Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Game of the Day (4/21/84)

Expos 4, Cardinals 0 (5). Intermittently effective veteran Bob Forsch took on David Palmer, who had missed two of the previous three seasons...

Wait a minute. Five innings? What's this nonsense?

Turns out, David Palmer threw a rain-shortened perfect game in those five innings. The Excel formula I have to identify no-hitters and perfect games does not include a requirement that the game be played to completion. Hold on a minute.





Now it does. That makes the best game of April 21, 1984 Reds 5, Giants 4. The Cincinnati starter was Joe Price, who had been very effective over the preceding three seasons (albeit with only one of those years spent as a starter). To oppose Price, San Francisco summoned Bill Laskey, who we have seen before in this space.

Laskey walked Tom Lawless to start the first; Lawless then stole second and scored the game's opening run on a Cesar Cedeno single. Neither team got a runner past first in the next four half-innings. The bottom of the third opened with singles by Steve Nicosia and Fran Mullins; Laskey grounded out to advance both runners into scoring position with one out, but Chili Davis grounded to third, with Nicosia getting thrown out at home on the play, and Mullins was then caught stealing home to end the inning.

Cincinnati padded its lead in the fourth on a Dan Driessen single and a double by Dave Concepcion. Two outs later, Price stepped up with Concepcion still on second and doubled as well, making it a 3-0 game. It would be the only extra base hit in Price's 171 career at bats, and it's hard to criticize his timing.

Jack Clark reached on an error and Joel Youngblood on a walk in the fourth, but the Giants were unable to score. Nicosia led off the fifth with a double and was not advanced further. The top of the sixth saw singles from Concepcion and Ron Oester, but Brad Gulden hit into a double play to miss a chance to extend the lead.

That lead would promptly vanish in the bottom of the sixth. Manny Trillo led off with a single, and Clark's walk pushed him to second. Jeffrey Leonard doubled to score one run, and Youngblood doubled as well, scoring two more and tying the game. Price was double switched out along with Gulden; the new battery was Ted Power throwing to Dann Bilardello. Bob Brenly bunted Youngblood to third, but Power struck out Nicosia and got Mullins to pop out, leaving the go-ahead run one base shy.

Cincinnati mounted a seventh-inning rally, courtesy of a one-out single and steal by Lawless and an Eddie Milner walk. But Laskey got Cedeno to pop out before being removed from the game, and Randy Lerch got the same result from Dave Parker to end the inning. Power was flawless in the bottom of the seventh, so the game remained tied going into the eighth.

It did not stay that way for long. Dan Driessen greeted Greg Minton with a walk and moved to second on Concepcion's sac bunt. Oester popped back to the mound, and pinch hitter Duane Walker was intentionally passed.

That brought the Reds' catcher, Bilardello, to the plate. He was frankly a dreadful hitter (career line of .204/.257/.305), but he was also the second catcher the Reds had used in the game. Fortunately, they were carrying three on the roster at the time, so there was no hesitance in hitting for Bilardello with one Tony Perez. The 42-year-old Perez tripled in both runners (amazingly enough, it was not the last triple of his career) before being replaced by pinch runner and third catcher Alex Trevino.

Mike Smith entered for the bottom of the eighth and gave one of the runs back on a Clark double and a Youngblood single, but Tom Hume came on and recorded the last two outs of that inning, then worked around a Gene Richards single and steal in the ninth to secure the save.

It's a good game - close, decided late, and with plenty of runners on (27 combined AB with runners in scoring position), not to mention the half-inning in which two different runners were thrown out at home or the game-deciding triple by an old man. It also helpfully demonstrates the value of a deep roster of position players (the Reds had plenty of pinch hitters and the flexibility to hit for their backup catcher late), which is something that present-day baseball teams tend to sinfully neglect. Finally, it featured an RBI double by a starting pitcher in a game his team won by a single run.

Oh, and it's the third consecutive Bill Laskey start to be selected as the day's best game. I'm already tired of writing about him after 20 days of the 1984 season.

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