Head Spinning Day of Baseball

While off the field, there was sad news, on the field, there were strange and head spinning happenings all over baseball. We had a cycle. We had a first baseman pitch. We had the debut of a new stadium and we had two players hit their 300th homers in the same game. Let's recap.

We'll start with the cycle. Orlando Hudson hit an infield single, a homer and a double against Randy Johnson and finished with the hardest part of any cycle, a triple down the right field corner. He just beat the relay throw into third. He was unaware of what he had done until he got into the dugout. A cycle has occurred only 284 times in major league history before Hudson's and his was the first for the Dodgers since Wes Parker did it in extra innings in 1970. The last Dodger to do it in a regulation game was Gil Hodges in 1949.

In other news of the day, Chien-Ming Wang of the Yankees had his second consecutive miserable start and only lasted an inning. The Bay Rays beat up the Yankees so badly that Nick Swisher came on to pitch the bottom of the eighth for the Yankees. Swisher, who has been one of the few Yankee highlights this short season, hit a homer in the game and upped his team lead in RBI to ten. Since the bullpen was gassed, he was given the ball by Girardi in the eighth.

The game was laughable by the time Swisher came in to pitch. Jorge Posada went to play first base while Swisher came in to pitch and the score was 15 - 5. The Fan was following along on Yahoo GameDay and when Swisher walked Upton and Willie Aybar singled to left, the Fan groaned and thought it would soon get very embarrassing. But then Gabe Kapler struck out (he'll never live that down), Carlos Pena popped out to second and Pat Burrell flied out to left. So Swisher will probably retire with a 0.00 ERA.

The Mets had their opening night in Citi Field and lost to the Padres. The winning run was brought in by a Pedro Feliciano balk. That always sucks. The Fan wonders how a home team feels in a new park. They have to feel like visitors themselves, no? At least for a while anyway.

The coolest feat of the day came in the top of the second inning at Detroit in a game that the White Sox beat the Tigers. Jermaine Dye and Paul Konerko both hit their 300th career homers, not only in the same game, but in back to back at bats. How cool is that?

So in the last two days we've had a triple play, back to back 300th homers, a first baseman/outfielder pitching, a cycle and we haven't even mentioned the near no-hitter by Ted Lilly. The Fan can't wait to see what will happen tomorrow!