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| Saturday, September 9 | |||||||||
| Here, there, oh what the heck, everywhere ESPN.com | |||||||||
Some men make history by having a number drop on a warehouse. Some
men make history by hitting a baseball into the fourth deck. And then
there's Scott Sheldon.
Scott Sheldon is a 31-year-old utility man for the Texas Rangers,
with exactly 91 at-bats this year. So until Wednesday night, his only chance
of making history would have been to have a 57-game hitting streak -- over
parts of about four seasons.
OK, so Scott Sheldon may not have been the first big-leaguer ever to do this. But his big claim to fame is: He was the first to do it spur-of-the-moment. When Bert Campaneris became the first to play all nine positions, on Sept. 8, 1965, it was a planned stunt to commemorate Campy Campaneris Night in Kansas City. And when Cesar Tovar did it for the Twins on Sept. 22, 1968, his team had been eliminated from the pennant race for two weeks. So his game, too, was a pre-planned extravaganza in which he played an inning at each position. But while Sheldon and Rangers manager Johnny Oates had been discussing the possibility of making this little slice of history since spring training, they'd actually been thinking of doing it later in the month at home. Instead, though, the game got out of hand almost instantly. The Rangers trailed, 10-1, after two innings. So Oates sidled up to Sheldon and asked: "Want to do it now?" So Sheldon said: "Sure." Oates didn't even know at the time that Sheldon's wife and parents were at the game, or that his father happened to be in town on vacation from his job in conveniently located Croatia. So it worked out even better. "I knew I had the ability to play all nine, because I'd played the outfield and infield, and I'd caught a little," Sheldon said. "But I was a little nervous about the pitching. That was the mind-boggling part." Ah, but he had no idea just how mind-boggling. Stay tuned. Give him a map Sheldon entered the game in the fourth inning as a catcher and caught a 1-2-3 inning. Then he started orbiting the field like John Glenn. He went to first base in the fifth inning, to second base and shortstop in the sixth and to right field and center in the seventh. Then he finished up by bouncing from left field to the pitcher's mound to first base in the eighth. He would have played all three outfield positions in the seventh, but an inning-ending double play foiled the master plan. "Without the double play, I would have pitched to two batters instead of one," he said. "But we said, 'We're gonna have to squeeze this in.' " He also used just three gloves all night -- a catcher's mitt, a first-baseman's mitt and his regular glove. "The funny thing was that probably the most difficult thing of the whole night was hitting," Sheldon said. "It was like, 'Oh, by the way, you've got to hit.' I was worrying so much about switching positions, I was thinking, 'OK, now I'm going to this position next.' Or, 'Let's see. Am I in center field next inning or left or right?' I was thinking about so many different things with all that, that when it came time to hit, it was basically just: Hop in the box and swing. At least I didn't need a glove to do that." Where's the action? The most bizarre part of this whole event was this: Here we had a man who played every position on the field on the same night. And yet, except for his inning as a catcher (when Magglio Ordonez was helpful enough to strike out looking) and his one-third of an inning as a pitcher, he basically had nothing to do out there. He chased one foul pop-up while he was at second base but couldn't reach it. He fielded a ground-ball single in right field. But outside of that, his only activity was moving from one position to the next. His total chances, except for catching that strikeout, came to a grand total of, well, zero. But at least he could say he had a perfect night. "Yeah, that's one way to be perfect," Sheldon said. "On one hand, I didn't exactly get to showcase what I can do. On the other hand, that's not really the purpose of playing all nine positions in one game. The purpose is really just to do it, to achieve it, to accomplish it." But contrast that with Campaneris' night, which was the diametric opposite. Joe Dittmar's book, the Baseball Records Registry, reports that Campaneris got mixed up in a 1-3-4-1-6 pickoff at second base, caught a fly ball in left and a fly ball in center, dropped a fly ball in right, caught a pop-up at first and had an action-packed inning as a pitcher (two walks, a strikeout of Bobby Knopp, a run and a runner thrown out stealing). Then Campaneris concluded his thrill-a-minute evening by moving to catcher and getting involved in a collision at the plate with Ed Kirkpatrick. They then got into a shoving match, after which Campaneris had to head to the hospital for X-rays. Sheldon, meanwhile, could have played solitaire most of the night. But when told about Campaneris' crazy game, he actually sounded jealous. After an evening of avoiding the baseball everywhere on the field, even a collision at the plate sounded good. "That would have been awesome," he said. "I would have loved that. I caught a few times in the minor leagues, I had two collisions, and I loved both of them. I won them both, too. ... I'm 6-3, 210. So unless I get broadsided, I can do OK for myself. "I would have loved to have said I caught a ground ball at shortstop and caught a fly ball in left and had the whole thing be like that Bugs Bunny routine: 'Bugs Bunny at shortstop, Bugs Bunny at pitcher.' That would have made it better than just hitting and basically changing positions. They would have had a little more to go on when they put together the highlights. But that's OK. It was cool just doing it."
As Sheldon bounced around the diamond, his travels eventually took him to right field, where John Wetteland wandered out of the bullpen and told him, "When you go in to pitch, you've got to do something crazy. Throw a knuckleball or an eephus pitch. Something." Sheldon told him: "I don't even have a knuckleball. I don't know how to throw one. So if I get to two strikes, I'll do my Robb Nen impression. I'll do the little stutter step and the toe tap and throw a change-up." That made Wetteland happy. But then this whole adventure almost got dangerous. Had Sheldon gone in to start the eighth inning on the mound, he would have been due to face Frank Thomas. Which might have necessitated heading to the mound in football pads. "No, I said, 'That's OK. I'm going to do this, even if I have to face Frank,' " Sheldon said. "I just figured I'd throw it inside and let him pull it. That way, I wouldn't get hurt." But it never came to that. Thomas left the game. Sheldon started the inning in left field. And when he did get to the mound, he was facing Jeff Liefer, who had just entered himself. The count on Liefer, amazingly, got to 1 and 2, even though Sheldon's hardest pitch was timed at 77 miles per hour. So since he'd gotten to two strikes, Sheldon dutifully did his Robb Nen knockoff on the next two pitches. Liefer, miraculously, missed a 2-and-2 changeup. And pandemonium busted out. "It was a no-win situation for Liefer," said White Sox third baseman Greg Norton. "We told him we'd see him on 'SportsCenter.' " And they sure did. Meanwhile, Scott Sheldon had already recorded only one fewer out than his team's starter (Rick Helling) did that night. Which was great enough. But he also got to end his big-league pitching career right there, with these sensational totals: One batter faced. One strikeout. We figured that enabled him to pass Nolan Ryan for the all-time Rangers franchise lead in career strikeout ratio. But Sheldon wasn't so sure. "I think there might have to be some sort of minimum," he said. "I think you might have to have a full inning in -- more than one batter faced, anyway." But when asked if he had plans to go back out there to get his required one inning in, Sheldon sounded as if he'd rather vacuum the entire stadium. "No, I think I'll stick with one batter faced, one strikeout," he said. Box-score madness When a guy plays nine positions in one game, maybe the most fascinating part of all is: How do the box scores handle it? The first box scores to move on the wire went with this approach: Sheldon C-1B-2B-SS-RF-CF-LF-P-3B. Of course, that took three lines to display. So baseball's official web site just gave up and handled it this way: Sheldon every position. But the wimpy box scores some papers use -- the ones that just list the first position a guy plays -- were an abomination. They just looked like this: Sheldon C. To which we would ask: "What's the point?" Then there was USA Today, which went this route: Sheldon *. If you then pored hard enough through all the fine print, you discovered: "NOTE: Sheldon played all nine positions." "Both Chicago papers just listed three or four positions," Sheldon reported. "I saw the asterisk in USA Today. I heard the Texas papers listed all nine positions. I've got to get ahold of those." We give Sheldon major extra credit, though, for being so aware of his place in box-score lore. He said he couldn't wait to wake up the next day and see how the box-score people solved this puzzle. "First thing I looked at," he said. "I didn't care about the article. I said: Where's the box score?" The record books So he isn't quite Babe Ruth. He isn't quite Cal Ripken. He isn't even Todd Helton, for that matter. But Scott Sheldon -- 31-year-old utility man -- has done something people will be kicking around forever. And how tremendous is that? "There are worse ways to make history," Sheldon said. "Of course, there are better ways to make history. But for most of us who play major-league baseball, there's not much history we're going to make. "I mean, I'm not going to the Hall of Fame. I'm not going to set any home-run records. So for me to get in the record books as one of a handful of players to do something like this, I'll take it. Some of the purists might not like it. But to play all nine positions in one game is rare in baseball. So for me, it's a treasured moment. And to have my whole family there, it's something I'll remember for the rest of my life." And the best part of this record is: It's just about unbreakable. Or is it? "Well, it is possible to play 10," Sheldon said, clearly hesitant to fire this idea out there. "You could do it on the road and start off as the DH, hit in the first inning and then go out on the field. The one record I do have is, I did it in the fewest number of innings. But now somebody will probably come along and do all 10." Whereupon Scott Sheldon would have only one recourse to get himself back in the record books: He'd have to go play for the Cowboys -- and play all 11 positions. "Nah, I don't want to do the Cowboys," he said. "I'll get killed. I think I'll stick with this. I know my limitations." Trifecta of the week It sounds like the most exciting play in baseball: A triple play. Three outs for the price of one. A rally turning into a disaster in the blink of an eye. It's Gary Gaetti backhanding a rocket down the line, stepping on third, then whipping the ball around the infield in less time than it takes to say, "And now for this word from our sponsor." OK, that's what a triple play is supposed to be. And then there was the triple play the Orioles turned against the Indians last weekend. This was a triple play in which the ball Sandy Alomar Jr. hit to start it was never even caught. This was a triple play in which it took 21 seconds from the time the ball was hit until the umpire called the second out. This was a triple play in which the guy who made the third out was sitting in the dugout at the time he was called out -- a few minutes after the swing that started this mess. We've seen Greg Maddux pitch three whole innings in the time it took to turn this triple play. "A triple play is supposed to go boom-boom-boom," Alomar told Week in Review. "Double steal on. Line drive. Somebody makes a diving catch. Throw to second. Throw to first. It's supposed to take a couple seconds. This one took like four minutes. It was the longest triple play ever. I guess I'm very slow, man." Well, if it wasn't the longest triple play ever, it was sure the weirdest triple play ever. Here's how it unfolded: Alomar came to the plate with no outs in the second inning of the Indians' game last Friday at Jacobs Field. Travis Fryman was on second. Wil Cordero was on first. Alomar lofted a very routine-looking pop-up into short left field. Shortstop Melvin Mora retreated onto the outfield grass. He heard no umpires calling for the infield-fly rule, which would have meant Alomar was automatically out. So he raised his glove, then let the ball drop to earth uncaught. "When the umpires didn't call infield fly, I said, 'Well, I'm going to drop the ball,' " Mora said. "And it turned out pretty good." Yeah. For the Orioles. But it also turned out pretty comical. Fryman had no idea what had just taken place. So he stayed on second. But Mora then threw to second baseman Jerry Hairston. And Hairston wasn't sure quite what was going on, either. But eventually, he stepped on second base, figuring he must have just forced somebody out. Then he tagged Fryman, who was standing on second. But umpire John Shulock ruled that Hairston had tagged Fryman first, meaning he was out, then stepped on second next, meaning he'd just forced Cordero out. So that was two outs. Meanwhile, Alomar had jogged down the line to first base, thinking he was out the second he hit the ball. So he hung out on the bag a few seconds, then headed for the dugout. "I went to first base, but I figured, 'Infield fly rule,' " Alomar said. "I stayed at first base for a little bit. But I saw the second-base ump signaling out. And nobody else moved. Travis stayed on second base. Cordero stayed on first. I heard somebody yelling about an infield-fly rule. So I went back to the dugout." It was a full 30 seconds before the Orioles noticed Alomar was missing in action. At that point, Hairston ran the ball over to first base, figuring he might have a third out. And it was about then that total chaos busted out. "The guys in the dugout were yelling at me, 'Run to first,' " Alomar said. "But I said, 'I think it's too late. It's 90 feet from home to first. It's 55 feet from the dugout to home. I don't think I could get there fast enough.' Besides, I think I was already in my catcher's gear. That would look good, huh? A guy running to first base in his catcher's gear after hitting into a triple play?" Except this still wasn't a triple play at the time. It wasn't a triple play until Cleveland manager Charlie Manuel went out to try to plead his case with Shulock. Little did he know he should have brought F. Lee Bailey with him. "When I was walking out onto the field, the umpires got together," Manuel said. "Shulock came over and said, 'Double play.' I said a few things that he didn't like. He said, 'Do you want it to be a triple play?' I told him, 'I don't give a damn what it is.' He said, 'OK, triple play.' That's when I got mad." And Alomar wasn't too thrilled, either. "I hit into a triple play, and it took four minutes," he said. "I know I'm not too fast. But I run pretty good for a catcher. I think I could get to first in four minutes. "I hit into a triple play, but in my mind, I still didn't hit into a triple play. The guy didn't even catch the ball." In fact, though, Shulock ruled that Alomar was out for "abandoning his right to first base." And when was the last time you ever heard of that call? "I just hope nobody in the ballpark was at their first game ever," Alomar said, "because they just saw the most bizzare play ever. They'd be saying, 'This game is weird, man.' " Of course, this game is weird. But that's why we love it. Even the Indians were kind of amused by all this in retrospect. Of course, they'd just come back and won the game. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been quite so amused. They'd have been more likely to take the video to the Supreme Court. "Can you imagine if we'd lost a playoff spot because of that?" Alomar wondered. "It would have been the biggest blooper in baseball history." Instead, though, it was merely the funniest blooper of the week. Which was fine with us. It just wasn't so fine with Sandy Alomar. "What a day I had," he said. "I hit into a triple play. I hit into a double play. And I made an out on fan interference. It was the golden sombrero. I didn't drive home that night. Too dangerous." Brave new world of the week It's been a truly strange week in the life of America's most stable franchise, the Atlanta Braves. So let's take a look at the highlights, with the help of distinguished Week in Review Braves correspondent Terry Mulholland. De ja Unit Chipper Jones is clearly a Sept. 4 kind of guy. Or possibly Randy Johnson isn't a Sept. 4 kind of guy. But at the very least, we now know that Chipper isn't the Big Unit's favorite Sept. 4 kind of guy. On Sept. 4 last year, the Chipster became only the 10th player in Unit history to bop two home runs in one game off Johnson. Then, on Labor Day, exactly one year later to the day, the Chipster became the first man ever to bop two home runs in one game off Johnson twice. But that's not all. According to the Sultan of Swat Stats, SABR's David Vincent, Jones also became the first player ever to have multihomer games against the same pitcher on the same date two years in a row. So how exactly do we explain that? "I think it's Buck Showalter's fault," Mulholland theorized, not very seriously. "He's the one who scheduled Randy to pitch that day. "Everyone knows one of Buck's shortcomings is that he doesn't do his homework," Mulholland continued, his tongue just about impaled in his cheek. "We know he doesn't believe in looking into numbers. He's more of an instinctive type manager. "So I really wouldn't put the blame on Randy. And I wouldn't want to give Chipper credit. I would just say Buck screwed up." In the future, Mulholland advised, Showalter should simply avoid using Johnson against the Braves should the schedule bring them together on any more Sept. 4's. "Until we get some data on Sept. 3 and Sept. 5," he said, "I'd stay away from Sept. 4 if I were him." Then again, in the future, all pitchers might want to stay away from Chipper on Sept. 4. "I would at least advise guys against going out and throwing 98 miles per hour," Mulholland said. "I'd do my best Tim Wakefield impression if I were them. And I wouldn't pitch any 6-11 left-handers against him, either. If Seattle ever comes into the National League, they don't want to be pitching Ryan Anderson." Crime does not pay An astonishing thing happened last week: Our man, Terry Mulholland, allowed a stolen base. It was just the second he'd given up in the last four years, thanks to his death-ray stepoff pickoff move. But Reds speedster Pokey Reese survived a bunch of pickoff throws, took a big lead and made it. Mulholland saluted Reese's courage and fearlessness and all that. But he saw a larger trend in this development that has to concern us all. "Pokey obviously hasn't delved into the numbers," Mulholland said. "But you know how today's baseball player is. They have no respect whatsoever for the history of the game. It almost sickens you." But Mulholland did find a bright side in all this. By his computations, his buddy Greg Maddux still has allowed more stolen bases just this season (31) "than I've allowed my whole career." When Mulholland mentioned that statistic to Maddux, "I think he said something about Cy Young awards," Mulholland reported. "I don't know. I felt like saying, 'Yeah, but that's in the past. What have you done lately?' But I didn't. I can't be saying that sort of thing to him. I've got to depend on him to carry me into the playoffs." So instead of telling Maddux, he just told us -- ESPN. "Yeah," Mulholland said. "But who watches that?" Don't give me five And while we're on the subject of Greg Maddux, how are we supposed to explain his sudden outbreak of Curse of the First Inning Disease? Maddux went 348 consecutive starts over 10 years without giving up five runs in the first inning. Then he somehow did it two starts in a row. And what were the odds of that? "I don't think there are odds on that," Mulholland said. "First of all, he's a resident of Las Vegas. And I think they stick up for their hometown guys first. So if you tried to get odds on that, they'd just say no, that's not possible. "Second of all, the only explanation I can give is that he was paying too much attention to the way I was pitching early in the year, and he picked up some bad tips from me. I just hope his short-term memory goes and his long-term memory clicks in and he remembers how to pitch like himself again." The most bizarre part of all, though, is that after those two first innings -- in which he gave up a total of 10 runs and 12 hits, Maddux then allowed a total of one run and seven hits in 13 1/3 innings thereafter. "I think they call that schizophrenia," Mulholland said. "He's got two personalities. Fortunately, the good one usually overcomes the bad. The good Greg comes out, and the bad Greg has to take a seat. It's a good thing, because the bad Greg is coming out constantly. This guy can be downright foul. Bobby Cox called him a Booger Flipper once. He's very proud of certain bodily functions." But we can't get into any discussion of bodily functions here. This is a family kind of web site. We're just glad the good Greg came out and shut out Arizona this week -- so we can go back to talking about ERA's and strikeout-walk ratios. Because that's what the Atlanta Braves are supposed to be all about. Mystery hurler of the week In baseball, WP means winning pitcher. And LP means losing pitcher. But Wednesday in Detroit, they discovered two new pitching initials. They stand for "batting-practice pitcher." And they go: VP. Yes, sir. If you've seen the video, you know that crafty right-hander Al Gore stopped by Comerica Park on Wednesday, ripped off his sports jacket and headed for the mound to throw an entire round of BP to a bunch of Tigers hitters who were hoping Gore would add "more belt-high fastballs" to his list of campaign promises. "One minute, we're in there hitting with our regular group," Robert Fick told Week in Review. "The next thing we knew, the vice president stepped in there. I said, `What's going on?' And they said, 'Just start swinging.' " So Fick did. Except for the third pitch Gore threw him. Which actually hit him. Asked if he considered charging the mound, Fick replied: "Yeah, right." But two pitches later, Fick did hit a line drive right back through the box that almost altered the course of this presidential campaign forever. Fortunately, for all concerned, Gore lurched out of the way. "He wouldn't get behind the screen," Fick alibied. "Then he throws me one, and I finally stayed on a ball and didn't try to pull it -- for the first time in three months -- and it went right back up the middle. Just missed him. I noticed he stayed behind the screen after that. Good thing I didn't hit him. It would have ruined his day, for sure. And they'd have probably thrown me in the slammer and thrown away the key." "I'm sure," Fick joked, "he was thinking Bush hired me." Normally in these situations, those politicos fire a couple of lobs, make sure the photographers snap about 1.7 billion pictures and then get the heck out of there. But not Al Gore. He appeared intent on firing pitches right up until Election Day. "He threw like 50 pitches," Fick said. "He went the full 10 minutes. He didn't want to leave. The Secret Service guys were saying, 'You've gotta get out of here.' But he stayed for the whole (BP) group. Mad Dog (coach Bill Madlock) had to kick him out of there. He just goes out and yells, 'OK, next group.' And he stopped. But the guy threw a lot of pitches, man. He might need rotator-cuff surgery after that." Asked to appraise Gore's stuff, Fick reported: "Slow -- but strikes. You could tell he knew what he was doing." The Tigers actually were so impressed that assistant GM Steve Lubratich told the Detroit News' Tom Gage: "If he's out of a job, spring training begins in February. But I hear he's looking for a four-year deal with a four-year extension." Then again, even in his current gig, Gore also gave new meaning to that old baseball term, "safe." "It was amazing, all the Secret Service agents all around," Fick said. "People think we're big, because we're major-league baseball players. Well, let me tell you. He's big. He's the real big man." Fick said his girlfriend was a former White House intern ("right after Monica") who met Gore back then and just returned from the Democratic convention. She was pretty impressed by that until this turn of events. "Now," he said, "I can tell her, 'Hey, what's the big deal? He threw me batting practice.' " But Fick was already one of the Tigers' most historic figures, despite his limited time in the big leagues. Last September, he was the guy who hit the final home run in the history of venerable Tiger Stadium. And now this. "Yeah, everybody's been razzing me about that," he said. "They were saying, '34 days in the big leagues, and now another thing happens to you.' But hey, five more inches on that line drive, and I'd have been real famous." Wild pitches Box score line of the week It's never a good thing when your starting pitcher takes the mound in the first inning with a four-run lead and can't even hold it through the bottom of the first. But that's what happened to Angels starter Ramon Ortiz on Sunday in Chicago. His nightmarish line: 2/3 IP, 8 H, 9 R, 9 ER, 2 BB, 0 K, 1 WP, 43 pitches to get two outs and an ERA that went up more than a full run (from 5.16 to 6.19) -- in LESS than a full inning. The good news for Ortiz was: He didn't get a loss, because the Angels made up that 9-4 deficit before still managing to lose, 13-12. The bad news was: That first inning took 46 minutes. "I have eight guys behind me playing defense, and they caught the ball only twice," Ortiz said. "I was saying, 'Oh my God, what's going on here?' " Box score line of the week (walk-an-inning dept.) Royals pitcher Dan Reichert had one of the all-time crazy lines Thursday against the Yankees. You have to look at it twice to believe it: 8 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 9 BB, 5 K, 110 pitches, 55 strikes. Reichert was the first pitcher to walk nine hitters in one game and not give up a run since Jim Bibby did it in 1977. "It's weird how the game of baseball goes," Reichert said, in the understatement of the year. Box score line of the week (hitless wonder dept.) Ellis Burks has had 11 games this year in which he's driven in three runs or more. But in only one of them did he manage to do that without getting a hit. That was Saturday, when Cubs rookie Ruben Quevedo and his equal-opportunity bullpen were having one of those days in which the strike zone never quite showed up on their radar screen. Quevedo piled up more walks (five) than outs. The Cubs walked 11 in all. And that included five walks with the bases loaded. Three of those five were to Burks, enabling his amazing line to look like this: 1 AB, 1 R, 0 H, 3 RBI. Burks is only the third player to achieve this three-RBI, no-hit daily double in the last three seasons. The others, according to the Elias Sports Bureau: David Ortiz earlier this year, and Darin Erstad in 1998. But this game got so wacky that Cubs pitching coach Oscar Acosta came out to visit Quevedo on the mound in the second inning and wound up getting ejected by umpire Scott Packard. Manager Don Baylor then ran out to separate Acosta and Packard. Then, after Quevedo faced one more hitter, the umpires decided that peace-making gesture by Baylor constituted a second trip to the mound -- and forced him to remove Quevedo. By the time the day was over, the Cubs had needed 204 pitches to get through their required eight innings -- and more of them were balls (103) than strikes (101). "That's a first for me -- five bases-on-balls with the bases loaded," Baylor said. "I've never seen that. Ellis Burks has an 0-for-1 day, with three RBI, without swinging the bat." Dusty Baker on the forced removal of Quevedo, who already had walked in three runs just by himself: "We wanted him to stay in the game." Football scores of the week Last Sunday was the first day of the NFL season. So in Chicago and Cleveland, they paid tribute by putting up two football scores. In Chicago, the White Sox beat the Angels, 13-12. In Cleveland, the Indians beat the Orioles, 12-11. (OK, so there were a lot of safeties in that Indians game.) The Chicago-Anaheim game was so nuts that the winning team issued nine walks and gave up five home runs. It was so nuts that the Angels led by four runs in the first inning, the White Sox led by five after their half of the first, and both teams blew those huge leads. The score went from 4-0 (Angels) to 9-4 (White Sox) to 11-9 (Angels) to 11-10 (Angels) to 12-10 (Angels) to 12-12 (Bears) and finally 13-12. "It was pretty much like a heavyweight fight," said White Sox manager Jerry Manuel. "They got in the first blow. Then we got in some blows and went into a rope-a-dope, or whatever it was we were doing. Then we finally knocked them out." Meanwhile in Cleveland, there were four lead changes just in the first four innings (after which the score was Cleveland 8, Baltimore 7). Then the Indians extended their lead to 11-7, the Orioles tied it at 11-11 in the seventh and it took until the 13th for the Indians to kick an extra point and win, 12-11. The hero, without a doubt, was Kenny Lofton. All he did was get four hits, steal five bases, tie a 61-year-old record for most consecutive games scoring a run (18) and hit a game-winning home run in the 13th inning. So what didn't he do? "Let's see," said Sandy Alomar Jr. "He didn't commit an error. He didn't strike out. And he didn't rake the infield." Trusty assistant of the week When Tigers bench coach Bob Melvin had to be hospitalized this week with an inner-ear virus, manager Phil Garner decided to turn for assistance to a man with, essentially, nothing else to do. That would be injured veteran Gregg Jefferies, who was already out for the year with a hamstring tear. "He's putting a lot of faith in an idiot, really," Jefferies told Booth Newspapers' Danny Knobler, after learning of his new post. "He's putting a lot of faith in a guy with no idea what's going on." That notwithstanding, Garner let Jefferies handle the job for a couple of days. Then, after learning Melvin would be out longer than expected, he canned Jefferies in favor of bullpen coach Lance Parrish. Asked for an explanation of this shakeup, Garner said: "I think Jefferies is trying to lead a palace revolt. Besides, if we get in a fight, I'd rather have Lance. Just think of the (nick)names. Either the Big Wheel or the Mutt. Which one would you rather have next to you?" Dietician of the week Boston's Jose Offerman had homered four times all season before Wednesday. Then he hit three in 24 hours (one Wednesday night, two Thursday afternoon). "I don't know where he ate last night or the night before," said manager Jimy Williams. "But I'm going to follow him." Throng of the week The box scores tell us that the "crowd" at Wednesday afternoon's Twins-Orioles game in the Metrodome -- a game that had been moved from 7:05 p.m. to 12:05 -- was 5,753. But in real life, there weren't many more spectators than players. Reporters counted a grand total of 12 fans in the outfield lower deck and eight in the upper deck. "Man," said Twins outfielder Torii Hunter, "I could hear the dugouts talking from center (field)." Sacrifice of the week It isn't every day you see Mariners slugger Jay Buhner lay down a bunt. In fact, it's been only 11 days in Buhner's 14-year career. But these are desperate times for the Mariners. So on Tuesday, the big play in the eighth inning of what would turn into a 4-3 win in Toronto was indeed a sacrifice by the aforementioned Jay Buhner. Buhner admitted, to the Seattle Times' Bob Finnigan, that he gets asked to bunt so rarely that "I'm not even sure of the sign for it." So he never even looked at third-base coach Larry Bowa. He just looked into the dugout, where manager Lou Piniella "gave me a little nod." But that made Bowa nervous. So he moved in for a personal conference and told Buhner the bunt was on "until I take it off." That personal touch can be a good thing -- but it wasn't for Buhner, he said, "because I'm not sure of the take-off sign, either." Jose Canseco feat of the week It can sometimes be tougher to walk Jose Canseco than most people. In the course of drawing a leadoff walk to start the Yankees' game-winning rally against Kansas City on Thursday, Canseco actually swung at a pitch that hit him (and missed it). "I have a history of doing some strange things in this game," Canseco said, without needing to convene a history class to review them all. West-Coast boys of the week We're still not sure what got into the Pittsburgh Pirates. They just went 6-0 on a trip to the lovely state of California (3-0 in L.A., then 3-0 in San Diego). At the time, they'd won six of their previous 19 games in Pittsburgh. But the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Paul Meyer reports that this turnaround might have had something to do with the surprise call-up of their long-time good-luck charm, 33-year-old utility man John Wehner, from Nashville. Wehner walked into the clubhouse last weekend and announced: "I'm here to right the ship." Whereupon Brian Giles replied: "Gosh, what direction are we heading?" Insider of the week It took almost three months, but Juan Gonzalez finally hit a home run in Comerica Park last Saturday -- for the first time since June 17. That was the upbeat development. The downbeat development was that Gonzalez still hasn't reached the seats at Comerica until June 17 -- because this was an inside-the-parker. It was also the first inside-the-park homer of Gonzalez's career. And it took him six innings until "I finally caught my second wind," he said. But did he save the ball? You bet he saved the ball. "Why not? It's my first," he said. "And maybe my last." Speech writer of the week Finally, Pirates outfielder Brian Giles recently revealed to the Beaver County Times' John Perrotto that he was the valedictorian at his high school -- Granite Hills High, in El Cajon Calif. Asked if he remembered his valedictory speech at graduation, Giles recalled that it went this way: "Look out for No. 1 -- and don't step in No. 2." And let us add that if you get drafted by the Yankees, don't ask for No. 3. Trivia answer Mark McGwire (six), Junior Griffey (six, going on seven), Juan Gonzalez (five), Sammy Sosa (four) and Frank Thomas (four). Jayson Stark is a senior writer at ESPN.com. Week in Review appears each Friday. | ALSO SEE Jayson Stark archive | ||||||||
