Random Dodger Game Callback

September 24, 1997

The Dodgers didn't have much margin for error in the NL West race on this night at Dodger Stadium and the margin almost completely disappeared as the San Diego Padres used home runs from Steve Finley and Ken Caminiti to beat the Dodgers 4-1 before a crowd of 39,184. The Dodgers fell to 85-73 and were 2 ½ games behind the first place Giants, who had a magic number of 2.

Finley started things off for the Padres with a first inning homer off of Dodgers starter Tom Candiotti. Los Angeles shortstop Greg Gagne tied the game in the second with an RBI single.

But after that, Padres starter Joey Hamilton shut down the Dodgers, allowing just five hits and one walk in eight innings.

In the fifth, Tony Gwynn singled and Caminiti followed with a home run to left-center. In the ninth, against reliever Darren Hall, pinch hitter Trey Beamon singled, stole second, and scored on a double by Finley off of reliever Scott Radinsky. Radinsky then hit Gwynn with a pitch, which made Gwynn slam down his helmet in anger and take a few steps toward Radinsky, although nothing further happened.

In the ninth, Trevor Hoffman relieved and he set the Dodgers down in order to close out the game for his 37th save.

The Giants had won earlier in the day in Denver on a ninth inning home run by Brian Johnson. The Giants catcher had hit a 12th inning home run on September 18 off of Mark Guthrie to beat the Dodgers 6-5 in what turned out to be the pivotal game of the season. The Dodgers lost 6 out of 7 in late September to allow the Giants to pull ahead in the division. The Dodgers ended up 88-74, 2 games out of first and 4 games out of the wild card.

The bad finish made fans forget that Mike Piazza put together one of the best offensive seasons by a catcher ever. Piazza batted .362 with 40 home runs and 124 RBI. He had an OBP of .431 and slugged .638. Amazingly, Piazza received just 3 first place votes for NL MVP. Colorado's Larry Walker won the award easily despite having numbers not much better than Piazza when the park effects of Colorado were taken into effect. Walker had an OPS+ of 177 while Piazza was at 186. (OPS+ is a park and league adjusted form of OPS. 100 represents an average player.) Piazza became the first Dodger to hit a home run completely out of Dodger Stadium, doing so on September 21 against Frank Castillo of Colorado.

The Dodgers had three other players reach 30 home runs in 1997. First baseman Eric Karros hit 31 while third baseman Todd Zeile and right fielder Raul Mondesi hit 30 apiece.
But the Dodgers were shaky up the middle. Gagne was solid, although unspectacular, batting .251. Wilton Guerrero played an erratic second base, batting .291, but he drew only 8 walks in 111 games. Eric Young was acquired from the Rockies for the stretch drive.

Center field was another problem. Brett Butler returned from cancer treatment, but missed time with injuries and could not cover enough ground in center. Roger Cedeno was given the job for a while, but could not cut it. Eventually, Otis Nixon was acquired from Toronto to finish the season.

The pitching staff was not bad, but not particularly good either. Hideo Nomo was 14-12, but had a 4.25 ERA. Ismael Valdes had an ERA of 2.65, but was just 10-11. Chan Ho Park looked to be coming into his own with a 14-8 record and a 3.38 ERA. Todd Worrell led the bullpen with 35 saves, but had an ERA of 5.28.

Rookie lefty Dennys Reyes made five starts for the Dodgers. He was the first southpaw to start a game for the Dodgers since Bob Ojeda did in 1992.

And to top it all off, Peter O'Malley announced that the Dodgers were for sale. An Australian media magnate was interested.

Thanks to the Los Angeles Times and Retrosheet.

Hmm. 1997. What was I doing in September '97?

NL teams eliminated from the playoffs today: Chicago

Teams that must win or be eliminated: Milwaukee, Arizona, and New York

Team that must win and have help: Dodgers (San Diego must lose also.)

It was a power-packed outfield.

42G .274BA

The Dodgers had 5 runs on 15 hits in 12 innings in that game.
The Giants had 6 runs on 12 hits, but they did get 10 walks.
The Giants still have two starters from their 1997 team who still start for them today: Bonds and Snow.

On the Nationals front, 'cause I know you all care, was at the game last night and after the Nationals got a 2 out 2 run home to tie the game in the bottom in the Ninth, Robinson rather oddly sent Gary Majewski his pitcher up to bat. Explaining to a 4 year old why that confused me was time consuming.

Tonight, down 5-2 in the bottom of the eighth, the Nationals got a one out walk. Robinson brought in a pinch runner (Junior Spivey!) and then the next batter sac bunted him over to second so that Cristian Guzman could take a whack at brining him in. Now I only saw this on gameday, and I'm assuming the rookie Brandon Watson who laid down the bunt was trying to sneak on with a bunt single, but with Robinson at the helm, I just can't be sure.

Just some grass-is-not-necessarily-greener fodder to fill up the pregame quiet.

J Wilson
Redman
Sanchez
Bay
Doumit
C Wilson
Macowiak
Eldred
O Perez

Padres already up on the DBacks and Russ Ortiz 2-0 in the first.

He batted .272 with 2 homers.

But with the Dodgers pitchers that year, that was positively Ruthian.

Sometimes, you just know Gameday is not doing the game justice.

San Diego magic number: 4

However, one of Washington and New York will be eliminated tomorrow since they play each other.

And Washington, New York and Milwaukee could all be eliminated with a Houston win.

Philadelphia lost to Cincinnati 3-2 to fall 2 games in back of the Astros in the wild card.

The Marlins are on life support.

The Padres lead AZ 2-1 in the third.

That should be ODPerez tonight to be more clear.

Also, does anyone know why Aybar and Kent were running on a 3-2 count to Saenz?

I'll say no to both.

I will guess that Greene's toe must be bothering him.

The running on the 3-2 count has led to a large degree of head scratching. But after this year, I've sort of developed grooves in my scalp.

Nice play for A. Perez

TCU beat BYU in the battle of initials 51-50 in a game that went to OT.
I just like the name of BYU's coach:

Bronco Mendenhall.

Now that's a football name.

This is an exclusive. Must credit Steve.

When BYU got slaughtered in Hawai'i a few years ago, that was like V-J Day for that state.

Which made Provo pretty boring.

``On my headset, our coaches told us it was a fumble. But I trust the replay system. They reviewed it and made the call,'' BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall said.

In any event, you can't have much sympathy for a team that loses in overtime on a botched extra point.

Or maybe you were just too lazy to read to end the end of the story.

Or too depressed.

Yeah, but missing the PAT in overtime is pretty bad.

Aybar with another walk

I think Macowiak pronounces the "w" as a "v".

Will we get to see J.J. Fumaniak though?

If this game mattered, I'd be fuming. But alas, who cares?

I want to see Antonio Perez play the whole game, and Broxton pitch tonite.

He needs his power back.

Preston Wilson will not sit, the Nats want to give him more RBIs so he looks better to other teams so they get a draft pick

And Dessens is making the decision to pick up his option a little harder, although it would probably be for the best to pick it up

I'm not sure if this is an improvement.

I wasnt paying attention. Is Jason Repko hurt?

"Osoria doesn't throw as hard as Carvajal but shows the ability to command a nast sinker. Osoria has a sixth digit on his right hand, but doesn't use it to grip the ball."

It's post 218 in this thread:

https://dodgerthoughts.baseballtoaster.com/archives/190807.html

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=nen

Whatever your feelings about the Giants, you've gotta respect a guy willing to do that for his teammates...

There you go.

Fan Appreciation Day can turn ugly if the Dodgers are getting beat that day. You can give away a lot of cars, but you still have 50,000 grouchy people.

Am I the only person here who remembers when the Dodgers would give away a catamaran on Fan Appreciation Day and to publicize the giveaway they'd tow it around the warning track in the 5th inning the last few weeks of the season? To me, it was how I knew that baseball season was almost all over.

So alone.

Yep, you guessed it.

DP.

"Exposure is the best teacher," Tracy said. "It doesn't always work out the way you want it to, but with time and exposure, they grow."

"Steve Schmoll was throwing the ball great and I didn't take him out for that reason," Tracy said. "I wanted to see Kuo on back-to-back days." (Tracy already has Kuo penciled in as the 2006 LOOGY)

Tracy told Myrow to protect the runner in a hit n run PH yesterday

"I purposely ... started him, just to see how he'd respond," Tracy said. "And he hit the ball long and foul, but the point is, you've got to protect the runner."

"He has not had a bad at-bat since he's been here," Tracy said. "His stock has risen, from my standpoint."

"The last five or six games, I've been doing some things that go against the norm of what I usually do," Tracy said, "because there are some things I want to visualize for myself going into the winter." (translation: I'm doing things to different so I don't have to visualize myself unemployed...? Anyone got anything better?)

"I like what he's done," Tracy said. "The guy can hit, there's no question about it."

Coming into today's game he was 0-2. 7 IP, 6 ER.

The Dodgers may get a stay of execution that could last about ... 30 minutes.

I think Tike was out

Arizona 8, San Diego 5 Final

I still think that the final appeal will not be successful.

http://tinyurl.com/73not

Kurkjian: "Well, I've heard several people tell me this past week that Renteria was the worst free agent signing of this season. First of all, Russ Ortiz was the worst free agent signing this winter..."

...and then some more useless drivel about the Yankees and Bosox.

BTW: Yes, there were definitely more Sox fans in Baltimore this weekend than O's. They kept glaring at me when Daniel Cabrera struck everybody out last night and I was the only person in the section cheering for him.

Jose Lima was a pretty bad free agent signing for a pitcher. His ERA is over 7.00.

Blackburn 2, Manchester United 1

How many teams with better records than the Padres will not make the playoffs this year?

10.2IP 19K's 0 HR's 9BB's

All he needs to do is work on his walk total, which is too high. He should get alot of innings this upcoming week out of the bullpen hopefully.

I honestly hope they move Brox back to a starting pitcher. I think he'd do better pitching 180-200IP, than 60-70 out of the pen.

The king is dead! Long live the new king, whomever it may be.

Washington is a 1/2 game record. The Mets have the same record as the Padres (77-77).

Washington's is a 1/2 game BETTER than San Diego.

and nobody commented on this??

I vote 3 starts.

I can see Myrow, Saenz stealing some time from Chopper this week. Better yet, Choi will be pinch hit for on Korean-American night.

Is it some sort of sign that Alvarez's final stand marks the end of the 2005 Dodgers?

Some random discussion topics:

When Carpenter's arm falls off again and Pujols has the inevitable "off-year", does Milwaukee make the playoffs next year?

Craig Biggio has 24 home runs on the year, NINE Indians have 15+ HRs, the only other team to do is...this year's Rangers, and this is the year homers were supposed to be down?!?

Can Bartolo Colon now say that he has won 20+ games for -one team, -two teams, -three teams, some combination of those...?

If Dontrelle Willis were a Dodger, where in the batting order would he be?

(I'm almost afraid to see how that last one is answered...)

There should be at least 3 teams with better records than the Padres that don't make the playoffs.

The Yankees/Red Sox loser, Oakland, and Minnesota.

Tracy also announced Saturday that if the Dodgers' season finale does not impact the outcome of the National League West race, Jeff Weaver will not start

Maybe DePo told Tracy not to start him so we can piss off Boras?

In the NL I'll be rooting for the Astros. I'm just sentimental about the old guys like Roger Clemons, and Brett Favre that make you pull for them to dominate even at their old ages. And I think the Astros with their pitching could give the Cards fits.

In 1973, 8 teams (from both leagues) had better records than the Mets.

http://media.scout.com/Media/Image/25/257179.jpg

http://tinyurl.com/dbvo7

But I didn't get this reference: "like Doyle Brunson at the tables at Binion's, or Gary Cooper in the streets of Hadleyville"

High Noon I get, but who/what the heck is the first reference? Are my pop culture skills failing me, or is this so obscure that I needn't feel dumb?

http://www.linkmeister.com/blog/archives/000988.html

ps. [165] - under. also, choi's lucky webb is starting on tuesday; he might have a chance. if it was a lefty, he doesn't start for sure, korean american night be damned.

http://tinyurl.com/c7p55

It's not that Robinson doesn't believe in numbers, I guess, he just has a particular view of what numbers matter for what purpose.