ANAHEIM, Calif. – Thanks to thousands of Wiffle ball games on the front lawn of his parents’ Riverside, Calif., home, Dan Giese was on familiar ground when he took the Angel Stadium mound yesterday to face the Angels.
“It was my first start (in Anaheim), but in my head I had done it a thousand times,” Giese said of pitching inside the park where he watched Wally Joyner’s Angels play while growing up.
Had it not been for the Angels torching Yankees relievers Jose Veras and Edwar Ramirez, Giese would have attended a family barbecue last night with a victory. But Veras flushed a 3-1 lead in the seventh and Ramirez was the primary reason the Angels plated eight runs in the eighth for an 11-4 victory.
“I have been on the other side of that as a reliever,” Giese said of the bullpen meltdown. “I have been there and it hurts.”
According to Pudge Rodriguez, only one of Giese’s 83 pitches was bad: A sixth-inning home run hit by Mark Teixeira.
“He made one mistake,” the catcher said. “After that he did a great job.”
Giese purchased 11 tickets for family and friends and the other 40 had to pay to see a dream come alive.
“It was emotional when I went out there to stretch, to see my family in the stands,” Giese said.
That emotion didn’t overwhelm the pitcher, who spent nine years in the minors before working eight games last year for the Giants in his first taste of major league life.
He retired the first seven batters he faced, fanned Vladimir Guerrero and got Torii Hunter and Garret Anderson on fly balls after Teixeira opened the fourth with a single. He recovered from Teixeira’s homer to whiff Guerrero and get Hunter to pop up to keep the Yankees ahead, 3-1.
“I felt like a kid,” Giese said. “That’s all my memories as a kid.”
Fortunately those memories can’t be ruined by Veras and Ramirez.