Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2003 | 10:14 a.m.
MLB snap shot
Until the A's went to Boston last week. Tejada has produced six multihit games in a row, going 15-for-27 with four homers, five doubles and 10 RBIs, boosting his slugging percentage from .422 to .461.
A 6-1 left-hander, Rusch won a game at Pittsburgh on April 8, and he hasn't won since. He lost 10 of 13 starts after beating the Pirates, was sidelined by a groin injury and then relegated to the bullpen.
Two Las Vegas-born closers have had difficulty handling the heat in their new roles this season.
Mike MacDougal of Kansas City was fortunate that the Minnesota Twins got to the Royals early Sunday at the Metrodome, or he would have been tagged with more than just two earned runs in the eighth inning.
Rocky Biddle's return home to the West last week, with the Montreal Expos, was downright ugly.
MacDougal's family moved to Arizona in his youth, and he went from Mesa (Ariz.) High to Wake Forest.
The Biddles moved to Southern California, where Rocky attended Temple City High, in suburban Los Angeles, before going to Long Beach State.
Wednesday night, Biddle's wife, Tina, sat with 59 other friends and family members at Dodger Stadium, where they were welcomed as "The Rocky Biddle Fan Club" on the stadium's huge message board.
At least 40 others who are tight with the Biddles attended, then all watched the evening unravel as Biddle gave up Adrian Beltre's game-winning, three-run homer in the 10th.
"A bad pitch at the wrong time," Biddle told MLB.com. "You know when you give up a game-winning, walk-off home run."
In Biddle's next appearance, Saturday in San Diego, he walked Mark Kotsay on five pitches, with the bases loaded, to force in the only run of the game, again in the 10th. That dropped him to 4-7.
He had squatted on the hill, with both arms out, and yelled at plate umpire Joe Brinkman after ball four to Kotsay -- which Kotsay called "borderline" -- allowed Brian Buchanan to traipse in with the winner.
Brinkman had immediately turned and walked away after the ball-four call.
"I'm disappointed because I didn't want to be in that position in the first place," Biddle told the Montreal Gazette. "I can't say it wasn't my fault. I lost the game."
He lost another game this month, to Colorado, and Biddle's ERA has shot from 3.50 to 4.52 over the past three weeks.
That was a position-by-committee last season. Scott Stewart, who blew only two of 19 save opportunities, hung onto it the longest, then bone spurs in his left elbow sidetracked him in September.
The Expos acquired Biddle as a free agent. He had spent time with the Chicago White Sox, with whom he had three stints on the disabled list in four years.
Biddle, 27, lost only one of his first 32 appearances this season. The two times he blew saves over that span, Montreal won both games.
A 6-foot-3, 230-pound right-hander, he both blew a save and lost a game in Pittsburgh in June. In July, he did that twice in three trips to the mound. He has lost three times in his past six appearances.
Biddle makes $320,000 this season, while MacDougal, mistakenly called "Robert" on a preseason salary list by the Associated Press, earns $301,000 in '03. The minimum is $300,000.
With an abundance of winter work that increased his low-90-mph fastball to the mid-90s and honed his location, the longtime starter won the Royals' closer job over Ryan Bukvich and Jeremy Hill in the spring.
That post had been vacated by Roberto Hernandez's free-agent departure to Atlanta.
MacDougal, 26, saved 10 consecutive games, between June and July. He hasn't been in many save situations of late, but his ERA has ballooned from 2.59 to 4.67 over the past five weeks.
In fact, MacDougal, a 6-4, 195-pound righty, has been in only four save positions since July 18, and has blown -- and lost -- half of them.
He told the Kansas City Star that, lately, "it (seems) like a lot of ground balls have been finding holes."
That's hardly a healthy sign for a team in the playoff hunt, and his lack of concentration Sunday showed that he has not solved his problems.
A week earlier, Royals manager Tony Pena used Curtis Leskanic to finish a victory. Friday night, Pena turned to Jeremy Affeldt, whom Pena allowed to get the final seven outs of another win.
Pena said he had "no reason" to tap another reliever, because Affeldt was strong. MacDougal has yielded 16 earned runs over his last 12 1/3 innings of work.
"We need him to be confident, and we need him to get guys out," Royals right fielder Aaron Guiel told the Star. "We need him to be dominating in (tight) situations, so that hitters fear him."
It had nothing to do with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, either, whom Ludwick and the Cleveland Indians dispatched in a three-game sweep.
Ludwick's adversary was Robert Szasz, easily the most vocal of the Tropicana Field crowd of 14,507 on Sunday, like most days. A season-ticket holder, Szasz usually picks out one foe to heckle for an entire series from his perch behind home.
Ludwick, however, has been in a zone of his own. Dealt from Texas to the Indians in July, he has gone 12-for-32 (.375) in his past seven games, with five multihit games, two home runs, a triple, a double and nine RBIs.
In Minnesota on Aug. 12, he had his first multihomer game in a 9-6 victory against the Twins. Before his recent hot stretch, he was at .202. Ludwick is hitting .244.
With runners in scoring position, he's a lethal .444.
Just trying to get the head of the bat on the ball, Ludwick said. He didn't say that Szasz's noggin would have made a perfect target. It was Cleveland's lone visit to Tampa this season.
"He was trying to get in my dome, but I didn't let him," Ludwick told The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. "He said Texas was glad to get rid of me and kept telling me I'm striking out 33 percent of the time."
From the start of July to just before the Indians-Devil Rays series, Ludwick had struck out 40 times in 119 trips to the plate. At least Szasz does his homework.
His average finally dipped below .300 almost three weeks ago, but it only stayed there for four days. Back-to-back two-hit games got it back to .300. Then he dropped below it for a day. Then another day.
Consecutive days, he was at .300. Then two down. Two up. Two down. With three hits Sunday, Baldelli is currently hitting .300. No wonder Rays officials have scrambled to hold a Baldelli bobblehead day, Sept. 7. The first 5,000 fans will get mini Baldellis.
Halberstam's book is about the lifelong friendship of former Boston teammates Dom DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, Bobby Doerr and Williams, whose decapitated head and body are supposedly in separate receptacles in an Arizona cryonics facility.
"I was appalled. It seemed gruesome ... a desecration," said Halberstam, of his first thoughts when he heard about the state of Williams' body. "Your mind, your brain, is filled with these images of him as a player ...
"The last thing in the world you want is your brain to be invaded by this cancerous last image of him and the desecration, physically, of his body. The idea of this terrible thing happening to Ted, a man for whom dignity meant so much ... it's a very sad final chapter."
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