Diamondbacks Notes: April 15. 2009
* CARDS TAKE GAME 3, SERIES - On a blustery day, the Diamondbacks showed off their bats and not much else in a 12-7 loss to the Cardinals. High winds whirled through Chase Field, an atmospheric effect that made the location seem more like St. Louis than Downtown Phoenix. The weather must have made the Cards feel at home, as they recorded hit after key hit against their hosts.
It was nice to see the Arizona offense maintain the roll that began with Tuesday's big walk-off victory. Unfortunately, even their seven runs were insufficient on a day when the Snakes' pitching labored and their defense was spotty.
Starter Jon Garland (3.2 IP, 7 H, 7 ER, 5 BB) threw 88 pitches without retiring a St. Louis batter on strikes. After walking Joel Pineiro to begin the Cardinals third inning, Garland fell asleep on the mound and allowed Pineiro to steal his first career base. Five runs would score before Garland could record the third out.
In the field, the performance was mixed. Chris B. Young robbed Khalil Greene with a catch at the center field wall to end the visitors' fourth inning. Justin Upton made a valiant, diving attempt at a ball hit to the right field corner. Usual suspects Mark Reynolds and Felipe Lopez each committed errors. With two of the team's three official miscues, Lopez was particularly egregious in his play; a ground ball rolled under his glove like he was Bill Buckner (the Red Sox first baseman, not the Diamondbacks pitcher) in the 1986 World Series. Sorry, LoDog, but you can't blame a botched grounder on the wind.
The result dropped Arizona to 3-6 and kept the club without a series win. Their record looks particularly unflattering given that the entire stretch was played at home. It is an understatement to say that Diamondbacks Nation hoped for more from such a favorable schedule to open the 2009 season. The Snakes now take their show on the road for a weekend set against the Giants at AT&T Park.
* JUST LIKE JACKIE - As members of Diamondbacks Nation, we're not in the business of giving love to the Dodgers. But while we are partisans for the Diamondbacks, we cannot help but tip our Sedona Red caps to the boys in Dodger Blue every April 15. For one thing, we appreciate the high-revenue Los Angeles club for paying a bigger share to Uncle Sam. For another, all baseball fans owe a debt of gratitude to Jackie Robinson and the Dodgers organization for the racial integration of Major League Baseball.
After shameful decades of prohibiting black players from participating in the game at the highest level, MLB began the process of atonement for its great injustice on April 15, 1947, when Robinson made his debut for the then-Brooklyn Dodgers. If you have not watched the Ken Burns Baseball documentaries, we highly recommend you do so. The decade-by-decade retrospective traces the twin arcs of baseball and race relations from the Civil War through modernity, with Robinson's breakthrough as the central event in each. We admit to weeping each time we hear the story retold.
The baseball family does a great job every April 15 of celebrating Jackie Robinson Day. In 1997, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the integration of baseball, uniform No. 42 was retired on a league-wide basis. (Players who wore the number at that time were grandfathered in and permitted to continue to wear it; of those players, only Mariano Rivera remains active.)
In recent years, MLB has allowed players upon request to wear No. 42 in games played on Jackie Robinson Day. This season, MLB saw to it that every player in baseball wore Robinson's number on their jerseys. That's a tribute appropriate in light of Robinson's contribution, although it was perhaps more meaningful when individual players could elect whether or not to participate.
Two Diamondbacks players -- Upton and Young -- took the further measure of wearing their uniform pants short and their socks high, just like Jackie used to do. As baseball purists, we always love that look, but never more so than on the day we honor Robinson. Good show, guys.
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