This is a continuation of our last two posts. Yeah, Notre Dame beat us up pretty good in the second game of the double-header that day, but like I said we STOLE a game from them. Even though we got beat…we still got in a few shots Verdugo-style. And we got our shots in on the big-gun cleanup hitter they had with the last name Milligan.
Milligan looked like what you’d expect a guy named Milligan to look like. Fair skinned, reddish hair. But he was a stout dude and he was strong. He had big forearms and with his hat on kind of reminded me of Popeye. He had that step haircut thing going on. Nobody gave this guy any shit I noticed…and he didn’t have much of a sense of humor. He came from a Baseball family. He was pretty much all business out there on the field and I must admit he did hit the shit out of the ball.
He reached base on a fielder’s choice in the second inning. This is when the fun began.
Milligan was getting a little too big of a lead off of first base. So we picked over. Hank was playing first base. He took the throw from the pitcher and made a sweeping slap-tag that caught the diving Milligan right in his face. Milligan’s helmet was all out of whack from the impact. It was down over his eyes when he got up and he tried to look cool while he readjusted it. He wasn’t looking too cool, either.
So he then got off of the bag and took an even bigger leadoff. So we picked over again. Hank did the exact same thing. Sweeping slap tag to his head…making sure that the ball was in the not-so-padded area of his glove. Hank was making sure that when he slap-tagged him that the BALL was involved with that slap-tag as well as his glove. The second one caught him in the nose/cheekbone area. Milligan was NOT happy.
So he got an even bigger lead….
And we picked over again. Hank slapped him real good in the face again. Now Milligan was flat-out pissed.
As he was taking his lead off of the bag you could hear him say in a gravelly voice “You slap-tag me again like that and I’m gonna rip your head off.”
Then he got an even BIGGER lead.
So we picked over. And Hank slapped-tagged him again…harder than the first three. This went on another couple of times. Each time Milligan getting slap-tagged harder than the last, and Milligan insisting on taking a bigger lead-off from the bag. Hank never even made an effort to tag his arm or hand! Every time, right in the head/face!! Milligan finally realized after about five slap-tags to his dome that it might be a good idea to STOP taking such a big lead. Hell, this guy could hit but he wasn’t any threat to steal a base. Milligan finally backed down and took a normal lead-off from the bag and all the bullshit ended.
The beautiful thing about all of this was that Hank was slap-tagging a pretty big dude. If they went at it…I’m sure most people would have put their money on Milligan. Hank never said a word to the guy. He just kept slap-tagging him as hard as he could until he backed off. And if they did go at it, I’m sure Hank would have more than stood his ground. This was just a little old-fashioned power-struggle that was going on between Milligan and Hank. And I gotta give the “W” to Hank. Milligan warned him..but Hank came right back and slap-tagged him again….TWICE!!!
Yes-sir-ree. ‘Ol Hank. The heart and soul of that 1990 Team. His jersey number was “00.” “Double-Ott” we called him. And while we lost ONE of the battles that day, we WON the other battle…but the slap-tagging incident was the ‘tie-breaker.” And the way we served notice on Milligan…Verdugo had CLEARLY won the war that day!!!!!!!!
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