Mark Mulder’s 7-year-old son Xander skipped his first baseball game of the season so the entire family could be at the Coliseum to watch Tim Hudson and Barry Zito pitch on the same day as their impressive careers near the end.
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All of the A’s players wore the “Zito look” of high socks on the afternoon to honor the lefty, with Bob Melvin even hiking his trousers up when he went to the mound to take Zito out.
Hudson, who joined Zito and Mark Mulder, who made it to the big leagues with the A’s in 2000, to comprise the A’s Big Three rotation from 2000-2004, left Oakland for nine years in Atlanta and never believed he’d come back to pitch on the West Coast. But you have to keep a mindset, too.
“I’m a SoCal guy who has spent much of my adult life in Northern California, ” Zito said. “Didn’t throw that many pitches, so maybe next time out I’ll be nice and fresh”. The 37-year-old’s fastball topped out at about 85 miles per hour and his curve didn’t have the bite in the strike zone for which he’d been famous.
The start just did not go well. After a scoreless first inning, Hudson gave up three runs while walking three batters and hitting two more in the second.
But, again, no one should care how well he pitched. “There’s no real [promotions] strategy”, says Ken Pries, the team’s Vice President of Broadcasting and Communications. In what was supposed to be the matchup of the year, turned out to be a game to remember for rookie Jarrett Parker. That’s all anyone needed out of this matchup.
Tim Hudson was traded to the Braves by Billy Bean in 2005, got hurt, had Tommy John surgery and came back as the NL Comeback Player of the Year in 2010. It doesn’t matter, really, that this may only amount to a couple of nice standing ovations and a few ghastly innings. And man, it went on forever. The teams announced that Zito and Hudson would be the confirmed starters for the game on Saturday. About a billion runs were scored.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the start either pitcher imagined. This game was a black hole that sucked in fun and spit out frustration.
Though they both broke into the league with the Oakland A’s and formed two-thirds of the three-headed pitching monster that made Oakland a force to be reckoned with in the Moneyball era, from there their career paths diverged. “It wasn’t just the three of us, it was that whole team those years”.
The A’s got off to a good start in the post-Zito end of the game.
“A lot of those years we were so young and immature, I guess you could say. Today was really thrilling”. The Giants hadn’t hurt him in the first two, but two doubles and two singles produced three runs.
Parker’s other homers Saturday were off lefties, Zito and Drew Pomeranz.
Zito outlasted Hudson by making it to the third inning, but it was not easy for the left-hander, who gave up two runs in both the first and second innings to trail 4-3. “Totally came in today thinking it was going to be a 1-0 Giants win“. That’s obviously not ideal.
The San Francisco Giants defeated the Oakland Athletics 14-10 today in a game which saw two pitchers beloved by both fan bases face off. Just a night earlier, Parker had poked a 454-foot homer into the far reaches beyond center field.
Anyway, that was it. The A’s put together a small teAse in the ninth inning, but Santiago Casilla is good and the A’s are not. Manager Bruce Bochy removed Hudson to boos, then the pitcher walked off and gave a slight wave and tip of his cap, though clearly disappointed.
The trio represents three of the best winning percentages in Oakland history: Hudson (.702) ranks first, Mulder (.659) second and Zito (.618, tied for third). It was always meant to reside in the Bay Area, a tribute to both pitchers and a treat for A’s and Giants fans.
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Howe said, “I would have loved to have been there to see it, ” but the 68-year-old is in a hospital in Pittsburgh after suffering six broken ribs and a punctured lung in a fall last weekend.
