This spring training game was played to a 2-2 tie without much interesting happening, although there are some names you might not expect showing up as substitutes – Jose Bautista as a late-game replacement for Ty Wigginton, Tony Womack, Doug Glanville, and Bobby Crosby as Yankee reserves. A pitching matchup of Kip Wells v. Tanyon Sturtze is the kind of thing you don’t mind on March 3.
Bonds did not disappoint, drawing walks in his first two PAs and hitting the 688th homer of his career in the seventh on an absolute line-drive missile to right-center, the most impressive homer I’ve ever seen in person. AJ Pierzynski followed that with a homer, and the Giants added another run in the frame to take a 6-4 lead. The Pirates came back with three in the eighth, but Michael Tucker’s second homer of the game tied it in the ninth off Jose Mesa. Mat Herges got the first two outs in the home ninth, but Jack Wilson singled and Rob Mackowiak doubled to the warning track to bring him around.
As a Bonds supporter, I sat in the left field seats to be closer to the great man, observing quietly in neutral clothing (gray OSU shirt and Indians home cap). As you might imagine, the crowd was hostile, with one poor guy carrying a “Greatest Pirate Ever” sign having his sign destroyed by the hometown hooligans and then literally was hounded from the park when he objected. My unabashed Bonds fandom aside, I do not concur with “Greatest Pirate Ever” - perhaps the greatest player to wear a Pirates uniform, but Hans Wagner clearly had more career value as a Pirate, among others (Roberto Clemente, Paul Waner, not Chris Archer).
Ricardo Rodriguez pitched what must have been one of the best games of his career, allowing just four hits and two walks (although only fanning two) over seven innings to earn the win for the Indians. The only run he allowed was a Tony Batista homer, while Deivi Cruz homered on the second pitch from the Cleveland pen for Baltimore’s only other score. The Indians got four runs off Omar Daal, the most notable plays coming on Omar Vizquel’s bunt single coupled with Daal’s throwing error in the third, and Ellis Burks’ two-run seventh inning single off the first Baltimore reliever, Willis Roberts (I do not remember him at all).
The Blue Jays led 6-0 after two and 9-4 after five, but the Indians came back with one in the sixth, two in the seventh, and five in the eighth to complete a late spring training comeback. Travis Fryman had a big day, going 4-5 with two doubles and 4 RBI and making his only out on a warning track fly. His eighth inning single cut the deficit to 10-8 and left the bases loaded for Ricky Gutierrez, who tripled to clear the bases and give the Tribe the lead in the process. Current Rangers skipper Chris Woodward had a big day for Toronto with a single, double, and homer.
This exhibition was played at a neutral site in Caracas, Venezuela. The Indians power bats (Jim Thome, Russell Branyan, Juan Gonzalez) clobbered Jose Lima for a homer in each of the first three innings, building a cushion that would be chipped away at by the Astros until they plated two on consecutive sac flies in the eighth to take a 6-5 lead. But three straight Cleveland extra base hits off Doug Brocail in the ninth swung the game back to the Tribe.
This exhibition game saw the Braves beat the Indians thanks largely to homers by Wally Joyner and Andres Galarraga. There are great names all over this scoresheet as these were two of the better teams of the era, but there’s not a whole lot to be said about a late spring exhibition, despite how much I love the genre of “tune-up exhibition in a major league park.”
This was a fairly mundane exhibition, with the Dodgers tallying five runs in the last three frames to turn a 3-2 deficit into a 7-4 victory. But one of the charming things about the slower pace of spring baseball is illustrated by the note at the top of the sheet “Uncle Rick at game says Tom”. The Tom in question is Indians play-by-play announcer Tom Hamilton; my uncle, a Florida native, left a note with him to say hi to the family back in Cleveland. Of course, I was listening to the game to hear it because what else would I be doing on a Saturday afternoon in March when baseball is available?
This was a 1-0 spring training tilt until Detroit scored five runs off Jason Grimsley in the seventh inning. Cleveland would get a Jim Thome homer in and a play that I do not understand my scorekeeping for (it looks like Richie Sexson scored from first on a Russell Branyan fly to right which seems quite unlikely) to make it 6-2. For such an early spring game, there was a surprising lack of Indians substitution – Thome played the whole game with two singles, a walk, and the aforementioned homer.
This game was marred by an ugly injury to Tigers starter Willie Blair when he was hit by a Julio Franco line drive with two outs in the sixth. Blair would suffer a broken jaw but thankfully miss just a month before returning the mound to continue the best season of his big league career. And this was a good start, as he held the Tribe to just five hits and two walks with four strikeouts over his 5 2/3. John Cummings and Doug Brocail finished what Blair had started, with the only Cleveland baserunner for the rest of the game coming on a ninth-inning Franco walk.
Charlie Nagy pitched eight strong innings, although he uncharacteristically surrendered six walks. He departed after loading the bases with no one out in the ninth, with Paul Assenmacher and Jose Mesa cleaning up his mess unscathed, although the lack of Tribe offense made that a moot point.
A couple notes on the
I recently moved and in the course of packing found this scorecard and another that will I post when I get back around to 1996. They were both kept on ballpark scorecards at minor league parks, and I tried to retain some of that flavor in the scans. The scorekeeping is nothing special, and unfortunately there weren’t any big future stars in this Florida State League game (the biggest names are Ryan Freel, Chris Richard, and Placido Polanco). Freel had a game that you might imagine him having in A-ball, singling twice, reaching on an error, getting caught stealing, scoring two runs. Richard and Polanco were both 0-4 and made the final St. Petersburg outs of the game.
I didn’t write down the score, which was normal for my scorecards for years to come, but I also didn’t mark down the pitchers, which was not normal for me. It looks like the Blue Jays won it 8-1.
