Athletics defeat White Sox 5-4 in 14 innings

April 25, 2012 • 2 Comments

Less than 12 hours since leaving, I was right back in the parking lot in Oakland to cover the match up between the Oakland Athletics and the Chicago White Sox. (For those who don't live in the bay area - Oracle Arena and O.co Coliseum share a parking lot)

Though I presumed there wouldn't be much batting practice since the teams had played last night and the sky was preparing to drop some rain, I showed up early just in case. And sure enough, they took batting practice.

But as I was trying to get some nice portraits incognito, I was busted by Kila Ka'aihue who gave me a great big grin. Haha.

Jarrod Parker stepped on the mound for his first game for the A's and just the second MLB game of his career.

He faced off against Chris Sale, one of the lankiest pitchers I've seen. Though it's hard not to look lanky when you're 6'6".

Though hits were allowed and plays made, both pitchers were have strong performances and the game was moving quite quickly.

Umpire Jerry Layne was hit by one of the pitches which despite the pads, can really do some damage!

And after making sure his was ok, he took the bat from batter Eduardo Escobar and pretended he was going to hit him.

Before laughing and returning to the game.

A's put up two runs in the 6th after Josh Reddick batted in Jemile Weeks, and then Yoenis Cespedes batted in Reddick - great team effort.

White Sox responded with a close call run of their own.

A's up 2-1, Grant Balfour came in for the save at the top of the ninth...

But things didn't go as planned as Paul Konerko hit his 400th career home run on the first pitch. (ha - works out nice to have him running past the 400 mark, didn't even plan that!)

So we went into extra innings... again...and again... and again.

There were a couple moments where I thought the game was going to be won by either side, but nope!

In the fourteenth inning Alexei Ramirez hit a double that sent in both Dayan Viciedo and Alejandro De Aza.

The A's were down 4-2 but their spirits weren't down as Hector Santiago came in to pitch for what would have been the save.

Reddick singled, then was batted in when Cespedes hit a clutch home run.

I was pretty pleased for the A's but worried that we were going to go right back into more innings with the scored tied up again.

Then Seth Smith and Kurt Suzuki both hit singles. And with two runners on base my smiley Kila Ka'aihue from batting practice was up, looking at his bat like "don't let me down"