Post-Game 13 Thread: Un-Lucky 13

REDS 11, DODGERS 9

I've written about Lucky 13 before. This, however, was quite the opposite for Chad Billingsley, who was staked to a three-run lead before he even took the mound, but then vomited this Jason Marquis-like pile of puke at the Great American Ballpark:

You probably can't read that small text. You probably shouldn't read it, anyway; you can see the amount of run-scoring green-fonted horror from here. Four runs before getting the first out of the frame. Six runs, all of which should have been earned except for a Billingsley throwing error. Bills watched his ERA jump from 5.73 to 7.07, and we all watched what little pebbles of confidence Chad had left get pounded into fine granules of sand right there on the mound. Billingsley was gone by the fourth inning, and the Dodgers were staring at a 6-3 hole that grew to 9-3 before Jon Link could stem the bleeding (one nice highlight was seeing Link, in his debut, show some backbone amidst a weak bullpen).

But the unlucky one wasn't Billingsley, who got off the hook after the Dodgers clawed all the way back to tie it at nine runs apiece, off a towering Matt Kemp 3-run HR in the eighth. Nor was it Ramon Troncoso, who walked two runners in the bottom of the eighth and watched them both score when a Reds reserve hit the game-winning RBI and Ronnie Belliard dropped the ball in a rundown (allowing the 11th Red run). No, the unlucky ones are Dodger fans, who get teased with a six-run comeback and then left alone a split-second later with a stinky loss. Yucch. I need a drink.