The Dodgers and Giants tried to break your heart with a near no-hitter and a first home run
Former Major League Commissioner Bart Giamatti wrote that baseball "is designed to break your heart."
The Dodgers and Giants seemingly tried to prove that by having your heart straight up explode out of your chest on Friday night. Playing on a rainy night in San Francisco, Ross Stripling came out to make his Major League debut with the Dodgers. It was a start that the 2012 5th round Draft pick, ranked 16th in Los Angeles' system, never would have made were it not for injuries that decimated the Dodgers' rotation. After all, the right-hander only had 67 1/3 IP at Double-A last season.
So, of course, Stripling had a no-hitter going into the eighth inning. Sure, he'd struggled with his command, as any rookie would, and he received quite a bit of help from the defense behind him as Joc Pederson and Yasiel Puig came to his aid with some brilliant diving catches.
After Justin Turner helped start a phenomenal double play to end the seventh, even Stripling was impressed. With the play and, presumably, with his good fortune:
After walking his fourth batter with one out in the eighth, reaching the 100-pitch plateau at the same time, manager Dave Roberts came out to lift the starter. With the Dodgers nursing a two-run lead and Stripling leaving the ball up in the zone, one could argue that it was the smart baseball decision, without even thinking of the strain on the young pitcher's arm. Not that it made the heartache of the longest hitless MLB debut in modern baseball history ending early any easier to take.
With reliever Chris Hatcher taking over, Trevor Brown and his .573 OPS in 44 career plate appearances stepped to the plate for the Giants. Perhaps you're the morbid type and, despite Brown's seven career Minor League homers, you turned to your seat partner and mused about Brown going deep in this situation.
If you did, you must feel pretty good about yourself. Because while one story ended, another was created.
Surely there's a German word for this emotion, this feeling of both immense joy and sadness intermingling into one stew of gastric distress.
Knowing that fans couldn't possibly handle the complex emotional soup stirring in their brains, the Giants' ballboy leapt, or should we say slipped, into action.
Bless you ball dude, for stepping up to perform the action that all great court jesters did.
The Giants would eventually win in the 10th inning on a walk-off home run by Brandon Crawford , though if those in attendance were too exhausted to feel emotion any longer, that would be understandable.
