The owners probably won't stop by to see what I'm about to write, but their otherwise ill-advised December 1-March 10 lockout did me one solid. But only one.
After the World Series, and as soon as they went on sale, I'd bought tickets for what I thought would be the Angels' home opener. They were scheduled originally to open the season on the road. But commissioner Rob Manfred's cancellation of the regular season's first series, in light of the owners' further goalpost-moving shenanigans, turned the Angels' home opener into Opening Day, after all.
It wasn't enough to turn my thinking toward the owners' side one iota, but it did enable me to cross something off my bucket list. Despite a lifetime of loving the game and watching countless games in the stands and on television, I'd never actually had the chance to be at the ballpark on Opening Day. Until Thursday evening.
The best part of the evening was that I got to do it with my now 28-year-old son, Bryan. The second-best part was being able to cross another item off the baseball bucket list within half an hour of us getting our pre-game food and drink, after putting replica 1972-1990 Angels hats onto our heads.
While the visiting Astros took batting practice, a line drive sailed into our section down the right field line. Adjacent fans made it impossible for me to see just which Astro hit the ball, but the ball bounced around off seats in front of us, then under them, and ricocheted off a fan two seats to our right, before rolling on the floor under us to where I could grab the ball before another fan reaching under the seat in front of me did.
I held the ball up to see for myself that I wasn't seeing or imagining things, then handed it to my son. He'd only been asking to try to catch a ball at Angel Stadium since, oh, the first time I got to take him there — in 2000, when the Angels beat the visiting Yankees one fine evening by prying the winning run out of The Mariano himself. We'd gone to plenty of games since. Thursday night, it was pay dirt at long enough last.
Of course, there was now a game to play, and the Angels lost, 3-1. These are my 10 takeaways:
1. Shoh-time! — The good news for the Angels was Shohei Ohtani starting on the mound. I'm convinced that what looked to be a lockout-dejected, ho-hum crowd in advance, shot into a near-sellout once Ohtani was announced as the Opening Day pitcher. Lockout after-effect, I suspected: I'd checked the ticketing for the game just prior to the announcement and there were several thousand seats remaining for the taking.
Well, now. The day before I set out for southern California from my home in Las Vegas, I checked the ticketing again. The tickets seemed to have flown off the board once Angel fans knew it would be Shoh-time. And Ohtani didn't disappoint, much. He pitched four and two-thirds innings of 1-run, 9-strikeout, 4-hit, 1-walk baseball.
The best the Astros could do against him was the third inning, after he caught Martin Maldonado looking at strike three and blew Jose Altuve away with a swinging third strike: Michael Brantley banged a double off the right center field fence and Alex Bregman sent him home promptly with a base hit to left center.
As a matter of fact, when Ohtani wasn't becoming the first player in Show history to throw his team's first pitch of the season and make his team's first plate appearance of the season (the Angels like to bat him leadoff), he manhandled Altuve for 3 strikeouts on the night, including the nasty slider that shot over Altuve's hard swing for the third such strikeout in the top of the fifth.
2. The bad news — Astros starter Framber Valdez was just as effective in six and two-thirds innings. (The Angels planned to keep their starting pitchers on an 80-pitch limit for the time being, after the lockout-imposed too-short spring training.) He struck 6 out, walked 1, and surrendered 2 of the Angels' 4 hits on the night.
3. The worse news, for the Angels — They came to within inches of taking a 2-1 lead in the seventh. Mike Trout led off by beating out a throw from shortstop that should have been ruled an infield hit but was ruled an error. Then Anthony Rendon hit a high liner that sailed into the left field seats ... but missed the foul pole on the wrong side by a hair.
"When I saw the ball flying in the air," Valdez said post-game of his narrow escape, "I got mad with myself that I didn't make my best pitch. I just took a deep breath and threw my best pitch." That would be the hard sinkerball on which Rendon promptly dialed Area Code 4-6-3.
Matt Duffy promptly beat out an infield hit to third, which promptly moved Astros manager Dusty Baker to end Valdez's night and bring Phil Maton in to strike Jo Adell out swinging for the side.
4. Cruising speed — Maton seemed on a bit of a cruise in relief until he hit Brandon Marsh with a pitch with two out in the bottom of the eighth and David Fletcher shot a 1-2 pitch through to the back of left center and gunned it for an RBI triple. That was the Angels' first and last run of the game, alas.
5. The worse news, for baseball as a whole — That ridiculous three-batter minimum for relief pitchers. Under normal circumstances, if your reliever comes into the game and gets murdered right away — as Angels reliever Ryan Tepera was in the top of the eighth — you'd know he didn't have it that night, right?
Oops. Tepera's first pitch to Alex Bregman sailed into the left field seats. The next Astros batter, Yordan Alvarez, hit a hanging slider on 1-1 over the center field fence. The Angels were lucky to escape with their lives after two prompt deep fly outs (Yuli Gurriel, Kyle Tucker) followed by a sinking liner up the middle (Jeremy Peña) that Trout caught on the dead run in from somewhat deep center to retire the side. (Trout also drew a loud ovation after he turned around and, from half-shallow center, winged the ball to fans halfway up the right center field bleachers.)
6. But there was good news on the relief front — Neither manager burned his relievers in the bullpens. If either Baker or Joe Maddon warmed a pitcher up, he either came into the game as soon as needed or he was handed what amounted to the rest of the night off. No Angels or Astros reliever was called upon to warm up more than once.
I paid as much attention to the relievers in the pen as I could, considering I was seated far opposite the pens behind the left field fence. The Angels used five relievers and the Astros, three. None of those eight pitchers threw any more than maybe 20-25 pitches before they were brought into the game. None of them could be called gassed going in.
Tepera simply didn't have it Thursday night; Maton got vulnerable after ending one inning and getting two outs to open the next. The rest of the two teams' bullpen corps (Hector Neris and Ryan Pressly for the Astros; Aaron Loup, Austin Warren, Jose Quijada, and Archie Bradley for the Angels) pitched clean-as-a-hound's-tooth relief. Would that all major league managers were that judicious handling their pen men.
7. Memo to: Angel fans. Subject: The Wave — The 1980s called. They want their obnoxious, obstructive Wave back. One fan adjacent to our section kept calling for fans to do the Wave. I kept shaking my head, but I did notice that each of about ten attempts at it starting in our part of the park died before flowing to a fourth section of the field-level seats. Maybe there's hope in such deaths, after all.
8. You were saying? — The back-to-back Astro bombs to one side, this game wasn't exactly the kind to send the old farts screaming to the whiskey shots. The game's 12 total hits included three Astros doubles, Fletcher's triple, and six singles. Altuve even stole second in the ninth, for whatever that was worth, since he ended up stranded.
9. Wasted Out Department — Altuve, the Astros' pint-sized, gallon-hitting second baseman, also dropped a sacrifice bunt to third with one out in the seventh against right-handed reliever Warren, after Chas McCormick opened the inning with a double. Remember: A man on second with one out, and you have less — chance of scoring a run after that bunt than you did before the bunt, even if you do exactly what Altuve did pushing McCormick to third.
Just what a man with a lifetime .512 Real Batting Average (total bases + walks + intentional walks + sacrifice flies + hit by pitches, divided by total plate appearances), and a .297 lifetime hitting average with a man on second and one out, is doing thinking sacrifice escapes. With his team leading a mere 1-0 at the time, the Angels brought Quijada in to pitch to Brantley, and Brantley flied out shy of the track in right center for the side.
That's what a wasted out did. The right-handed-hitting Altuve might have been futile against Ohtani on the night, but he has a lifetime .301 hitting average against right-handed pitchers. The Astros would have had a better chance scoring McCormick if Altuve hit away.
10) When Bregman checked in at the plate in the top of the eighth, the Angel Stadium video boards flashed a graphic with Bregman's head shot plus this: [He] donated over 200 iPads w/protective cases and iTunes gift cards to several Houston-area elementary schools that have autistic classrooms — He does that through his Bregman Cares charity, with a particular focus upon autistic children.
It was almost as admirable for the Angels to show Bregman such respectful acknowledgement as it was for Bregman and his wife, Reagan, to take such an interest in lending hands to autistic children. Even if Bregman's idea of saying thank you for such respect was to smash a leadoff homer in reply.
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