DC’s favorite baseball team, the Nationals, lost to the San Francisco Giants in extra innings 4-2 when the Giants scored a run in the ninth to tie, and World Series hero Pablo Sandoval hit a walk-off homer in the 10th.
Back in DC, also in extra innings, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted that immigration reform package out of mark up and on to the Senate floor, 13-5.
Hard to say who won there.
The Gang of Eight’s compromise is still together, and a pathway to citizenship is still in play for 11 million undocumented immigrants.
But Asian Americans failed to get deleted provisions in the current law restored.
And in the biggest blow, same-sex advocates couldn’t even get a vote on an amendment that would allow for bi-national partners to re-unite.
Same-sex marriage is hard enough. Same sex immigration not even in the discussion.
Discrimination continues. That’s why 13-5 isn’t quite the victory it could have been.
After a discouraging 1-5 road trip, the Giants found out how you can have a discouraging 8-0 victory.
“It does rain on your parade when you lose your starting pitcher,” said Giants manager Bruce Bochy in the post-game news conference.
Pitcher Ryan Vogelsong, who had struggled in his first 8 games with an 8.06 ERA– the highest among all qualifying pitchers in the Majors—was finally pitching a game like everyone knew he could.
And then, he got unlucky.
Afterwards, he didn’t mince words on how he felt.
Yeah, it stinks.
And now he’s out 4-6 weeks.
With the score 6-0 and the Giants batting in the bottom of the 5th,, Vogelsong looked like he had it all together.
He had what some observers still believe is the “best team in baseball” at his mercy with five innings of shut-out ball. He had made Nats phenom Bryce Harper look foolish with a swinging strike three. Vogelsong even had a bunt RBI to help his own cause in the fourth inning.
Vogey was having himself a game.
And then in the fifth, always the toughest inning for him all year, when he’s allowed 16 of his 44 runs and teams have batted .500 against him, Vogelsong survived a Giants error, and went to bat at the bottom of the inning looking to contribute to yet another Giants rally.
But then he took a swing at a ball that hit his pitching hand.
It was enough to force him out of the game as both a hitter and pitcher.
The diagnosis: a fractured right hand, with two breaks to his pinky and a knuckle, requiring surgery in the morning.
The Giants had jumped on Nat’s spot starter Zach Duke early, tagging the Nats with 2 runs in the second, as Pence and Belt singled and Torres and Crawford drove them in. The Giants added 3 more in the fourth, as Pagan and Scutaro delivered RBI hits. For Scutaro, his two hits helped extend his Major League leading hitting streak to 18 games.
Brandon Belt added a home run to right center in the 5th to make it 6-0. Along with three singles, Belt had a four-hit night for the fourth time of his career.
It was working out to be a good cathartic victory, with lots of Giants contributing. The kind of team victory you need after losing 8 out of the last 13 games.
And then all the good feelings were deflated in the bottom of the fifth.
Of course, it was just a game.
Just prior to the start, an announcement was made about the tragedy in Oklahoma where dozens lost their lives to a monstrous tornado.
A moment of silence added a little perspective to the night.
I’m sorry, I must not have the proper immigration visa to comment on the San Francisco Giants poor performance in Toronto. Multi-run defeats to a last place team? I commented at the start of the series, dismissing it saying ex-Giant, new-Blue Jay, Melky Cabrera was having a non-dairy creamer kind of season. But he played more like 100 percent homogenized. And well, there are other things than baseball for a few days.
By the way, was that really baseball? The turf seemed to baffle the Giants, who played like they were newcomers to cricket. That was it, right? It was cricket?
If you can’t trust baseball, what more the government? Between the IRS, Benghazi, and AP scandals, I’ll have more on that later and how it could affect the immigration bill at www.aaldef.org/blog.
Oh, we’re also half-way done with Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month? So now you can officially celebrate if you’re half-Asian? No, AAPI Month is for everyone!
The Giants, all muscle on Mother’s Day, pounded the Atlanta Braves with three solo homers– a splash hit homer into McCovey Cove from Pablo Sandoval, and long-balls to left from Brandon Belt, and Marco Scutaro.
It was just the lift Giants starter Tim Lincecum needed to provide 7 innings of shut-out baseball, as the Giants beat the Braves 5-1, winning three games in the four-game series.
Giants manager Bruce Bochy said Lincecum “was on top of his game,” keeping the ball down with effective use of his secondary pitches.
“Today he had great focus,” said Bochy. “That’s when he’s at his best when he has his concentration on every pitch, and today I thought he did. He didn’t drop his guard at all when he got ahead in the count. He just pitched. Every pitched. He and Buster worked great together.”
I asked Lincecum in the locker-room about that “focus” Bochy talked about.
OK, his best game this year. But, still, as Lincecum said, he’s “not jumping up in the air right now.”
A bit more consistency is needed before we can all joyously proclaim the Lincecum of old is back.
At the start of the game, as Lincecum took the mound, he greeted an older woman, part of the Strike Out Cancer Day ceremonies, with a warm hug and signed her baseball.
Then, as Lincecum has in previous starts, he began to labor—almost like a mother.
In the first inning, he threw as many balls as strikes (nine each) and got into trouble with a runner in scoring position. He settled down to strike out Justin Upton. But then Freddie Freeman drew out a 7-pitch at- bat before flying out to right.
The questions began: Would we see the good Lincecum or bad one today? Would he have that one infamously bad inning?
In the third, the Braves threatened again. Jordan Schafer took Lincecum to a 3-1 count before singling. He stole second and went to third on a grounder. Lincecum then walked the dangerous Brian McCann on 4 straight pitches.
With runners on 1 and 3rd, Lincecum showed his wildness by throwing two more balls out of the zone to the next batter, clean-up hitter Justin Upton. Then Lincecum settled down, and with his fast-ball got Upton to fly-out to right.
From then on, Lincecum cruised with “three-up/three-down” innings in the 4th, 5th, and 6th. The seventh was marred by an inconsequential walk. In all, he threw 111 pitches, 65 of them strikes. In pitching shut-out ball, he gave up just two hits, struck out seven and issued three walks.
Lincecum seemed to relax once the offense got going. Belt’s solo blast in the second was just a hint of what was to come. Then came Sandoval’s splash homer in the third. Crawford knocked in a run in the fourth. In the fifth, the Scutaro homer and a ground-rule double from Gregor Blanco added two more runs to complete the scoring.
On this Mother’s Day, there were no bad innings for the Giants at bat, or for Lincecum on the mound.
The seventh win in this 10-game homestand showed Eastern Division leading Atlanta that it’s no fluke the Giants are first place in the West.
