Well, after last night’s rainout, Jeff Fassero got pushed off to game 2 of the double header. The starter was Rick Helling.
After an extremely quick top of the first, we blew out to a big lead in a hurry. After a passed ball that let Alicea score (and Juan to first on strike three), Jim Parque plunked Raffy in the hand to load the bases. Todd Zeile came up, and smacked one over the center field wall. It wasn’t a monster home run, it didn’t get up onto Green’s hill, but it was enough to get over the fence for a grand slam! That put us up 5-0 after the first inning, and it was 6-0 after the start of the second when Royce Clayton belted one over the 407 sign in right center field – the deepest part of the park. We also got two more in the 6th when Pudge doubled home two runners. However, the runs in the first and second seemed more dramatic to me. – It was nice to get Rick Helling some run support, though – something he’s not gotten all year, and has kept his win loss record down.
Rick Helling was doing really well – his only mistake through 6 innings was a solo home run ball in the fifth inning to Chris Singleton, and another solo shot by Carlos Lee to lead off the seventh. After the start of the seventh, Rick seemed to lose it a bit, allowing a few more hits, and two more runs. Venafro came on to finish out the 7th, and start the 8th. After a triple, Zimmerman came on, and would have gotten out of the inning unscathed, but an error by Royce Clayton allowed another run to score.
Scarborough Green came into the game as a pinch runner and was promptly picked off first. D’oh!
That closed out the scoring at 8-6. This is a game where we let the White Sox get back in it by small stupid things, when they shouldn’t have. We outplayed them for the most part, and let ’em creep back into the game. Fortunately, we had enough going offensively to overcome it. Wetteland came in and allowed only a single to get his 38th save of the year.