Oh man, what an annoying loss.
Aaron Sele seemed to be rolling along, although he came out after the fifth inning. Our rookie phenom pitchers kept the middle up, not giving any runs, or much of anything in the 6th through the 8th. We were up 3-2 going into the ninth.
Unfortunately, John Wetteland had a meltdown in the top of the 9th, and gave up three runs. Now, that alone would have been bad enough on this loss. However, in the bottom of the ninth, two big things consipired against what was an apparent comeback for (at least) the tie. Tony Phillips, who had just been put into center field (he was playing second all the other 8 innings) made probably the catch of the season. Text doesn’t describe how awesome this catch was. That robbed Juan Gonzalez of an easy double, with two RBI’s to tie up the game. What made it worse was that Rusty Greer was called out for a major brainfart – he passed Pudge on the basepaths, which is a huge no-no. Actually, that was the second thing like that – Rafael Palmiero got caught in a rundown at third, and was thrown out – basically throwing away a run there. :(
Oh man. Not only did we give it up in the 9th, but we screwed ourselves in the bottom of the ninth. Did’t like this at all – but tomorrow night’s trip to the luxury boxes would have made up for it. Or so I thought – wait till you read tomorrow’s commentary by me!