Singing the blues
Garth Brooks strikes out in only plate appearance
Posted: Tuesday March 02, 1999 09:01 PM
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Brooks needs all the hitting advice Carlos Hernandez and the Padres can offer. AP |
PEORIA, Ariz. (AP) -- First things first for Garth Brooks.
"You might want to get a helmet," San Diego Padres
manager Bruce Bochy told the country singer as he headed out for his only
at-bat in the club's intrasquad game on Tuesday.
Five pitches later, Brooks was back in the dugout, apologizing to his
teammates for striking out on a neck-high fastball from non-roster
right-hander Salvador Rodriguez.
He didn't deliver a hit, but he at least knew what was going on out
there. He even managed a couple of foul balls.
"It was cool," Brooks said a few hours later, when most of his teammates
were long gone for the day, but he was still in uniform.
"I guess four out of the five pitches I was proud of. The last one I
wasn't. That's the one I'll remember. I was there. That's why I was
apologizing to my teammates. The guy on first has to be moved over and it
was my job to do it."
After whiffing, Brooks tapped the front of his helmet with his bat and
motioned toward Rodriguez, 24, who played in the Mexican Leagues last year,
as if to say, "Nice job."
When Brooks got back to the dugout "he said he was sorry," said scout
Jeff Gardner, who was managing Brooks' team. "He's such a good guy. He
honestly feels like he let us down by striking out."
Heck, Brooks even apologized to reporters later on.
"I knew what I was doing. He just brought it a little harder than he did
the first one," said Brooks, who's in camp on a non-roster basis to live
out his fantasy and help kick-start his baseball-related charitable
foundation. "He bettered me. He shook it off twice, so I knew he was coming
with something I hadn't seen. I'm sorry guys, I apologize to you, too. I
don't know what the hell I was thinking. It was clearly a ball."
When he makes a mistake in batting practice, Brooks usually tells
pitchers, "Pretty pitch," "I'm sorry" or "My fault."
This was his first real game situation. Brooks tried to take Rodriguez's
second pitch to right field, but fouled it into the screen covering the
first-base dugout. He hit a weak foul ball down the third-base line, then
took ball one.
"I'm not proud of the statistic, but I am proud of the at-bat," said
Brooks, who admitted he'd be thinking about it for a while.
"This is going to be my hardest part of the game right here. Because if
every at-bat I remember as well as this one, I'm never going to get to the
next one. I got to let it go. It's hard for me."
Said Bochy: "I didn't expect any more. Actually there was a pretty good
slider, and he made contact to stay alive there. He probably wish he would
have taken a swing at the first pitch [a called strike]. But he had a
couple swings in. A lot of hitters were overmatched today."
Brooks did better with his glove, cleanly handling his only chance in
left field -- a single by Gary Matthews Jr. Brooks even hit the cutoff man.
"I'm real glad that my one field thing wasn't an error," he said.
Bochy said Brooks would likely see action in B games and split squad
games, and might play in some minor-league games so he'd get 4-5 at-bats in
a row.
Brooks said he'd love to bat against intimidating lefty Randy Johnson
of the Arizona
Diamondbacks this spring.
"You might as well go against the best," he said.
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