A while ago, back when I still wrote for Outside the Boxscore, I wrote a piece about wandering the internet and rediscovering the first baseball game I ever attended, a 7-6 Tigers win over the Twins in 1997. It was a great game, and I was happy to discover exactly what game it was!
Problem is, I attended a second game a few years later, and I hadn't been able to figure out (until today) exactly which one. I knew only a few things about the game (since I misplaced the stub):
1. It was the Athletics vs. the Orioles, in Baltimore.
2. Terrence Long, Frank Menechino, Olmedo Saenz, and Ramon Hernandez all started for the A's, and Mike Bordick and B.J. Surhoff started for the O's.
3. I thought Jason Johnson and Tim Hudson were the starting pitchers for their respective teams (though I wasn't 100% sure).
With some time to kill today, I searched the Baseball Reference box scores and found the game. It was a 4-0 A's win on May 27, 2000, so a little over 10 years ago, from when I was 13.
Now it's no wonder I remembered Hudson or Saenz - the A's would not have won without Hudson's 7.1 innings of 1 hit, shutout ball, nor without Saenz's first inning 2 RBI double into LF/CF.
What amazes me, however, is what I forgot about the game. Like, for example, the Orioles hitters from spots 4-7 in the lineup:
4 - Albert Belle
5 - Cal Ripken Jr.
6 - Harold Baines
7 - Will Clark
Those are 4 damn good hitters, and somehow I didn't remember seeing any of those 4. Now granted, they didn't do a lot to help me out - a combined 1 for 13 with 3 strikeouts isn't exactly memorable. But you'd think that at least one of those guys would have stuck in my mind just a little bit. Very weird.
Either way, I'm happy to now realize that I saw those guys play. But most of all I'm happy that my memory stands correct - Tim Hudson was absolutely dominant in that game, and Olmedo Saenz was the man, if only for a day.
The internet's amazing haha. Last yr I decided to do the same thing and find the first game I went to. I remember it was the Yanks vs Indians on a summer Saturday. That narrowed it to 1 game - 8/12/95. More than the game itself, I remember being disappointed because I was sitting behind the home plate netting and knew I couldn't get a foul ball
ReplyDeleteHaha, that's awesome! I had a similar thought with my Twins game - though the game was nice, I mostly remember just missing catching a Chuck Knoublauch foul ball. Literally landed 2 rows behind us and was scooped up the guys right behind us. The game was nice, but I wanted that foul ball haha.
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