Friday, July 10, 2009

Just a Day: June 10, 2002

The ol' randomizer came up with a fairly recent one this time. Which is good, because it's already pretty late at night, and maybe I can get away with saying less than I would if I got myself absorbed in 1957 or something. (If you missed the first one of these, here's how it works.)

It's also another day with more than one very long game, which is kind of fun. It's interleague play, which is less fun (to me). In any case, onward!
  • Jamie Moyer throws a complete-game, 123-pitch shutout, the Mariners thumping the Cardinals 10-0. It's Moyer's second consecutive game allowing no runs (he'd gone 8 in a win over the A's on the 5th), and runs his record to 6-2, 3.52. He had looked done as a 38 year old in 2000, then exploded back to win 20 for the first time in his career in 2001. He'd go on to have another fine season (128 ERA+, though with only 13 wins), then win 21 in 2003 at age 40. He's won 68 games (and counting) since. I know I just talked about him a little while ago, but it's always worth remembering what a wonderfully weird career he's had. Ichiro! has three of his 212 hits, and inexplicable fan favorite Charles Gipson singles, triples, walks and drives in two.

  • In the same game, 32 year old So Taguchi makes his Major League debut and goes 0-for-3 for the Cards. I believe that Taguchi was the second Japanese position player to hit the Majors after Ichiro!, so it was fitting that he debuted opposite the first. Didn't turn out quite as well.

  • The Twins beat the Braves, 6-5, in 15 innings. I've just remembered for some reason, as I'm looking this over, that The Common Man was at this game and told me about it at the time; here's hoping he hops on and tells what he remembers (if anything). It was a historic opportunity to watch the great Greg Maddux at the Dome...and he's very much off his game, giving up 5 runs in 7 innings. Luckily, Eric Milton matches him run for run, and the bullpens take over and make quite a show of it. Eventually, in the bottom of the 15th, 37 year old backup catcher Tom Prince singles, then somehow lumbers all the way around on a Cristian Guzman double to win it. That must've been quite a sight (or quite a double). Journeyman reliever Tony "the Vulture" Fiore goes three scoreless for maybe his most honest "win" of the year; that puts him at 4-1, and he ends the season 10-3.
    [Edit: here's the recap. Apparently Prince was running on the pitch, but it still seems like an awful lot to ask of the slowest runner on the team. Guzman: "I thought, 'hey, he can make it!'"]

  • Game of the Day: The Marlins blow out the Royals in 14 innings. Yes, you read that right. The Royals score in the bottom of the 9th to tie it at 6. Florida scores two in the 12th, but so do the Royals. So it's 8-8 in the top of the 14th, and the Royals suddenly go all Royalsy: walk, wild pitch, fielder's choice, wild pitch, double, intentional walk, single, walk, walk, single, fielder's choice, popout. Seven runs come home in all that, and the Marlins waltz away with the 15-8 win. Pitcher Mac Suzuki was out there for better or worse, and thus responsible for all that ugly: four walks (five in his two IP) and two wild pitches. They actually let him into three more games after this one, the last three he'd ever get into (in the Majors, that is--seven years later, his career is still alive and kicking in one of professional baseball's little out-of-the-way places).
    [EDIT: recap. Amazingly, not a word about Suzuki's implosion. Derrek Lee homered twice for the second straight game, then hit 4 homers in his next 47 games.]

  • There was apparently a partial solar eclipse visible in parts of the Pacific side of the world.

  • According to Wikipedia (and uncredited), "the first direct electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans is carried out by Kevin Warwick in the United Kingdom."

  • I was attempting to sell cars at a crummy dealership in Washington state. This lasted less than a month. Probably the worst idea ever. What were you doing?

3 comments:

  1. I think Shinjo was the second Japanese position player, and Taguchi was third (this Wikipedia article seems to agree).

    Moyer didn't win 20 for the first time until he was 38 and has now won 103 games since the end of that season. Mussina didn't do it until he was 39, but he retired. If Moose decided to have the same post-40 career as Moyer (and there's not a lot of reason that he couldn't, considering the type of stuff he threw), he theoretically could have more wins than Clemens, Maddux, or Spahn. How crazy is that. Yet another reason to appreciate Moose.

    In June 2002... hmm, I guess I had just finished up my 4th year of college and was moving, with my roommates, from one crappy house to another. It was actually a fun summer, but I can't recall anything specific about it.

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  2. That's right, I totally forgot about Shinjo (and thus am the envy of Giants and Mets fans everywhere).

    Interesting point about Mussina, but I think the fact that Moyer is one of only 20 or so individuals ever to throw a pitch after his 46th birthday is a reason to believe Mussina wouldn't be likely to do the same. I would've liked to see him give it more of a try, though (ideally for a different team).

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  3. Great blog. Here's a link to the English Department's spiffy new blog (and a post about baseball books): http://upsenglish.wordpress.com/

    Send me an update about what y'all are doing, and I'll post it under Alumni News.

    The Giants had one of the first Japanese players, pitcher Masanuri Murakami (sp))....I do hope you'll post about Zoillo Versailles, Twins, MVP of the American League one year. Died tragically, alas. I still have my Post Cereal Killibrew card from the early 1960s!

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