[外電] Nats vs. Phillies: Jonny Gomes takes one for team to dri
run in 10th inning
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Nats vs. Phillies: Jonny Gomes takes one for team to drive in winning
run in 10th inning
By James Wagner, Monday, August 22, 6:24 AM
In Jonny Gomes’ mind, there’s a rule of thumb when batting that
harkens back to his days at Santa Rosa Junior College in his native
Northern California. The inner half of the plate is his, the outer
half of the plate is the pitcher’s. And if a pitch dares come inside
and close to your arm or body, well, quite simply, you hang in there
— or as Gomes described it, “hard-nosed dirt-bag baseball. That’s
how we played.”
So when Phillies reliever Brad Lidge’s slider came in high in the
bottom of the 10th inning with the bases loaded and only one out,
Gomes did what he had always done before: stood there, braced himself
and took the pitch off his arm. And with it, a game filled with
dramatic moments ended in the most unusual of fashions: a walk-off
hit-by-pitch that scored Ryan Zimmerman for a 5-4 win over the
Phillies before an announced crowd of 41,727.
“Getting hit was last on my to-do list in that at-bat,” Gomes said
with a chuckle.
Sunday’s wild game against the Phillies (81-44), baseball’s best
team, was anything but normal. The Nationals pestered starter Roy
Halladay enough to trail 3-2 in the sixth inning, but found a
blessing in disguise in the form of a 71-minute rain delay that drove
the ace out of the game. The third-place Nationals (61-64) twice tied
the game late on solo home runs by slumping players.
“That’s what we’ve been doing all year,” said shortstop Ian
Desmond, who hit one of those late-inning home runs. “We’ve been
grinding all year.”
Desmond’s home run in the bottom of the ninth inning came in a
dramatic of situation: The Phillies led 4-3, reliever Antonio
Bastardo had notched two outs and had a 1-2 count on Desmond.
But Desmond, a .230 hitter this season who was familiar with Bastardo
from the upper minor leagues, drove the fourth pitch of the at-bat
just over left field fence.
It was the second time the Nationals had clawed back to tie the game.
Three innings before, with the Phillies leading 3-2, second baseman
Danny Espinosa welcomed Halladay’s rain-delay replacement, reliever
Michael Schwimer, a St. Stephen’s/St. Agnes graduate who was making
his major league debut. Espinosa smashed the second pitch from the
6-foot-8 reliever nearly 440 feet into deep center field and tied the
game at 3.
For five innings before that, Nationals starter Chien-Ming Wang had
admiraly dueled Halladay, one of the game’s best pitchers.
Wang — who has been slowly building his strength and consistency
since a major shoulder injury forced him out of baseball for more
than two years — showed improvement, throwing 89 pitches, 59 for
strikes, over 52 / 3 innings, allowing three runs and striking out
four batters. If it weren’t for the rain delay in the sixth inning,
“I’d have given him 100 pitches,” Manager Davey Johnson said. “
Easy.”
At times, Wang’s trademark sinker worked. The tailing, dipping pitch
induced 10 groundouts.
At other times, it failed. A sinker that wasn’t low enough to Chase
Utley in the third inning was hammered to right-center field for a
home run and a 3-2 lead. An inning earlier, Carlos Ruiz hit a two-run
home run, albeit on a much better sinker than the one to Utley, into
left field for a two-run home run.
From the start, the Nationals looked poised against Halladay, as they
had the last time they faced him. On May 30, Halladay gave up 10
hits, four earned runs and three home runs — his most in one game
all season.
On Sunday, the Nationals scored two runs in the first inning, led by
Desmond’s leadoff single, and forced Halladay to throw 27 pitches.
After Wang’s exit, Johnson used a combination of Tom Gorzelanny, Todd
Coffey and Tyler Clippard to get to the ninth inning without allowing
the Phillies to score again. But in the top of the ninth, closer Drew
Storen seemingly gave it away. He walked Raul Ibanez and gave up
back-to-back singles. Rookie Michael Martinez smacked Storen’s first
pitch up the middle to score Ibanez for a 4-3 lead.
But this would set the stage for Desmond’s dramatic, two-out home run
in the bottom of the inning and for Gomes’ walk-off heroics. Sean
Burnett pitched a scoreless 10th inning for the win and in the bottom
of the frame, a furious rally began. Zimmerman led off with a double,
followed by an intentional walk to Michael Morse and single by Jayson
Werth. And after Espinosa struck out, Gomes strode to the plate,
ready to play his brand of baseball.
It was a long, winding and unusual game, enough to prompt Johnson to
sit down before reporters following the win and immediately utter to
a room full of chuckles: “That was fun.”
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