Showing posts tagged “Jorge Julio”
Adam Sobsey ·
4 Sep 2009, 5:00 AM ·
4 Comments
It has happened twice in the history of major-league baseball. Rennie Stennett of the Pittsburgh Pirates did it in 1975—with someone else’s bat, no less—and Wilbert Robinson did it, too, way back in 1892, when balls were made out of the hides of woolly mammoths and bats from the tusks. Seven hits in a nine-inning game. You probably won’t see this happen again in your lifetime. And you probably aren’t even very old.
Who knows about the International League, which has been around for 126 years? But I’d be willing to bet that Desmond Jennings etched his name into its record books and will stay there for a very long time. He came up seven times last night. He hit six singles and a double.
This is one of those records that requires you to be extraordinarily lucky and very, very good. (In Jennings’s case, being very, very fast didn’t hurt, either.) The beauty of it was that Jennings did it without overswinging: he hit three ground-ball singles up the middle; two more grounders that were knocked down by the shortstop, who was helpless to throw out the speedy Jennings; a solid line-drive to left; and then an opposite-field drive into the gap for a ninth-inning double. “I just went up there hacking,” he is reported to have said. Yeah, sure, Desmond.
It’s a very good thing, in retrospect, that the official scorer at Charlotte’s ballpark had reversed a call earlier, when he charged Knights shortstop Justin Fuller with an error on one of Jennings’s infield grounders. According to Bulls broadcaster Neil Solondz, Fuller had no chance to throw out Jennings. (I believe Solondz’s exact words were “You’ve gotta be kidding me” when the scoreboard flashed E.) A couple of batters later, you could dimly hear the scorer announce the error-to-hit change in the background. Had he not done so then, you’d better believe Bulls manager Charlie Montoyo would have been on the phone to the press box, in high dudgeon, immediately after the game. Fortunately for everyone involved, it didn’t come to that.
Oh: guess how many hits the entire Knights team had? Seven.
Oh, also, before I forget—because, believe it or not, there is so much to report tonight that losing track isn’t unthinkable—the Bulls clinched a playoff spot with a resounding 14-3 win over the Bristol Sox Charlotte Knights.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Bulls on the Move, Button Gwinnett, Calvin Medlock, Charlotte Knights, Chicago White Sox, Dale Thayer, Desmond Jennings, Fernando Perez, Gwinnett Braves, Jason Childers, Joe Bateman, Joe Nelson, Jorge Julio, Justin Ruggiano, Louisville Bats, Rashad Eldridge, record, Reid Brignac, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, Sean Rodriguez, seven hits in a nine inning game, strikeouts, Team USA, Wade Davis
Adam Sobsey ·
8 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
6 Comments
DBAP/ DURHAM—And by “wonder-full,” I mean full of wondrous things. If you’re one of those quick-and-dirty types who stops reading at the jump, let me dispense with the summary:
The Bulls battled back from a 6-2, sixth-inning deficit. They scored three times in sixth inning and twice in the eighth inning and took a 7-6 lead into the ninth against Syracuse. Joe Nelson, the fifth Bulls pitcher, came in to save the game, but he put two men on with a single and a walk. With two outs and a full count on Justin Maxwell, he threw a fastball that tailed back toward the middle of the plate, and Maxwell tattooed it. His long, high drive sailed over the Blue Monster—just foul, it appeared to us, up in the press box. But home plate umpire Fran Burke, the only one of the three officials with a straight-on view of the play, called it fair.
Things went nuts. The Bulls all argued. Charlie Montoyo charged out of the dugout to join them. We watched two replays in the press box, both of which seemed to show the ball crossing in front of the screen that extends from the foul pole—which would indicate a foul ball. Charlie Montoyo implored the umpires to watch the replay on the big screen behind them. They didn’t. The call stood. Montoyo was so mad, he threw not only his hat but also the photos of his kids that he keeps in his back pocket. He went into ultra-argue mode, which is manager-code for Eject Me Now, Please. Crew Chief Kevin Causey complied and ejected him. Montoyo, as if only now realizing just how mad all of this had made him, then had to be held back by one ump while he yelled at another. Finally he departed, but not before picking up the photos he’d thrown. A fan threw beer on the field and was escorted from the ballpark. After the game, which the Chiefs won, 9-7, Bulls’ General Manager Mike Birling had a brief, heated exchange with with one of the umpires.
And that was only one exciting sequence in a game full of them.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Anthony Michael Hall, Baltimore Orioles, Bulls on the Move, catcher's interference, Charlie Montoyo, ejection, Elliot johnson, F.O.B., Fran Burke, Greg Zaun, injury, Jack Spradlin, Joe Nelson, John Hughes, John Jaso, John Meloan, Jorge Julio, Justin Maxwell, Justin Ruggiano, Kevin Causey, Matt DeSalvo, Matt Joyce, Reid Brignac, Rhyne Hughes, Shairon Martis, Shawn Riggans, Sixteen Candles, Syracuse Chiefs, Winston Abreu, Zechry Zinicola
Adam Sobsey ·
3 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
1 Comment
DBAP/ DURHAM—I had a bunch of really nice tomatoes that I got at the farmers’ market on Saturday, and on Sunday afternoon I made a sauce out of them that I planned to poach some fish in on Monday. Maybe some Spanish Mackerel. The sauce had mint in it, some young garlic, a little fresh cayenne. Simple, but really tasty.
After I was done with the sauce, I went to last night’s ballgame at the DBAP. When I got there, I realized I’d left my voice recorder thingy at home. Oh, well.
In the fourth inning of the game, I had one of those uh-oh moments.
The Indians had jumped on Durham starter Wade Davis—they hit three homers and two doubles off of him—and led 4-0 after three innings, but the Bulls began the last of the fourth with three straight singles off of the highly regarded Indianapolis pitcher Brad Lincoln. Two of those hits were little loopers, but of course loopers count. With the bases F.O.B., Chris Richard flew out to shallow center field for the first out of the inning. To the plate stepped Rhyne Hughes, the Bulls’ hottest hitter over the last ten games.
Here’s the uh-oh moment: Hughes hit a towering fly ball to deep left-center field. From where we sat in the press box, it looked very obvious that the ball would at least hit the Blue Monster if not clear it, and Hughes would either have a three-run double or a grand slam. But Justin Ruggiano, who had been on first base, must not have seen the ball well, because he hung around between first and second waiting to see the outcome of Hughes’s hit.
The ball hit high off the Monster in left-center field—had it been hit about 15 feet to the right, it would have avoided the Monster and been a homer—and Hughes had a double, extending his hitting streak to 10 games (which matches the longest by a Bull this season). Reid Brignac and Jon Weber scored, but Ruggiano had to stop at third base. It was 4-2 now, but it should have been 4-3. Elliot Johnson struck out and John Jaso grounded to third, Ruggiano was stranded, and the inning was over.
I thought to myself, I hope that doesn’t end up the difference in the game.
Guess what? It was the difference in the game.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls Chris Richard, Desmond Jennings, F.O.B., farmers' market, Henry Mateo, Indianapolis Indians, Jon Weber, Jorge Julio, Jose Tabata, Justin Ruggiano, Mario Brothers, Media Pass, Neil Walker, Reid Brignac, Rhyne Hughes, SBG, Tagg Bozied, tomato sauce, voice recorder, Wade Davis
Adam Sobsey ·
31 Jul 2009, 5:00 AM ·
1 Comment
In one chapter of Word Freak, Stefan Fatsis’s absorbing account of his foray deep into the world of competitive Scrabble, Fatsis narrates the history of the game and its painstaking design by an obsessive tinkerer named Alfred Butts. Butts spent years fussing with the board layout, the premium-square arrangement, and the calibration and distribution of points and tiles. Fatsis concludes:
Perfection isn’t arrived at overnight, and the more I play, the more Alfred’s game seems perfect. I think he was like Alexander Cartwright’s Knickerbocker Base Ball Club laying the bases ninety feet apart or James Naismith setting the height of his peach baskets at ten feet.
I thought of Fatsis’s praise of Butts’s exacting design for Scrabble while listening to bits and pieces of yesterday’s doubleheader between the Durham Bulls and the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees (the teams split, 6-2 Durham in Game One, 8-2 Scranton in Game Two). When the two games are played consecutively in a minor-league twinbill, as they were Thursday when the Bulls and Yankees made up Wednesday’s rainout, they are shortened by rule to seven regulation-innings each. That truncation may not sound like much of a big deal, but there are a couple of problems with it. First off, it treats the players like they’re not fully mature and can’t handle a major-league twinbill. I’d be willing to wager that most minor leaguers can probably handle a pair of nine-inning games better than many big-league veterans.
Second, baseball games are supposed to be nine innings long. The reasons are ineffable, but there’s something wrong with a ballgame that only goes seven innings. You don’t get enough development, enough structure. The team that jumps out to an early lead seems almost sure to win; the game never evolves properly, rewarding sprinters over marathoners—and if there’s one thing that sets baseball apart from most other sports, it’s in the patience and endurance that must accompany not only each game but the whole season, which unfolds day by day for almost half the year. In a seven-inning game, if you’re losing after two turns of the order, it’s already getting almost too late. A baseball game needs nine innings in order to play itself out fully. Seven innings is just too short.
Things other than length were also wrong with Thursday’s doubleheader.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Dale Thayer, doubleheader, Jeremy Hellickson, John Jaso, Jorge Julio, Matt DeSalvo, Ray Olmedo, Scrabble, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, Stefan Fatsis, Victor Martinez, Word Freak
Adam Sobsey ·
27 Jul 2009, 12:47 PM ·
Comment
DBAP/ DURHAM—A bizarre rain shower hit the DBAP yesterday around the sixth inning of the Bulls’ 5-3 win over Norfolk yesterday, their third victory in four games so far in the series between the two top teams in the division. It was bizarre because the sky was mostly sunny; but if you looked off to the southwest, beyond the first base bleachers, you could see a stack of clouds with a pale rainbow arcing through them. (Sorry I don’t have a camera-phone thingy and had to use the stock image above. I’m sure the Indy will buy me the equipment soon. [Four minute pause to recover from hysterical laughter.]) The rain let up quickly—making a steamy late afternoon steamier—but the rainbow confirmed that a few rays of luck helped the Bulls get the win, which put them 1.5 games up on Norfolk in the International League South (Gwinnett is now just a game back). Details on a rather unlikely game follow:
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Baseball, Durham Bulls Blake Davis, Damien Beal, doubles, Jason Childers, Jason Cromer, Jeremy Hellickson, Joey Gathright, John Jaso, Jon Weber, Jorge Julio, Luck, Matt Joyce, Norfolk Tides, Rhyne Hughes
Adam Sobsey ·
20 Jul 2009, 4:00 AM ·
3 Comments
If you were feeling uncharitable, you could pin the Bulls’ 7-6, 13-inning loss at Louisville last night on catcher John Jaso: he struck out four times (the Bulls K’d 17 times overall), the last in the 12th inning against Bats’ infielder Michael Griffin, who had been sent to the mound to pitch in emergency relief. Worse, Jaso struck out looking against the non-pitcher, with the go-ahead run on second base; he didn’t even go down swinging. An inning later, Jaso allowed the winning run to score when former Bull Wes Bankston bulled into him on a play at the plate, knocking the ball loose from Jaso’s glove.
But if you’re feeling avaricious—or, to look at it more generously, if you’re handing out leaflets of blame free of charge at the corner of Bull and Blog—why stop at Jaso’s shortcomings? Continue reading »
Baseball, Durham Bulls Charlie Montoyo, Elliot johnson, extraneous innings, golden sombrero, John Jaso, Jorge Julio, Louisville Bats, Luis Bolivar, mariachi, Matt DeSalvo, Matt Joyce, Michael Griffin, Ray Olmedo, strikeouts, Wes Bankston
Adam Sobsey ·
19 Jul 2009, 5:16 AM ·
2 Comments
The Eedge delivered for Durham
“This type of game is all about the late mistakes,” Bulls’ broadcaster Neil Solondz noted in the 14th inning of last night’s
3-2 Bulls win at Louisville. Solondz made that comment moments after Ray Sadler was picked off of first base: an S.B.G. of potentially dreadful consequence from which Sadler was held harmless when Elliot Johnson struck out to end the inning. But given Johnson’s night overall—more on that below—it’s easy to suppose that he’d have found a way to plate Sadler had Sadler managed to stay attached to his base.
The “type of game” Solondz was referring to was the very long, extra-inning one that might be dubbed the extraneous-inning game: fun as free baseball is, there comes a point when you can’t help but sigh “enough already.” It’s like too much drink: the fun wears off and you’re left with the hangover and vague memories of a wasteful evening. If you wake up to discover you’ve also lost the game in question, it’s a bit like realizing you didn’t go home with that cutie at the bar you were hitting on.
Or in the Bulls’ case last night, not hitting on.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls Ben Jukich, Charlie Montoyo, Dale Thayer, Elliot johnson, extraneous innings, James Houser, Jason Childers, Joe Bateman, Jorge Julio, Louisville Bats, Matt Joyce, Ray Sadler, SBG, The Eedge, The Roodge
Adam Sobsey ·
13 Jul 2009, 12:39 AM ·
1 Comment
Even though I am psychic, I was half-kidding when I ended my last post with a borderline prediction that the Bulls and their bricolage of relievers would end their four-game losing streak and beat Norfolk on Sunday. Sure enough, Durham rolled, 9-2.
I was half-kidding not only because Julio DePaula + Calvin Medlock {not =} Andy Sonnastine, but also because the Bulls have suffered a big losing streak before and could easily have another one. But I was half-not-kidding for a few reasons: one, the Bulls hadn’t played terribly during the skid, as they had during the Horrible Homestand of mid-June; two, the hitting was still potent; three, in hindsight after I suggested the Bulls would win on Sunday, it became clear that a victory would balance so many accounts that it was virtually assured.
Also, dare I say that the Bulls needed this game?
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Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays all star, Calvin Medlock, Charlie Montoyo, Dale Thayer, Dave Myers, Elliot johnson, Henry Mateo, I Am Psychic, injury, Jake Arrieta, John Jaso, Jorge Julio, Julio DePaula, Justin Ruggiano, Mary Steenburgen, Michel Hernandez, Norfolk Tides, Ray Sadler
Adam Sobsey ·
11 Jul 2009, 5:00 AM ·
Comment
The problem with winning streaks is that they end. After rattling off series wins against Toledo, Columbus and Charlotte, which put them back at the top of the mountain, the Bulls then looked down and saw Gwinnett and Norfolk—their two closest competitors in the International League South Division—coming up to try to knock them off. After Gwinnett basically handed Durham the first game of the three-game set at the DBAP, the Bulls responded by more or less giving one back, and then nearly stealing one late that they had no business even coming close to winning.
And then last night they faced Norfolk, who sat just a game behind. The Bulls basically gave that one away, too, losing 5-3 despite putting 17 men on base in the game on 11 hits and six walks. And although the Bulls went 4-8 with runners in scoring position, they hit into four double plays, were caught stealing third once, and had a runner thrown out at home plate trying to score from second on a single to left field. These last two erasures both came in the fourth inning. I’m not prepared to call them SBGs since I didn’t see them—although I suspect at least one of them was—but the fact is that the Bulls lost a game they should have won. A whopping 15 of the 24 men faced by starter Andy Mitchell reached base. That is Houseresque.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls Andy Sonnanstine, Calvin Medlock, Dale Thayer, Gorch Brothers, James Houser, Joe Bateman, Jorge Julio, Norfolk Tides, Ray Olmedo, SBG, The Wild Bunch, Wade Davis
Adam Sobsey ·
6 Jul 2009, 5:00 AM ·
Comment
The most important inning of a baseball game in which one team jumps out to a big early lead isn’t the one when they score the runs. It’s the one right after that.
A few weeks ago against Pawtucket, the Durham Bulls struck for six runs in the bottom of the first inning and the ballgame looked like it was over early. But in the top of the second, Bulls starter Wade Davis allowed a leadoff home run to the PawSox’ Paul McAnulty. It certainly wasn’t Davis’s “fault” that the Bulls wound up losing that game—he led 6-3 when he left after six innings—but he gave Pawtucket a little glimmer of hope. They turned that glimmer into the Bulls’ sixth straight defeat.
Cut to last night at Charlotte—which actually plays, don’t forget, in Fort Mill, South Carolina. The Knights touched Davis for a run in the bottom of the third when rehabbing major-leaguer Carlos Quentin knocked a single up the middle to score Eider Torres. But in the top of the fourth, Justin Ruggiano quickly erased the deficit by lining an opposite-field home run off of Knights’ starter Lucas Harrell. Did Ruggiano’s homer rattle Harrell? He walked Chris Richard and Rhyne Hughes, and then Ray Sadler hit another home run, a startling tape-measure blast that gave the Bulls a sudden 4-1 lead. So far in the home-and-home series against Charlotte, the Bulls have scored 15 of their 18 runs via the long ball. They’ve hit 26 homers in their last 12 games and now lead the league again. Their record in those 12 games? 9-3. Take that, Small Ball.
What would Davis do with the lead his hitters gave him? Continue reading »
Baseball, Durham Bulls Carlos Hernandez, Charlotte Knights, Jason Childers, Joe Bateman, Jorge Julio, Justin Ruggiano, momentum, Ray Sadler, Wade Davis
