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Road Trip to Baltimore

August 12, 2001


Cal Ripken bats

After Doug Mirabelli homered in the sixth, making it 8-5 Red Sox, Wakefield struck out the side in the home half of the inning. Everett, Ramirez, and Bichette all walked to start the seventh, but the next three batters all hit ground balls and no runs scored. Finally order had been restored to an otherwise wild game - for a couple of innings, anyway.

At Camden Yards In the top of the eighth, Mirabelli walked, Garciaparra singled, and Everett launched a three-run homer. Manny Ramirez followed with a homer of his own, and the Sox were ahead 12-5. Then in the ninth, John Wasdin came in to pitch for the Orioles, and the Red Sox fans in attendance remembered his propensity for giving up the longball which haunted him when he played in Boston. "Hey, it's Johnny Wayback!" I yelled, to no one in particular. "Good ol' Whiplash Wasdin! Look out on Eutaw Street!" The friend I was with is not a big baseball fan, but she had humored me and let me spend one day of our vacation at a baseball game. (I found out it's fun to go with someone who doesn't care about the game, because I won't leave my seat, but she didn't mind going for ice cream and other concessions for me.) She was now very busy pretending not to know me, but I was sure we'd get to see some tape-measure jobs. Much to my surprise, Wasdin pitched better than any other Orioles pitcher that day. He struck out Offerman looking, retired Lansing on a fly ball (which did at least travel to the warning track, prompting me to yell, "Way back! Waaaaay back!" as we were so accustomed to hearing when Wasdin pitched), and got Mirabelli swinging to complete a 1-2-3 inning.

Red Sox 12, Orioles 10 There was a commercial shown repeatedly on NESN at the time for the Red Sox wives' cookbook. Bitsy Hatteberg and Stacey Beck were among the lead organizers of the project, and both had appeared in the broadcast booth during games to promote it. The commercial had Scott Hatteberg and Rod Beck arguing over which recipe they liked best. Beck picks the brisket, and Hatteberg calls him "Brisket Boy". Beck had come in to pitch the eighth that day, and had promptly served up a homer to Tony Batista. In the bottom of the ninth, with the Sox up 12-6, he retired the first batter. But then came a walk, a single, Lansing's second error of the game, an RBI groundout by Cal Ripken (batting against Beck in the picture at the top of the page), and finally Tony Batista's second homer in as many innings. Suddenly it was 12-10. "Come on, Brisket Boy!" yelled the guy behind me, obviously a New Englander. Finally Derek Lowe came in and retired pinch-hitter Brady Anderson to end a wild game.

It wasn't exactly a well-played game, with 22 total runs and 5 total errors, but the result was good, and it was a fun day in a decent park. And given that it's only about an eight or nine hour drive from Boston, I'm sure I'll visit Camden Yards again.



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This page and all photos copyright © 2001-2002 by Kristen D. Cornette.