Fashion statement of the week
It was one of those new-millennium baseball moments that was bound to happen one of these days.

Now that each team has approximately 112 different uniform combinations, it was only a matter of time until somebody made it onto the field wearing a different combination than his 24 teammates.

	Mathews

Well, it finally happened last Sunday. And the winner of this sartorial baseball lottery was ...

Astros reliever T.J. Mathews.

The good news was that, as he headed for the mound Sunday to finish up the last two innings of a 7-1 win in Atlanta, Mathews at least had his color combination right -- the black shirt with gold lettering. There was just one minor glitch:

Everyone else on his team had a shirt that said, "Houston," on the front. That's the road top. Mathews' shirt said, "Astros." Which would be the home warm-up top.

Now obviously, it could have been worse -- say, had he been wearing white while everyone else wore black. Or if he'd forgotten to wear any shirt.

But we're concerned that, as baseball's fashion combos grow more and more complicated, the sport itself hasn't sufficiently geared up to keep players on top of ever-changing style developments.

"I think MLB needs to hire a coordinator," Astros broadcast humorist Jim Deshaies told Wild Pitches. "They have umpire supervisors. I think they need a fashion supervisor, somebody like Donna Karan. She could dispatch her minions in the field to go to all the clubhouses and make sure everybody is properly attired."

Or, at the very least, MLB should have a fashion guru tour spring-training camps to provide annual fashion updates.

"I'd like to get Lucian Blackwell in there," Deshaies suggested, "to go to every team, make sure they're coordinated and to advise them: 'Depending on your body type, here's how you wear your pants legs.' The time has come."

Absolutely. Meanwhile, being more fashion-conscious could have other, farther-reaching advantages, too.

"If baseball really wants to reach out and broaden its fan base, reach more women, they can survey people, see if they like these new styles," Deshaies said. "If they'd done that years ago, we could have avoided all sorts of bad looks: The Astros rainbow shirts. Those old Padres uniforms -- whatever they were supposed to be. The Pirates train hats. The White Sox shorts. Think of all the bad fashion looks we could have avoided over the years. Well, there's no reason for that anymore."

Yes, we could give a whole new baseball meaning to "styling" at home plate. And it's high time we did. Ah, to think T.J. Mathews could have revolutionized baseball -- all by wearing the wrong uniform. Isn't that always the way?

Slammer of the week
He may not be Mike Cameron. Then again, who is at the moment? But the Angels' lovable mini-leadoff sensation, David Eckstein, was another guy who reminded us this week that baseball is an insane and beautiful sport.

He did that by hitting grand-slam home runs two days in a row -- the second of which just happened to win a game with two outs in the 14th inning and his team trailing by a run.

	Eckstein

And even David Eckstein conceded that was about as likely a development as Bart Simpson winning a best-actor Emmy.

"It was the last thing on my mind," Eckstein told Wild Pitches. "I know that. I never even thought of anything like this. I mean, you dream of hitting a game-winning grand slam when you're younger and all that. But I never, ever thought I'd do it on back-to-back days. Very bizarre. But that's why you play the games."

And that's why you watch the games. And that's why we never run out of ways to fill up this column.

Before we get to all that grand-slamming, though, we have this important announcement:

If you don't like David Eckstein, you either haven't been paying attention or you're hereby banned from ever watching another Angels game.

How can you not love a guy who's the approximate size of Mo Vaughn's bicep? Who throws himself in front of baseballs thrown at 98 miles an hour (with no pads) and gets hit by 20 pitches a year?

Who fouls off like 50 pitches a game? Who would give up a month's pay to get on base leading off an inning? Whose uniform is so dirty pretty much all day every day, he's a human Tide commercial?

"He's every bit 5-foot-8," Angels broadcast hyperactivity machine Rex Hudler told Wild Pitches, "if you put him on a stretching machine and stretched him out. But dude, he's Mighty Mouse on this team. Every night, he comes to save the day."

Nevertheless, for all the great things we can find to say about the Angels' plucky dust-storm shortstop-leadoff whiz, well, he's not exactly Mark McGwire. (Career high in any professional season: six homers.)

	“	He's every bit 5-foot-8 if you put him on a stretching machine and stretched him out. But dude, he's Mighty Mouse on this team. Every night, he comes to save the day. ”
		— Rex Hudler, Angels broadcaster, on shortstop David Eckstein

Heck, for that matter, he's not even Robin (Mr. Grand Slam) Ventura. Because, until last weekend, David Eckstein says he had never hit a home run with the bases loaded. And not just in the big leagues. We mean never. Ever.

Ever?

"Ever," Eckstein said. "Little League -- never. Tee ball -- never. I never hit any home runs in Little League. I had like two or three my whole life going into college."

OK, how about Nintendo?

"Oh, yeah," Eckstein said. "I got one in Nintendo."

Well, he admits he did hit a ball once that should have been a grand slam. It was in a summer league in Georgia a few years back. One day he was playing on a field which had a big, thick, black electric wire running across the outfield, about 20 feet above the left-field wall.

"It was funny," Eckstein remembered. "We were joking about it before the game. I said, 'What happens if a ball hits the wire?' They said, 'No one ever hits the wire.' ... So that day, I come up, the bases are loaded, and I hit one. It's about to go out, when it hits the wire -- and comes straight down. But all our guys thought it was a slam, so they're not running. And they wind up throwing one of them out at the plate."

That, then, was his closest call. And not only was it not a slam -- but it turned into an out.

Which brings us to last Saturday: Angels versus Blue Jays. Fifth inning. Bases loaded. The Angels had just rallied to take a 7-4 lead. Whereupon Eckstein lofted the first slam of his lifetime (non-computer-game division) into the first row in the left-field corner off Scott Cassidy.

He described that one as "a thrill." But he had no idea what was on the next page of his script.

The next afternoon, there he was, coming to the plate with the bases loaded again. Except this time, it was the 14th inning and the two teams were heading into their sixth hour of baseball. This time, the Angels were an out away from losing, 5-4. This time, Pedro Borbon was the man on the mound.

Could it be?

Naaaaaaaah.

The Angels hadn't hit a grand slam at home in two years before Eckstein's slam the day before. No Angels hitter had bopped slams in back-to-back games since Willie Mays Aikens did it in 1979, when Eckstein was 4 years old. No player in history had ever had as few career homers as David Eckstein (four) and then hit slams in two straight games.

Naaaaah.

Hey, it's baseball.

So of course, he did it again.

"The crazy thing," Angels hitting coach Mickey Hatcher told Wild Pitches, "is he hit it to the same spot as the night before. He put the same swing on it. It was almost the same pitch. ... He's Mr. Consistency."

"It was amazing," Hudler said. "It was identical everything. I didn't know if it was today or yesterday."

But all Eckstein knew was that he was 0 for 6 until that point, he'd left the winning run on second in the 12th inning, he'd flied out four times and his one-word review of his day until then was "horrible."

In this sport, however, you begin to think that was all part of the big plot in the sky to get him into the record books. Anybody got any other explanations?

"That's why people need to come to the park," Eckstein said, "because something can happen like that. That's why this is the best game in the world. You never know what can happen when you show up at the park. Anything might happen."

He was living proof, too.

He rounded third, after the world's fastest grand-slam "trot," and knew he was in trouble, because about a thousand guys in Angels uniforms were waiting for him at his destination.

"It looked like my whole team was waiting," Eckstein said. "I saw them, and I was like, 'Oh man.' They were hitting me in the stomach, hitting me in the head. I was just trying to get out of there as soon as possible. Luckily, I don't really bruise that easily."

Yeah, it's a good thing he's indestructible. And -- as our new Wild Pitches humorist-at-large, former Rockies coach-witticist Rich Donnelly observed -- he's also conveniently sized for jubilant moments just like that.

"You know how you usually pick up a guy and carry him on your shoulders?" observed Donnelly, who has often told us Eckstein is his favorite player. "They just put him in their pocket."

And Eckstein had two grand slams to put in his pocket, in a span of 24 hours.

We're not too sure what the odds were of that. But "they were probably less," Eckstein figured, "than the chance of winning that big lottery."

Yeah, but he won a Powerball all his own. And he'll be seeing those slams the rest of his life.

"That's two more slams than I hit," Hatcher said. "So I didn't tell him how. And now I'm gonna tell him not to keep doing it, either."

But Eckstein already knew that. He's supposed to be the ultimate small-ball kind of guy. He's not supposed to be Barry Bonds.

"I know that's not part of my job, and I don't want it to become part of my job," he said. "Or else I'll start flying out to the warning track every at-bat."

He's on a pace now to hit 12 slams this year. But Eckstein advised the mathematicians out there: "You never know. But I wouldn't put any money on that."

And that's wise advice. But after what happened to him last weekend, after what happens every week in this game, we've learned never to say never about anything -- because some of this stuff that happens ought to be illegal. Just ask Hudler.

"Dude, that's eight RBI in two days -- on two swings," Hudler said. "Man, call the cops on that kid."

Contraction fan of the week
Speaking of baseball developments that were only a matter of time, Mets pitcher Al Leiter set a record last week that Cy Young never had a shot at:

By beating the Diamondbacks on Tuesday, Leiter became the first pitcher in major-league history to beat all 30 teams.

He won a three-horse race that had come down to Leiter, Kevin Brown (who has beaten every team but the Devil Rays) and Randy Johnson (who has beaten every team but the one he now pitches for, the Diamondbacks).

An exhilarated Leiter, who didn't even know he'd set this mark until he heard it on ESPN, said the next day that this record was the one honor in baseball he'd always been shooting for -- uhh, after a spot in the Hall of Fame, a Cy Young award and a World Series ring, that is.

The trouble now is: How does he go about holding onto sole possession of it?

Well, Wild Pitches had an idea. So we asked Leiter, a staunch union man, if this was enough to suddenly inspire him to be in favor of immediate contraction.

"Sure, why not?" he said. "Contract this afternoon"

Rocky Mountain high of the week
Boy, it's amazing what can happen when you fire a manager. You can even (gasp) inspire the Colorado Rockies to figure out how to pitch.

Clint Hurdle didn't throw a single pitch last week in his first six games as manager of the Rockies after the firing of Buddy Bell. But he sure put a spell on his pitchers.

In six games against the Phillies and Pirates at Coors Field, they allowed 10 earned runs, had a 1.67 ERA, threw back-to-back shutouts for the first time in mile-high franchise history, ripped off a streak of 24 straight shutout innings and gave up no home runs in an entire six-game homestand.

Friends, that's managing. We didn't think it would take a managerial change to pull off something like that. We thought it would take maybe Siegfried and Roy.

But this didn't just bring the Rockies themselves peace of mind. We're using it as occasion to bring peace of mind to all of you out there who have expressed concern about the future of this column following the resignation last week of the funniest and most-quoted coach in baseball, former Rockies coach-witticist Rich Donnelly.

Well, we've already appointed Donnelly to a new, more prestigious position -- as witticist at large. And for his first assignment, we asked him whether, if these Rockies pitchers had pitched like this in April, whether he and Bell might still be there.

"Be there?" Donnelly said. "We'd have 10-year contracts."

Piazza-isms of the week
The most erudite superstar in baseball, Mike Piazza, is back with more pearls of wisdom, relayed to us by Wild Pitches emissary Lawrence Rocca, of the Newark Star-Ledger.