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June 4, 2005
Strange Days
Just when you thought that Duaner Sanchez's playground move would be the strangest play you'd see in the first half of the season-- and I really think he deserves a lifetime supply of mitts from Rawlings or Mizuno for actually hitting the ball when he tossed his glove at it-- well, then comes last night's truly bizarre play wherein Jason Phillips got conked in the noggin by a throw to home plate from 2nd baseman Bill Hall of Milwaukee.
Now, on the Dodger scale of bizarre plays, this isn't up there with Steve Yeager catching that piece of a broken bat in his neck while waiting on the on deck circle, and I've seen plenty of runners get hit by balls thrown by the fielders, but I've never seen a guy get hit when he's standing so far out of the baseline.
Clearly Hall never saw Phillips in his line of fire, but he also had better learn to take a little more care before slinging the ball around the field. And if you saw this play on TV, you know that even Vin Scully was confounded for a second, as he thought that the throw had initially taking down Dodger 1st base coach John Shelby. For his part, Phillips really was not watching the play in front of him, and he never saw what hit him. He's fortunate to have absorbed the blow in his batting helmet.
And in bizarre Angel news... Bob Nightengale's June 1 column in USA Today's Sports Weekly, which you can also find here (see The Buzz sidebar), floated the rumor that the Angels would move to Monterrey, Mexico, "within five years," and that the Oakland franchise would move down to Anaheim.
It all sounds too farfetched to even be a good rumor, and as Gabe Lacques reports on Inland Valley Daily Bulletin.com: "Angels vice president Tim Mead said there's 'absolutely, undeniably nothing' accurate to a one-sentence mention in USA Today Sports Weekly that owner Arte Moreno is planning to move the club to Monterrey, Mexico."
So that begs the question, why is Bob Nightengale even bothering to mention it in his column?
Posted by Andrew Torres at 2:00 AM
