It’s Angels That Fall When Erstad Hits Wall

Tiger left fielder Bobby Higginson has played in Comerica Park for two seasons now, so he knows how treacherous life can be for a center fielder here, with the wall behind you 420 feet from the plate and the gaps to your sides 395 feet from home.

“It’s definitely a tough center field to play because there’s a lot of ground to cover,” Higginson said after his three-hit, two-run effort led the Tigers to a 4-1 victory over the Angels before 22,133 Saturday. “You’ve got to calculate your gambles.”

Angel center fielder Darin Erstad, of course, does not play this game with a calculator. He’s more of a slide-rule guy: If you don’t dive for a ball you might be able to catch or crash into a wall trying, don’t bother playing.

This reckless abandon has usually served Erstad well, resulting in several spectacular plays that earned him a Gold Glove award in 2000, but not this weekend in Comerica.

Erstad has gambled twice here and lost, though he received a nice consolation prize Saturday: He was able to walk away from a bone-crunching collision with the right-center field wall in the eighth inning.

With one out, no one on base and the score tied, 1-1, Higginson drove a ball to the gap off Angel reliever Shigetoshi Hasegawa, who has a loss and two blown saves on this trip.

Erstad, after a sprint of about 30 yards, leaped at the wall but could not make the catch, hurling his body full-speed into the out-of-town scoreboard at the base of the fence.

Erstad’s right knee and left wrist bore the brunt of the collision, and when he bounced off the wall, hit the ground and remained there for a few seconds, it stirred memories of former Angel Bobby Valentine’s ugly, career-altering collision with Anaheim Stadium’s outfield fence in 1973.

“I was just gathering myself,” Erstad said, “making sure everything was attached.”

Erstad cut and bruised his left wrist and scraped his right knee, but he was able to continue. Higginson wound up with a triple, and Hasegawa walked Dean Palmer.

After an intentional walk to Robert Fick, Deivi Cruz, trying to protect the plate on a tough 1-2 pitch, reached out and tapped a tiebreaking, bloop RBI single to right-center.

Juan Encarnacion’s sacrifice fly and Angel catcher Jose Molina’s passed ball scored two more Tiger runs, and the Angels, who had only three hits, including Erstad’s seventh-inning, game-tying solo homer, lost for the fourth time in five games to fall a season-high 11 games behind first-place Seattle. The Tigers won their fifth in a row and, for the first time in six years, have a .500 record in May.

The Angels, who wasted Pat Rapp’s strong seven-inning, one-run (unearned), six-hit, five-strikeout effort, play the Tigers in Comerica once more today, and Erstad probably will be glad to leave the place.

He came up short on his diving attempt of Damion Easley’s drive Friday night, and the ball rolled all the way to the wall for a three-run, inside-the-park homer that pulled Detroit to within 6-5 in the sixth. The Tigers eventually won, 7-6, in 11 innings.

“There’s a lot more room to cover here,” Erstad said. “You just keep running because no matter where you’re playing, it seems impossible to get to the wall here. But I found it somehow.”

And then some. This was about as violent a collision as Erstad has had in his five years in the big leagues, but it’s not about to deter him.

“The day I start playing [to avoid injury] is the day I’m quitting,” Erstad said. “I’ve got a pitcher on the hill trying to succeed, I’m going to do everything in my power to help. You know what? If I break my neck on that play, I go home. That’s the way I approach it. I could care less where the wall is at. I’m going to run until I catch it.”

The wall isn’t Erstad’s only obstacle on such plays. So is his right knee, which is still not 100% after suffering a mild strain of his medial collateral ligament in April.

“I’m a step slower,” Erstad said, begrudgingly. “It’s not that I’m slow, but there’s a hitch in my giddy-up. It’s very frustrating, because the mind says yes, and the body isn’t there. I’ve missed five or six balls this year that I know I can catch but I’ve been a step short with a dive or a lunge.”