Last night’s win by balk was by far the strangest of the year for the Dodgers, and also supplied a nearly endless supply of puns (a balk in the park, a balk-off hit, “I wouldn’t balk at that Dodgers victory,” etc.), rivaled only by the humor of the Elymania Twitter craze.
First off, here’s Casey “The Beard” Blake describing the unusual play on the Dodgers’ post-game television show:
I was trying to make something happen. That’s the first time it’s ever worked for me. Usually guys don’t pay attention to me…I’m not really going anywhere right there. But I said, hey, we got two outs and I might as well try something, and took a couple hard steps and sometimes it works. The ninth inning, two outs, I’m sure there were some nerves on the mound, or some emotion, and so I just thought I’d try it and it worked one time.”
The balk-off win also inspired some great stories from across the web. Here are a couple of my favorites from last night and this morning:
- Tony Jackson at ESPN Los Angeles looks at the umpiring coincidence between last night’s balk-off win for the Dodgers and their last one in 1989
- As usual, Eric at True Blue LA offers up the stats behind the balk-off
Photo Credit: Jon SooHoo / LA Dodgers 2010
Post-Game Comments from Torre, Billingsley, Ellis and Blake
Here’s the feedback after tonight’s 6-0 loss to the Padres (particularly good stuff from Casey Blake). Additionally, earlier this evening, the Dodgers were officially eliminated from playoff contention.
Joe Torre
On Clayton Richard’s complete game shutout:
“It just looked so easy for him. We didn’t do a whole lot of damage. We just couldn’t get anything going. Up until that last inning, we didn’t really have a threat. You have to give him credit, he works fast, he’s very aggressive in the strike zone and he certainly pitched well tonight.”
On being eliminated from the playoffs:
“We didn’t play well enough to be in a pennant race. We thought in the first half that we would be able to contend. Unfortunately the second half started off badly and we never really recovered from it.”
On Billingsley’s performance:
“It just didn’t look like he had command. He’s been pitching so well, his stuff looked good, but he just wasn’t able to locate. It sounds simple, and that’s probably a simple explanation, but as I said, I thought his stiff was good, but he just didn’t get the ball where he wanted to. Plus we put pressure on him. We don’t score, they score a couple of runs and you try and be perfect. I think a lot of the pitchers have had to deal with a lot of that this year.”
Chad Billingsley
On his performance in tonight’s game:
“I just didn’t get the job done today. I was battling those two innings and couldn’t find a way to get out of it. I’ve just got to get ready for the next start.”
A.J. Ellis
On Chad Billingsley’s performance:
“They capitalized when we put their runners on base. The walk or a hit by pitch, they capitalized on it. When he was ahead in the count and throwing strikes, he was dominant as he normally is, putting guys away. When you put guys on base it makes it that much harder on you.”
Casey Blake
On being officially eliminated from the playoffs:
“In order to be a championship team, obviously you’ve got to be playing well, but you’ve got to have a lot of things go your way. It seems like neither of those happened for us. Injuries didn’t help anything: Losing Manny, losing [Furcal], Padilla, just go down the line. Andre for an extended period of time. I was out five games and that really killed us [laughter]. Every team goes through adversity like that. It’s disappointing. You feel like a failure. We’re not embarrassed, it’s just really disappointing for all the expectations and hope you have. You make it to the playoffs a couple of years in a row and you just expect to do it. When it doesn’t happen, it’s really, really tough to take.”