Old Time Family Baseball

After some 220 at bats, Lastings Milledge finally has hit his first home run of the 2010 season. Still, it wasn’t enough as the Pirates lost 3-2 to the Athletics. Despite the low score, this was one of the worst played games I’ve ever witnessed as the Pirates looked more like the Washington Generals of baseball than a real Major League club.

The first run of the game scored when Cliff Pennington should have been picked off at first, but instead the throw got past Garrett Jones and Pennington went scampering into third. The throw into third would have beat him there as well except that, again, the ball got past Andy Laroche and Pennington crossed the plate for the first run.

Later, with Jack Cust on first base, Mark Ellis hit a deep fly ball that McCutchen was able to run down. The only problem was that the ball clanked off of McCutchen’s glove and runners stood at second and third. Eventually, Ross Ohlendorf walked in the A’s second run.

After the Pirates tied the game at 2-2, Kurt Suzuki came to the plate and hit a foul pop behind the plate that Jason Jaramillo should have easily caught. Except that he didn’t. Two pitches later Suzuki hit a solo home run to give the A’s their 3-2 win.

Just to top things off, in the top of the ninth Pedro Alvarez was hit with Jose Tabata’s ground ball for the last out of the game. Seriously. This all seriously happened. Every single A’s run came from Pittsburgh errors and we ended the game with a baserunner being hit with the ball. Applaud the Pirates because they consistently find brand new ways to lose ball games.