Barry Bonds still can't throw out Sid Bream at home plate alert

Actually, he batted .260 with a .433 on-base percentage and the only post-season home run as a Pirate.

 

I haven't watched a replay of it, but I remember thinking Drabek was lucky to get through eight and didn't have much left. You just knew that Leyland was going to bring in Belinda at some point and ol' Boom-Boom really struggled if he had to come in with runners on base.

 

I remember watching the game live. I was a year into my first newspaper gig about 50 minutes from downtown Pittsburgh and had covered the Game 3. Or at least been in the press box for Game 3.

For this one I was at home in my easy chair rooting for the Pirates, not because I liked the Pirates but because all my friends liked the Pirates. Plus, everyone around would be so much happier. And I might get to go to a World Series game.

Then Francisco Cabrera singled, Sid Bream slid home with the winning run, Barry Bonds left, and the Pirates haven't had a winning season since. I buried my head in the arm of my easy chair. Watching it today for the first time since (the whole inning, uncut, not just the replay of the winning hit) brought the same chills I felt then.

 

Oh Drabek was totally out of gas by the 8th... But still ... still.

 

I stand corrected on Bonds' numbers.

rb

 

I remember it too. The gang that I hung out with in HS was down to three guys, since everyone else was away at college. It was a Thursday night and one of our buddies was off getting laid, or something, so my other buddy asked if I wanted to stop by his house and hang out. He HATED sports, and I said "Not unless we can watch the game." Shockingly, he said yes, so I went over, and proceeded to, for the next three-plus hours, explain baseball to him. (No I did not say "Mike Scioscia sucks!" )

All my buddy took from it was--and OOP and the rest of PiratesSportsJournalists.com Nation will appreciate this, and by appreciate it I mean it will further destroy their insides--was Doug Drabek's mustache. I kid you not. The whole night he's raving over Drabek's mustache and how he wants to grow one just like it. He did grow one shortly thereafter, but it was nowhere near as bushy or as gray as Drabek's.

For the next 10 years, any time I mentioned baseball, he asked me what Doug Drabek was doing. One year, when I was at the Hall of Fame, I saw Drabek's picture in the no-hitters display, so I took a picture of it and brought it to my friend the next time I saw him.

Then he met a woman who was a huge Yankees fan, married her and now talks baseball at the drop of a dime and knows what he's talking about. Apparently my tits weren't nice enough, or something, for the words to sink in.

 

No wonder I cancelled my DIRECTV account. Assholes.