Manny, Rain and a Lousy Call

iPhone Photo

On Thursday the Cats lost their first series of the season to the Round Rock Express.  Last night the Rivercats returned to a large (estimated at about 10,000) crowd wanting to catch a glimpse of Manny Ramirez who is spending the last couple of days of his suspension with the Cats before he goes back up to the bigs perhaps on Wednesday.    Manny had an unimpressive evening - keeping his average at .250 with a single followed by a ground out fly out, pop out combo.  This is the guy who was quoted in the Bee saying "I expect the attention, after all I am one of the best right handed hitters in the game."  Yeah, right - one for four - so far 20 at bats - five hits no extra bases.

Things started to get interesting when Travis Banwart was replaced with Neil Wagner.  We had been in the lead 3-1 but through a couple of doubles the Aces tied it up.   It then started to drizzle - rare for Sacramento in May but still possible.  Rich Thompson had replaced Wagner and he allowed a hit and a then a series of walks that moved one run across the plate.  But the bases were still loaded. Trey Barham came into to relieve Thompson.  Adam Eaton, the Aces best hitter (over .400) came up and at first was called out on an interesting play - the ball rolled down the bat and hit him pretty seriously in the hand.  Gallaraga tagged Eaton and then tagged home plate scoring an unassisted double play.   But then the Umps decided that Eaton had been hit by a pitch. I'm not sure how they changed their minds - from the description on the radio (By the time all this happened we decided, with a lot of other fans, that the mist was a bit more than that and were listening to the game on the radio.) Eaton had taken a swing at the thing - but that was the decision.

Thompson had had trouble on the mound getting his footing in the rain - he fell a couple of times after his follow through.   When the Eaton play was changed, Thompson got a bit grumpy and was tossed by Herzog - the home plate umpire.   Things fell apart and the Aces scored 6 in the 8th and 4 in the 9th to make the game 13-3.