Hocking Pays a Price for His Heroics

Hitting game-winning home runs can be hazardous, as Twin utility player Denny Hocking discovered Sunday. Hocking ripped a ninth-inning home run off reliever Al Levine to give Minnesota a 5-4 victory over the Angels, and during a raucous celebration at home plate, one of his teammates whacked Hocking in the face and broke his nose.

“I’m gonna look at the tape and [mess] somebody up!” said Hocking, who suffered a broken nose while breaking up a double play at Oakland in July. “When everybody hit me, I felt like I did in Oakland, like I was bleeding. I don’t know, maybe I was slobbering. I have no idea.”

Initial blame for the injury went to Twin reliever Eddie Guardado, who gave up a game-tying RBI single to Adam Kennedy in the top of the ninth, but Hocking, a graduate of West Torrance High School, wasn’t going to finger the guilty party until all the evidence was reviewed.

“I just hope my nose doesn’t stay crooked,” Hocking said. “Hopefully on our next trip [to Texas and Anaheim] I can do this again, get mobbed and push my nose back the other way.... But if the price of hitting a game-winning home run and winning a series is getting my nose broken, I’ll have to wear it today.”

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For the second time in five days Sunday, an Angel starting pitcher was drilled by a line drive. This time it was Ramon Ortiz, who took A.J. Pierzynski’s shot off the top of his right shoulder in the fourth inning. Pat Rapp suffered a bruised right forearm and had to leave the game after getting hit by Mike Sweeney’s liner Wednesday night.

After absorbing Pierzynski’s liner, Ortiz looked behind the mound for the ball before finally seeing it in front of the mound. Ortiz scooped the ball up and threw wildly to first, allowing Minnesota to score its second run.

Ortiz remained in the game, and there was no significant stiffness or swelling, but he went on to give up two monstrous home runs, to Cristian Guzman in the fifth and David Ortiz in the sixth. Ortiz has allowed a team-high 21 home runs this season.

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When Levine gave up only one earned run in 21 appearances from June 7 to Aug. 1, the setup man credited much of his success to luck, claiming his mistakes that were hit hard in the past were, for some reason, not being hit. Levine’s luck hasn’t been good since then--he has given up seven earned runs in 13 innings of his last 14 appearances.

“That’s just part of the game, you’ve got to take the good with the bad,” Levine (8-9) said. “I have 17 decisions. You can’t get too happy when you win or too sad when you lose. You have to stay on an even keel. What stinks about [Sunday] is we battled back [with four runs in the top of the ninth], and I gave it up.”