That headline changed about seven times throughout the course of this bizarre, often frustrating, ultimately exhilarating mess of a game. Walk with me down memory lane...
Taking things in chronological order, I have to start by saying that Dana Eveland is truly terrible at baseball. He may be good at other things -- basket-weaving, photography, goatherding -- but pitching? He's just not good at it. And tonight, after being staked to a 2-0 lead on Kurt Suzuki's 1st inning HR, Eveland should have been staked to something so he couldn't go to the mound. His defense didn't help and the umpires didn't help, but still...He's just bad, and by the 4th inning Eveland was gone and the Angels led 9-2.
The next thing you need to know is that these umpires are really bad at seeing. In the bottom of the 1st, second base umpire Greg Gibson decided that Cliff Pennington had missed 2B on a 4-6-3 DP attempt in which both runners were called safe. It's called the "neighborhood play" and to call otherwise was arguably somewhere between the worst call of the season and the 2nd worst call of the evening. Vying for that honor was Pennington being called out at the plate in the 2nd when he tried to dash home on a missed cutoff throw and replays showed that he was safe.
Anyhoo, all water under the bridge because the A's, buoyed by Jack Cust's 3-run HR, 3 more hits from Kennedy, 4 hits from the red-hot Daric Barton, a 6 run 7th inning capped by Mark Ellis' 3-run bomb, and 19 hits overall, came roaring back to win their 16th out of 20 -- and serve notice to the Angels that 2010 is not decided just yet.
