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Angels rookie catcher Carlos Perez came up from the minor leagues and started his first game in the bigs tonight. In the ninth inning of his first game, he won the game with a walk-off home run. That's rare. The last player to hit a walk-off homer in his first game was Miguel Cabrera in 2003.
The Angels barely know this guy but they mobbed Perez when he got to the plate, they dumped ice water (or some cold liquid) on his head, gave him a Cindo de Mayo sombrero to wear, and stood on the field in appreciation while he did the required post-game chat with Alex Curry. Welcome to Orange County, dude. Perez is a 24-year-old from Venezuela who came to the Angels organization in an off-season trade with Houston. Cabrera also is from Venezuela.
There's video of the moment at MLB.com.
Meanwhile: The Dodgers won Tuesday in Milwaukee, 8-2, and lead the division, but ace pitcher Clayton Kershaw has not been himself. Today, ESPN baseball blogger David Schoenfield looked into Kershaw's rash of home runs allowed on balls left where he didn't want them, and his unimpressive results so far this season, and wondered if something is wrong. If there is something wrong, and the Dodgers lose their most important player on top of injuries to several other pitchers, there would be trouble ahead.
While we're talking about baseball: The Baseball Reliquary, Terry Cannon's local baseball history group, announced it will induct former Angel Steve Bilko, former Dodger Glenn Burke and baseball card maven Sy Berger into its Shrine of Eternals. Burke is the late 1970s outfielder who was traded after the Dodgers realized he was gay. Bilko was an icon of the Angels when they were a minor league team in the Pacific Coast league, "by far the biggest sports star in Los Angeles history prior to the arrival of the Dodgers," the Reliquary says. He played for both the Dodgers and the Angels in their first seasons in Los Angeles.
