6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog: That Infernal Song: Dodgers 7, Diamondbacks 2

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Saturday, September 06, 2008

That Infernal Song: Dodgers 7, Diamondbacks 2

Fox Saturday broadcasts offer many, many things to hate for the baseball-consuming public. First, of course, is their all-too-frequently annoying choices of broadcasters: Joe Buck, before he announced his more-or-less retirement from baseball, was particularly grating, but Eric Karros in a Dodgers game has shown little restraint and a great deal of backstabby enthusiasm for criticizing, especially of the Dodgers' better young players. Now, today's game contained the following lovely excerpt from — I think — Tim McCarver, i.e. the play-by-play man not named Mark Grace:

Right now, anyway, as we've said, L.A. loves Manny and Manny loves L.A. He's done everything but hire Randy Newman to trail him and sing that infernal song all day long.

Of course, that was after Manny busted open a scoreless tie in the bottom of the fifth with two outs. The Dodgers got a couple more on two scoring walks, and an embarrassing fly ball that Justin Upton lost in the sun, dropping a good twenty feet away from him and bouncing into the stands for a ground rule double to plate two more.

So for the second time in as many days, the Dodgers throttled their division rivals, and beat them fairly convincingly. More, they took the division lead with 20 games remaining, and only one with Arizona.

It was the day of the walk; the one and two hitters, Russ Martin and Andre Ethier, got a total of six walks, and though they scored only one run apiece, they each got an RBI thanks to aforesaid bases-loaded walks. The Dodgers battered their second Diamondbacks ace in a row, not that Brandon Webb had been having many good games lately anyway; he had a 13.50 ERA in his prior two appearances, one of those against the Dodgers, and failed to make it out of the fourth in either of them. It's pretty bad timing for the Snakes, who need, need, need their pitching to hold together if they're going to make it to the postseason.

As for Dodgers starter Chad Billingsley, he was masterful, and in fact the Dodgers kept a shutout going through 8.2, with Bills only getting into a serious jam in the seventh when he walked the bases loaded; Cory Wade got him out of it with three pitches, eliciting a double-play ball from Justin Upton to compound his woes. (Upton redeemed himself somewhat in the ninth by driving in the team's only runs on an RBI single, but it was a bad day for the Snakes' offense.)

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