6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog

Powered by my unspeakably cool new Motorola RAZR phone and KUSC's Sunday morning Sacred Classics show, off we go for yet another round...

Today's Birthdays

Roster Notes

• Adam Kennedy called out — in the mildest possible terms, really — Casey Kotchman for his botched catch in Friday's game:

  "That was a good opportunity for Casey to pick up [catcher Jeff Mathis]," Kennedy said Saturday. "I know it was a tough play for Casey, but we've got to be there for one another. You've got to give your best effort. It's tough to say he got a good jump. I wasn't convinced that was his thought process."

  Kotchman said he "thought Jeff had a better chance to catch it than I did." Asked what Kennedy said to him, Kotchman, 23, shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. Asked if the incident bothered him, Kotchman said, "I'm not going to comment on anything like that."

• Hector Carrasco will get another start, this time against Detroit on Tuesday.
• Darren Driefort wants his knees back:

  "It was hard because I never entered a season thinking anything less than what they were counting on," he said. "I never entered a season thinking there was no way I could live up to expectations or no way I could do my job or finish the season. I never had any doubts. When whatever happened happened, it was kind of out of my control. It wasn't for lack of work or not doing what I needed to do to prepare myself. That's where I can look myself in the mirror every day."

  Dreifort has moved back to the LA area with his family after briefly moving to Texas following his retirement.
• James Loney says "I feel like I belong" after being demoted to Las Vegas on the heels of Nomar's callup. There's still time for Loney; he'll be 22 on May 7.
• Ned Colletti has been away scouting players on the UCLA and CSULB teams. Who knew?
• Must be one heck of a case of flu: Todd Helton has been placed on the 15-day DL and is undergoing further tests. He reported stomach cramping and a fever.
• Bobby Crosby will not start today's game either, and won't play the field until Monday at the earliest. Crosby made a pinch-running appearance in yesterday's game.

Seo What?Far, Seo Bad-SoLong, JaeMany Bad Puns: D'backs 5, Dodgers 4

A bad start by Seo, but his suckfest wasn't the only problem according to the game's WPA graph:

In fact, it appears Nomar, despite his good offensive efforts, was actually a negative contributor to last night's game. Perhaps that's because of the three runners he stranded, two of which were left on in scoring position. They were part of the eight baserunners stranded all night — not that this is necessarily a bad thing. Stranding runners on base means they're getting there in the first place. But if Nomar was bad, Kenny Lofton was even worse; I assume his numbers came from some fielding error or other. Still, however bad last night's efforts were, the team's situational hitting isn't that bad; they're hitting .267 with RISP and hitting .279 with RISP and two out. Gotta have the pitching, though.

Recap

Anniversary Of Monday's Flag Rescue

Wednesday is the anniversary of Rick Monday capturing the flag from some doofuses who wanted to burn it at a baseball game.

"Whatever their protest was about, what they were attempting to do to the flag -- which represents a lot of rights and freedoms that we all have -- was wrong for a lot of reasons," Monday said. "Not only does it desecrate the flag, but it also desecrates the effort and the lives that have been laid down to protect those rights and freedoms for all of us."

The game — played in Dodger Stadium on April 26, 1976 — ended up being a loss for the Cubs, but a huge moment in Monday's career, and oddly, something he never tires of discussing.

In Peter Golenbock's 1996 book, "Wrigleyville: A Magical History Tour of the Chicago Cubs," former Cubs reliever Darold Knowles recalled what happened in the aftermath of Monday's flag-saving effort.

"That put Rick on the map," said Knowles, a teammate of Monday's for two seasons in Chicago and one in Oakland. "Rick got more recognition out of the flag incident than he got as a player. He was getting letters from all over the country, all the time -- from VFWs (Veterans of Foreign Wars) and American Legions organizations. Every place we'd go, somebody would honor him with a plaque. He let us read some of the letters (from) people thanking him."

Yet, it somehow strikes me that in the spectrum of heroism, this ranks right down near the bottom, along with bumperstickers reading, "My Child Is A Super Citizen At Nosebleed Elementary", and the rest of the false puffery disguised as self-esteem boosting that goes on these days. If that episode marked the difference between Monday being in the broadcast booth or not, I'll take the guy doing the 51's games, thank you.

Update: Two more things on this, first being Jon Weisman's terrific piece at the Baseball Analysts about his uneasy relationship with Monday. The second is a piece by John Scalzi at Whatever about flag-burning in general, upon the occaision, three years ago, of yet another reintroduction of the no-flag-burning amendment. Scalzi points out that not only would such an amendment have the unsalutory affect of gutting the First Amendment, it would be nullified almost immediately thanks to a host of legal backdoors that a four-year-old could imagine. While I'm not inclined to do so myself, I can understand the itch to burn the flag as a protest against a government that refuses its charge of living under the laws it supposedly upholds, but more often ignores when convenient. In the end, that's what bothers me most about Monday's alleged heroism: he was happy to save a symbol, but that's all that it was.