Game 11 - Tigers vs Braves @ Disney
One more day at Disney, and a great pitching matchup for the ESPN audience - Derek Lowe for Atlanta and Justin Verlander for Detroit. The ESPN Wide World of Sports opens 3 hours before game time so fans can watch both teams take BP. Atlanta's new RF Jason Heyward was good about signing and taking pictures with fans. He just made the club as a non-roster invitee coming out of the Braves Minor League system. I saw ESPN's crew of Karl Ravech, Rick Sutcliffe, and our favorite Bobby Valentine. Bobby and Karl were there on Wednesday too. Today Bobby signed a few autographs (yours truely was too far back in line). He gave a nice touch to a couple of young Japanese women who giggled in joy at the sight of him by speaking in Japanese to them and signing his name in both English and Japanese on their baseballs. Johnny Damon once again was a big target for some rogue Yankees fans in attendance.
One thing that I've learned over the years of going to Disney's/ESPN Wide World of Sports is that there are 2 suns in the sky. They get in your eyes and they'll burn you more than at other parks. Remember, bake for 5 innings and then come in and baste, rotate, and bake again to get evenly burned arms and knees.
A random note for today - The Maytag Repair Man (or some actor playing that role) was on hand as part of a promotion. He also sang the national anthem. It sounded like they got an actor/singer (a real good barritone voice).
For the game, Atlanta gave the Tigers a couple of runs from a throwing error by Chipper Jones (I had to mention it), Detroit lost a couple of potential runs thanks to some bad baserunning decisions (they did get their runs from some good bunting, to give you an idea of the type of day it was for Jim Leyland), Verlander ran out of gas in the 5th with the game tied at 2, and Atlanta went on to take the lead right there and hung on to win. Billy Wagner came in for the 9th and gave up a run earning the save.
Back to the Mets for the weekend.
Leave a comment or drop me a line at DyHrdMET [at] gmail [dot] com.
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