Friday the 13th in LA was freaky for Adam LaRoche. LaRoche came up huge for the Atlanta Braves in the top of the eighth inning. He hit a two out grand slam off Jeff Weaver to turn a 2-0 deficit into a 4-2 lead.
But his mental mistake set up Milton Bradley’s heroics in the bottom of the frame. With one out and runners on 1st & 2nd J.D. Drew of the Dodgers hit a hard ground ball to first. LaRoche looked to 2nd in an effort to keep the potential tying run off secondbase, but then thought better and attempted to beat J.D. to the bag. All Adam had to do was feed reliever Chris Reitsma for the 2nd out, but he had a brain cramp. Drew was credited with a single, when it should have been ruled a failed fielder’s choice (as LaRoche could’ve gone straight to first rather than looking at second) or an error (as J.D. would have been out had Adam flipped the ball to Reitsma). Reitsma then got Jeff Kent to fly to left. That would have been the third out, but instead it set the stage for Milton Bradley.
Bradley a switch hitter batting lefthanded hooked a grand slam inside the rightfield foul pole to give the Dodgers a lead they wouldn’t cough up. Milton hit a homer batting righthanded earlier in the game off Horacio Ramirez. He became only the second player, joining Eddie Murray, in the history of the Dodgers to hit a homer from each side of the plate more than once in a game. As Bradley streaked around the bases he kept puffing out ‘Dodgers’ scripted across his chest as if to say, “this one’s for the team”. 53,689 fans went delirious as Milton came out for a curtain call.
Way back in 1969 when I was just 13 years old I went out to visit my cousins. I was fascinated by the dice baseball game they were playing called APBA. First off the dice were very small, one slightly larger red die & one extremely small white die, were mesmerizing as they tumbled across the table. Then there were player cards representing every single major league baseball player. These cards had almost mystical numbers on them beside the dice rolls, 11 through 66. There were four charts with every base situation from bases empty to bases loaded. My cousins were actually managing real live major league baseball players playing actual games. The randomness of the dice created unpredictable outcomes along with statistical accuracies that were hard to believe. After each game was played the results were recorded into spiral notebooks, each player having his own page on which his statistics would magically accumulate.