter what bets he may have going he's a Blue Jays fan first, and he's cheering as much as the rest of us.
BOTTOM 5TH - Catalanotto flied out to left; Koskie flied out to right; Hillenbrand grounded to short.
At this point, Greinke is just a machine. After Cat flares an 0-1 pitch into shallow left for an easy catch for Terrence Long, Robert makes an intersting point. "Cat needs to be more selective at what pitches he swings at - he's too good a hitter, he can hit marginal pitches that other hitters just foul off. But inevitably he's going to make a lot of outs that way." Sometimes a hitter's biggest strength can be a weakness...
TOP 6TH - Gotay reached on bunt single to pitcher, advances to second on throwing error by Halladay; DeJesus sacrificed to pitcher, R Gotay to third; Berroa struck out swinging; Gotay out 2-1 advancing to home.
Gotay isn't human. I was impressed at how fast he got down the line on his grounder to Adams in the third, but what really catches my eye is his speed down the line on the bunt. Halladay made a near-perfect field and threw a fastball to first, and it hit Gotay in the back. It was like a Roadrunner cartoon. Then, before my eyes could adjust to where the ball was, I looked and Gotay was on second, like he had a teleportation device. Robert : "I'd like to see a race around the bases between Gotay and Carl Crawford." Just a terrific play by Gotay.
What follows, cracks us all up. Down 3-1, Tony Pena orders a bunt!. DeJesus executes the sacrifice and the catcalls start for Tony - Robert remembers the great David Brazeal preview of the 2003 Royals with its refrain "Quoth the Peņa, 'Little Ball!'" Coach and I reinvent the old maxim, with "Play to tie at home, play to lose by one on the road - we're the Royals after all."
The next hitter is Berroa, who's looked terrible tonight (making the bunt even more questionable) and he can't catch up to Halladay. He strikes out, and Peņa's decision looks worse than ever. And then, with Halladay trying to walk Sweeney ("the old intentional unintentional walk", as NFH puts it) Huckaby appears to bail the Royals out, letting a pitch skip under his glove to the backstop. Gotay scampers home as the ball rebounds off the backstop, and suddenly Halladay and Gotay are piled up at home - Doc has blocked the plate brilliantly, down in the dust, collected the throw and tagged Gotay out for the third out and the end of the rally. It's a brilliant play; I remarked later that Halladay looked like a rodeo cowboy wrestling a steer the way he went down to tangle with Gotay. Sure, our hearts are in our mouths for the second time tonight as the $42-million pitcher is sacrificing his $42-million legs to get an out, but the high fives at the end of a brilliant play make it all worth it. If he didn't have this kind of attitude, would he be the pitcher that he is? I suppose not.
BOTTOM 6TH - Hinske lined to first; Wells grounded to short; Rios fouled out to first.
Hinske fires a rocket off his bat right into Sweeney's glove at first. Coach : "That's what evens out over a season."
BOTTOM 7th - Adams flied out to right; Huckaby grounded to short; Hudson flied out to left.
Terrence Long, as he has all night, makes a terrific-looking catch to rob Hudson. This time, though, instead of just a great-looking play, it's a genuinely great play - he takes off at the crack of the bat and makes a twisting, running catch.
TOP 8TH - Teahen doubled to left; Buck flied out to right; Gotay grounded to second, Teahen to third; DeJesus grounded to pitcher.
And to compare with Long, defensive replacement Reed Johnson for the second night in a row makes a hash of a flyball over his head, misreading the spin on the ball and getting completely turned around. This time, he can't make the catch and Teahen has an undeserved double. The rally is promptly snuffed with some terrific "pitching in a pinch" from Doc, who has 86 pitches through 8 innings, and a miraculous play by Hudson, who takes a smash up the middle from Gotay and throws out the speedster by two steps at first base. It's all the more amazing for seeming commonplace - Hudson is a Gold Glover without question this year. As the inning ends, I notice that with one full inning to go in the ballgame, it is still light outside - amazing.
TOP 9TH - Berroa doubled to right; Sweeney flied to center, Berroa doubled off second by Wells; Stairs singled to center; Long flied out to left.
Coach points out an exquisite dummy by Vernon. Seeing Berroa lallygagging off second base, Vernon half-pulls up and waves his glove, as if to take the ball on the bounce, before grabbing it at the last possible second. The deception freezes Berroa, who looks like a little leaguer who hasn't had any tag drills - he's easy prey for Vernon at second base, and the ballgame is essentially done with.
Quoth the Peņa, "Little Ball". There's no doubt in my mind, now, that Berroa's blunder is the death knell of the Royals manager. Terrence Long flies out to complete the ballgame, and at 8:51 we're ecstatically wondering what to do with the rest of our night.
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