August 4: White Sox 5, Angels 4
Scott Podsednik won this game the Ed Farmer Way: With a bloop and a blast.
The former took place with two outs and two strikes in the seventh. John Lackey had gained strength as the game went on, and had retired 15 hitters in a row (including a dropped third strike on Jayson Nix, who reached after the pitch skipped to the backstop).
Lackey threw another great pitch — a fastball tailing off the plate. Podsednik, using a method halfway between unorthodox and complete accident — popped it up with a half-swing. It landed just inside the left-field foul line, and thinking it even surprised Podsednik, because he wasn’t running full-speed around first, and barely made it into second with a slide toward the outside half of the bag.
That extra bag was huge, because Gordon Beckham ripped a fat curve to left to score Pods and tie the game at 4.
He took care of the blast in the game’s last at-bat, following another unlikely double. Nix hadn’t had a great day at the plate, ripped a 1-2 slider from Kevin Jepsen to the left-center gap.
Jepsen’s slider had given Carlos Quentin and Chris Getz fits earlier in the inning, but apparently, he lost the touch. He threw two more unimpressive sliders to Podsednik, and after taking the first one, he lined the next one deep into the right-center gap for his third walk-off hit of the season. Beckham and Dewayne Wise have the other two.
The game’s conclusion was immensely more satisfying than its beginning after Jose Contreras lost the plate.
