Loud, Quiet, Loud

August 31, 2013

Watching Saturday night’s 10-5 loss against the Tigers was a kind of like listening to a Pixies song–loud, quiet, loud. The Indians scored one run in the first, but held the Tigers to a walk and a single before ending the inning with a force-out and a double play. It was kind of cool for a minute because we were leading a game for the first time in what seems like forever. That didn’t last long. In the second inning, Detroit scored 4 runs, 3 of them on an Omar Infante home run. Loud.

All was quiet on the north-western front as Scott Kazmir retired 9 Tigers in a row. Granted, we weren’t scoring any runs, but neither were they. Quiet

The Indians even managed to eke out another the top of the 5th, and things didn’t look as hopeless. Then in the 6th, Omar Infante decided he wasn’t done and hit a two-run dinger. Loud.

Yan Gomes hit a solo dinger in the top of the 7th to make it 3-6, while the Tigers went down 1-2-3 in the bottom of that inning. Quiet.

Like any good Pixies song, it’s going to get loud one more time before it’s over, and boy did it.  The 8th inning started out with promise. Jason Kipnis doubled, and Carlos Santana hit a two-run inside-the-park home run when Tigers centerfielder Austin Jackson hit the wall and lost the ball. Play stopped for a few minutes while the Detroit manager Jim Leyland and the Tigers’ trainer went out to check on him and make sure all his parts were still working. Clearly Jackson wasn’t hurt too badly because later that inning he hit a two-run triple off of Indians reliever Cody Allen and started a rally in which the Tigers Would Not Stop Hitting The Freaking Ball.

The rally included an adding-insult-to-injury sacrifice bunt by Jose Iglesias that wasn’t even a sacrifice. Cody Allen was on the mound, fielded the ball, and threw it to home. Gomes was on the plate, but had to stretch just a bit too much for the ball. The tag missed it by that much. The run scored, and Iglesias had a single. And yeah, the runner scoring from third was Austin Jackson, who apparently has the recuperative powers of Wolverine.

Six hits, four runs, and three Indians pitchers later, the 8th inning mercifully came to an end. When the Indians came to bat in the 9th, they did that thing where you get all hopeful for a second that “Chisenhall is going to start us off” or “Brantley is the clutch man, he’ll get a hit” and instead the only pleasant thing about the inning is that the Tribe goes down in order so you only have to get your false hopes raised three times.

The rest is silence.

 

1 Comment

  • Vern says:

    Pitching went in the dumper they gave them to many good pitches to hit. We should be like the Tigers they give us nothing to hit. That as been the problem all year. You must adjust at the plate and hit what is pitchs and make something out of nothing. In my book they call it bat control at the plate that is pretty simple. They still have a chance for the wild card if they can stand up and fight and show the manager what they are made of. Becasue some on the team this year may go bye bye.