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Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy has retired from the Dayton Daily News after covering the Cincinnati Reds for 37 years. Hal's blog, though, will continue to be a must-read for Reds fans. He'll share his thoughts on the team this season and will file updates from Great American Ball Park. You also can catch Hal in print every Sunday in his popular Ask Hal columnHome > Blogs > The Real McCoy | Cincinnati Reds baseball news > Archives > 2009 > July > 20
Monday, July 20, 2009
Phillips says it won’t happen again (again)
THE ENIGMA that is Brandon Phillips surfaced again tonight in Dodger Stadium, another time he didn’t hustle, another apology, another quiet shaking of the head by manager Dusty Baker.
The Cincinnati Reds had Jason Schmidt draped over the ropes, groggy and out of it. The first three Reds hit safely to open the game. With two runs already in and a runner on third, Phillips flied to right field and trotted out of the batter’s box, head down, loping toward first.
But right fielder Andre Ethier lost the ball in the sun and it fell for a hit. Only then did Phillips turn on the after-burners and he tried to make second base. He was thrown out.
As Baker said, “We should have scored more in the first.” A walk and two outs followed Phillips getting thrown out at second. No more runs.
Asked if he talked to Phillips about it, Baker said, “Hey, man, we’ve all talked to Brandon about stuff like this until we’re blue in the face. Evidently, this must have started long before I got here. That was a rally killer right there. All you can ask is for a guy to hustle. That’s not too much to ask. Just hustle.”
Phillips, who had three of the Reds six hits, admitted he was wrong.
“I was happy to get the run in from third with a fly ball to right field,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘Damn, I missed it,’ and I had my head down. When I looked up he had dropped it and I tried to make second. I messed up. That’s my second time not hustling this year and it won’t happen again.”
We’ve heard that one before.
IF THE REDS are going to lose out here on the West Coast, three time zones away, can they at least do it more quickly than Monday night’s ghastly affair?
The Dodgers didn’t even have to bat in the bottom of the ninth, so the game was only 8 1/2 innings, but it still took the Reds more than three hours to lose, 7-5.
As far as time of game goes, this one didn’t start very well.
Jason Schmidt, making his first start since June 2007 went to 3-and-2 on leadoff hitter Willy Taveras, who smoked one to left center. The ball bounced back into the playing field and Taveras legged it for a triple.
Baker came out to argue and request a review, the only play in baseball that can be reviewed (home run or not a home run). After further review: no home run.
TWO PITCHES later, Jerry Hairston Jr. swung and missed and his bat ended up in the seats behind the Dodgers dugout. He had to walk to the bat rack, grab a new stick, apply the pine tar and … oh, well, I didn’t have anything to do after the game, did I? No movie starlets returned my calls today.
THEY SAY something you haven’t seen before happens often in baseball. I can testify to that. See something all the time and it happened again tonight. The first three Reds hitters played wall ball - all three batters (Taveras, Hairston, Joey Votto) hit the wall on the fly and I know I’ve never seen the first three hitters in a game hit balls off the wall on the fly.
MAKE IT a two-fer. Another event I’ve never seen. Rafael Furcal led the Dodgers first by bunting. For a double. Yes, he bunted for a double. He bunted over third baseman Edwin Encarnacion’s head and before shortstop Hairston could run it down, Furcal was on second.
Some weird stuff, man, weird.
END OF one inning: Los Angeles 4, Cincinnati 3. I’ve been sitting all day in an airplane and now I’m going to have to sit all night in a press box - and sit and sit and sit. First inning: 43 minutes.
Manny Ramirez put this one out of reach with a two-run homer in the second that was last seen circling LAX between two 747s.
ACTOR CHRIS Noth was in the stands. My wife, Nadine, loved him in Sex in the City and in Law and Order - or in anything. Maybe he could have pitched a couple of innings for the Reds. Or run hard from first to second on a fly ball???
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TweetVotto sends his love from Mannywood
It’s always fun to come to LA and see all the celebrities at Dodger Stadium - Charlie Sheen and Rob Reiner are regulars. Hugh Hefner showed up once with a half a dozen of his, uh, friends and nobody watched the game.
One night after a day game I went to the Improv Comedy Club to watch a bunch of comedians I never heard of. Midway through the show, the host said, “Special treat tonight. Somebody stopped in and wants to say hello. Robin Williams.”
Williams then did about 45 minutes of stand-up and didn’t take a dime for it nor did our cover charge increase.
A HALF DOZEN Reds were taking early batting practice at 3 o’clock in Dodger Stadium when one of them, Joey Votto, looked up at the pressbox and saw a couple of writers and yelled, “Hey, say hello for me to everybody on Twitter. Tell ‘em all I’m having a fun time in Mannywood.”
NO MAJOR incidents getting to LA on American, but they pulled a fast one on some folks. I had a 2 1/2-hour layover in Dallas and heard they cancelled two Dallas-LA flights earlier in the morning (6 a.m. and 9 a.m.). My flight was 10:15 and went off as scheduled, a 757 stuffed to the rafters. And I had a middle seat, which is like sitting in the middle of the front seat of a Honda Civic, only the Civic has more room.
What ticked me off was that sitting next to me was a deadheading flight attendant, a non-paying customer with a window seat. I knew I was in trouble when she said, “I love to talk.” After Saturday night’s rain-delayed game in Cincinnati, I got home at 2 a.m., got to bed at 3:30 and was up at 8 for Sunday’s day game. Then Monday morning I had to get up at 4 a.m. to catch my flight to LA.
So I was TIRED, with a capital Z, and this woman wanted to talk. The first time she paused for breath, I grabbed my iPod, plugged in my ear plugs, put on my Oakley sun glasses, turned my head the other way and went to sleep. For three hours.
After we landed, she tells me, “I went right to sleep. Did you?”
YOU KNOW you are in LA when you have lunch in the hotel coffee shop, order a Chinese chicken salad, a bowl of Seven Onion soup and an iced tea and the bill is $30. Those two iced tea refills must have cost $5 each. Although the salad was loaded with cashews (I love cashews but they don’t love me), it wasn’t that good.
HOPE I MAKE it until the fifth inning. That’s when they put the Dodger Dogs on the media grill. Then I hope I make it back to the hotel without acid indigestion and heart burn. I can’t resist Dodger Dogs - the best hot dogs anywhere. If I covered the Dodgers and worked 81 games at Dodger Stadium, I’d break Babe Ruth’s all-time hot dog record and my stomach would look like Mount St. Helens.
ROOKIES ALWAYS have fun stories and Craig Tatum is no different.
He was called up to the big leagues Sunday for the first time and flew from Cincinnati to Los Angeles with the team. The veterans had a great guffaw at his expense when he got off the bus from the airport and waited to retrieve his suitcase.
“It’s the big show, my boy. We don’t carry our suitcases. They magically show up in our room,” he was told.
Tatum was stunned when he rode a cab from Century City, where the Reds stay, to Dodger Stadium and the fare was $60. He figured he was riding the cab, not buying it. And he said, “They don’t have traffic like this in Hattiesburg, Miss. I saw more cars than we have people in Hattiesburg.”
Then he walked into Dodger Stadium and his jaw dropped. “Never saw a baseball stadium this big. Not even close,” he said.
NOW I KNOW I’ve made it. Walked past Aaron Harang’s locker today and saw his shoes - the idential black Cole-Haan loafers that were on my feet. Of course, mine were only size 13. His had to be 16, maybe 17, and mine would fit inside his.
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