Braves 7, Giants 5, 13 innings: Exciting game from the bottom of the ninth, unless your brand of excitement consists of batters pounding Tim Hudson sinkers into the ground, in which case you would have loved the first eight frames.
That was vintage Huddy, as nasty as he ever was with the A’s. Give the Giants credit for taking advantage of gifts, starting with the two 9th inning walks from Hudson, who had been practically untouchable until that point. Then Willie Harris comically misplayed Feliz’s deep drive for a double. It wasn’t a can of corn, but it should have been an out. If you want to pick a single pitch that did the Giants in tonight, it was the 1–0 to Ray Durham that inning. Improbably, delightfully, the 4–0 deficit had turned into a tie game, and Ray could have sent everyone home with a ball in the alley or down the lines (Molina was the runner at second). The one-oh pitch: fastball down the middle. That was it. He took it and eventually popped to left.
Jonathan Sanchez didn’t pitch too well, either.
Almost forgotten: Matt Morris pitched decently. Any left fielder but Bonds, and the Braves would have only scored two in the 4th. But was it good enough to convince other GMs that he’s worth trading for?
PLODAG: Randy Messenger, with three shutout extra innings, including an impressive K of Chipper Jones, who otherwise looked like his 1999 MVP self tonight. Runner-up: Feliz, who had two great at-bats with the game on the line and drove runs home each time.
