Archives for June 2009

Juan Rivera and Kendry Morales hit back-to-back home runs that put Los Angeles ahead and the AL West-leading Angels won their sixth straight game, 5-2 over the struggling Texas Rangers on Monday night.
The first five Angels hitters reached to start the sixth against Vicente Padilla (6-4). After Vladimir Guerrero's leadoff single, Rivera and Morales homered to put Los Angeles up 4-2. Chone Figgins drove in another run with a sacrifice fly.
The Rangers have lost eight of 11, a slide that cost them the division lead they had held since May 5 — by 5 1/2 games four weeks ago. Los Angeles, which has won 13 of 16 overall, took over first place Saturday and now leads by 2 1/2 games.
Rookie right-hander Sean O'Sullivan (2-0) allowed consecutive homers to David Murphy and Marlon Byrd in the third, but no other runs in his six innings.
Brian Fuentes worked the ninth for his major league-best 22nd save in 25 chances.
After being swept in a three-game series at Texas in mid-May, the Angels were 4 1/2 games back. But that was when they were still without Guerrero, and the Rangers were still hitting.

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Rookie Tommy Hanson threw six scoreless innings despite a bout with the flu, and homers by Chipper Jones and Garret Anderson carried the Atlanta Braves past Boston 2-1 on Sunday, preventing a Red Sox sweep.
Pitching dominated the weekend series, with the teams combining for only nine runs in three games. Hanson (4-0) kept it going, limiting Boston to two hits on another sweltering day at Turner Field and extending his scoreless streak to 20 innings.

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Exactly two weeks had passed since Luis Castillo gifted the Yankees a victory by dropping a ninth-inning pop-up, and the Mets commemorated the anniversary Friday in two ways. First, they spent about 30 minutes practicing fundamentals on the infield dirt. Then, once the game began, in a show of solidarity, the Mets tried outdoing one another to see who could commit the most unsightly error.When the disastrous top of the second inning finally ended, Castillo was the only infielder without one. As his comrades booted and flung balls around Citi Field, the Yankees took advantage of the shoddy fielding to score four runs that fueled their 9-1 victory. With C. C. Sabathia back in dominant form, pitching seven scintillating innings, the Mets failed to topple a Cy Young Award winner for the second time in 36 hours. They offered little resistance in managing as many hits off Sabathia as errors (three). That is never a recipe for success, but especially not for a wounded team like the Mets that has little margin for error.

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Alex Rodriguez tied Reggie Jackson with his 563rd home run and Mariano Rivera earned his 499th career save in the New York Yankees' 11-7 victory over the Atlanta Braves on Thursday night.
The Yankees have won two straight after a three-game losing streak. New York took sole possession of second place in the AL East and moved four games behind Boston in the AL East.
Rodriguez, who has driven in six runs over his past seven at-bats, gave the Yankees a 10-6 lead with a two-run single in the seventh off reliever Peter Moylan. Rodriguez hit his 10th homer in the first, a solo shot, to tie Jackson for 11th place on baseball's career list with 563.

Joba Chamberlain tries to get the New York Yankees untracked this evening, when they play the middle test of their three-game interleague affair with the Atlanta Braves at Turner Field.

Chamberlain, though, has struggled with his control of late and is winless in his last three starts, including a loss to the lowly Washington Nationals in his last trip to the hill on Thursday. Chamberlain surrendered three runs and seven hits with four walks over six innings of that one, as he fell to 3-2 on the season to go along with a 3.89 earned run average.

The 23-year-old right-hander, whose three wins this season have all come on the road, has walked nine batters in his last two starts spanning 10 frames.

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The Hall of Fame Game is dead. Long live the Hall of Fame Classic."This is pretty cool," Jim Kaat said during Sunday morning's media session at the Clark Sports Center, which preceded the inaugural Hall of Fame Classic at Doubleday Field. "I think, actually, it makes more sense to have the former players. We have more time; we don't have the rigorous schedule the current players do. I think the fact that the fans will be able to mingle with them, I think it will be a lot better fan experience as well."

Kaat said his first of "several" Fame Game appearances came with the Twins in 1966."We played the Cardinals and they brought up this young pitcher named Steve Carlton to pitch against us," Kaat said. Carlton became a Hall of Famer in 1994.

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LSU right fielder Jared Mitchell and pitcher Chad Jones entered Monday night's best-of-three College World Series finals against Texas with a shot at a national championship and a piece of LSU history.
Both were members of the team that won the 2007 season BCS national championship against Ohio State, and now they have a chance to be the first LSU athletes to capture football and baseball rings.
Jones played in all 13 LSU football games last season at safety. He had one interception and returned eight punts, averaging 11.9 per return. Mitchell, a wide receiver, grabbed nine passes for 106 yards in 12 games.

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According to a published report, former Douglas High School star Shawn Estes' baseball career is over.
The L.A. Daily News reports that Estes, a former 19-game winner for the San Francisco Giants, recently retired after pitching this season for the Triple-A Albuquerque Isotopes.

The 36-year-old Estes had considered retirement after failing to make the Los Angeles Dodgers' opening day roster.

But he decided to give Albuquerque a try, going 3-4 with a 3.07 ERA for the Isotopes.

Estes finishes with a 101-93 major-league record and a 4.71 ERA. He pitched for seven major-league teams, including each in the National League West except for the Dodgers.

Baseball's Civil Rights Game is one part celebration and one part reminder: There is reason to celebrate the game's role in the struggle for civil rights in America, but there is also the reminder that, in this area, there always is much more work to be done.

The Civil Rights weekend began with a roundtable discussion of the topic: "Baseball and the Civil Rights Movement." The panel was suitably distinguished. The venue for the discussion was ideal -- the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

The moderator of the panel, Charles Ogletree, a professor of law at Harvard University who mentored both President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, suggested that Harriet Tubman herself was looking down with joy at this gathering. Why not? Both the subject and the site were exactly what this occasion merited.

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Orlando Hudson homered, pinch-hitter Mark Loretta drove in the go-ahead run and the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Oakland Athletics 3-2 on Thursday night to take the rubber game of their interleague series.
Randy Wolf pitched six solid innings as Dodgers manager Joe Torre earned his 2,195th regular-season victory, passing Sparky Anderson for fifth on the career list.
Brad Ziegler (1-3) relieved Oakland starter Vin Mazzaro after six innings, giving up a one-out double in the seventh to James Loney and a walk to Russell Martin. Loretta, hitless in his previous 14 at-bats as a pinch hitter, singled to left field to snap a 2-2 tie.
Wolf allowed a run and five hits. Rookie Brent Leach (2-0) got the victory, getting Adam Kennedy to ground into an inning-ending double play in the seventh after Cory Wade gave up the tying run.
Wolf has 10 no-decisions in 15 starts this season. He allowed two hits over five innings in his previous start at Texas, but a power failure led to a 1-hour, 41-minute delay and the hard-luck left-hander did not return to the mound. The Dodgers scored all of their runs after the game resumed, and won 3-1.
With closer Jonathan Broxton sitting out his second straight game after getting a cortisone shot to treat a sore toe on his right foot, Ramon Troncoso got the final two outs for his fourth save in five attempts after 1 1-3 scoreless innings by Ronald Belisario.
Juan Pierre singled in Russell Martin in the fifth to give the Dodgers a 2-1 lead. Martin led off with an infield hit and advanced on Wolf's sacrifice.

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