Ryan Klesko

Fifth start against San Diego.

Klesko at Coors has always had great success.

Well, I tell you, Jason, to me, threw three out of four pitches in the strike zone, and Mike Winters not anywhere near it with Jason Jennings.

That's frustrating.

Here's the lineup tonight for San Diego.

Mark Loretta, after missing the last four ball games with, uh, an injured finger on his right, no, check it, left hand, is back in there tonight.

Brian Giles, Phil Nevin swinging a hot bat, then Klesko, Green, Xavier Nady in center field.

Ramon Hernandez is behind the plate, and Justin Germano is pitching.

... to work the bases

... or Ryan Klesko.

Klesko.

Yeah.

Look man, I, I...

Maybe I'm over-reactionary in the moment, but for those of you that are all here to be like, "Are you even a, been a true fan?" Dog, I lived through Ryan Klesko, Phil Nevin, Woody Williams, trying to talk myself into Pedro Astacio, being pumped that Clay Meredith was good, all that kind of stuff.

We're a really good team.

And just because we can't catch the Dodgers currently, in terms of winning 100 games every season and winning every single World Series, I think we should appreciate the steps that we have taken in terms of being a much better franchise now than we have ever been at any point.

Okay, he makes out, but you wanted to save Boggs for a situation, and you got the situation.

Well, not only that, but I wanted, uh, uh, you know, I wanted to keep L- um, Klesko out of the game.

So that's why I wanted to keep Lloyd in the game at that point.

That was more important for me.

Double play for the Yankees.

Now, two away.

[cheering] And Andrew Jones is being called back, and here is Ryan Klesko.

Now, you can say, "John, what happens if you bring in Lloyd? They probably would counter with Terry Pendleton." So you have to say to yourself, do I want Wetteland to Klesko, get it home, get home run and win the game for the Braves? Or do I want Lloyd to Pendleton or to the hitter? [cheering] Here's what I would do.

Two men gone.

And now the fate of this fifth game and this final game ever at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium will be turned over to a pinch hitter for Andrew Jones, Ryan Klesko.

Interesting, Pete.

When I was talking to Ryan before the ball game and I was telling him what a difficult time that was last night to come in defensively and have that ball hit in the lights and how frustrating it must have been for him, he said, well, it was.

They're going to walk him intentionally.

How about that? That is going a little bit against the book.

They put a potential winning run on, but they don't want to take a chance with Ryan Klesko.

And they're going to intentionally pass him here.

Weird hits.

Ryan Klesko loses the ball in the lights.

Charlie Hayes' ground ball ends up rolling, staying fair, and the Yankees have a rally.

And when we look at the numbers of this thing, and we will over the next hour or two that we spend here talking about the Yankees winning the world championship, we're going to say to ourselves, how did they do this? I mean, only one or two hitters actually hit for any average whatsoever for the Yankees in this series.

And his frustrations, I thought, were low-lighted tonight when he struck out on that pitch.

I had it here at the top of the sixth inning when he struck out on a pitch that was totally out of the strike zone, whenever it was, in my busy page of notes right here.

And Lopez just looked utterly miserable, as did Ryan Klesko, for the most part, as did a lot of these Atlanta

Braves' high-powered hitters.