Davis slams former mates in 51s’ victory

Steve Guiremand

Monday, Aug. 5, 2002 | 10:10 a.m.

In your face!

Las Vegas catcher Tommy Davis didn't exactly say that following the 51s' 10-8 victory over the Memphis Redbirds Sunday afternoon at Cashman Field. But he certainly put himself in position to utter that phrase if he wanted to.

You see, it was the Redbirds who had released Davis only a week earlier while the teams were playing in Memphis. And Las Vegas, which lost backup catcher Ryan Kellner to an season-ending elbow injury around the same time, was in the market for a catcher.

So Davis signed with the 51s last Wednesday. And Sunday afternoon against his old team, all Davis did was just miss hitting for the cycle, going 4-for-4 with five RBIs, including a first- inning grand slam.

Sweet redemption, huh?

"Nah, not necessarily," the 29-year-old Davis said. "You can't look at it like that. (Getting released) is just part of baseball. Things happen like that. Whoever we were playing today, I'd just want to go out and do the best I could."

Come on, Tommy. Didn't it feel a little nicer to do it against the team that had cut you loose?

"After it is all said and done, I guess there is a little bit of extra satisfaction," Davis said. "But I wasn't looking at it that way."

Davis admitted he was surprised that Memphis let him go.

"I guess it came down to a numbers thing," he said. "When I first got traded over there, both of their catchers were on the disabled list. But then they both came back and (Memphis) told me it was a numbers thing. So they let me go. Yeah, I was surprised because I had been told I was OK and that I was going to be there the rest of the year."

Instead, Davis finds himself in Las Vegas playing for the triple-A affiliate of the Dodgers, who have fond memories of another Tommy Davis. That Tommy Davis played for Los Angeles from 1959-1966 and won National League batting titles in 1962 (.346) and 1963 (.326) and still holds the team's record for most hits in a season (230).

"Yeah, I know a little about him," Davis said. "I've actually had some of his baseball cards sent to me to get signed. They think I'm that Tommy Davis. But I'm not that old."

He's also white. The Tommy Davis of Dodgers fame is black.

Besides his grand slam in the first, which highlighted an eight-run Las Vegas outburst, Davis also singled in the third and tripled off the fence in left-center in the fifth. In his final at-bat in the seventh, he singled into the gap in left-center but was thrown out when he got caught in a rundown between first and second.

"I really wasn't thinking about trying to hit for the cycle," Davis said. "I just tried to put a bat on the ball and have some good swings."