By Play was stopped momentarily on Monday night at Petco Park when a 5.7 magnitude earthquake occurred during the Padres’ 6-3 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays. That’s the second quake this season to have struck Petco Park, the first coming on Easter day in April. For some perspective on what it’s like to have a game interrupted like that, as well as some commentary on which of the two earthquakes was bigger, let’s hear from Padres manager Bud Black, who joined XX 1090 in San Diego on Tuesday to compare the two, what he says to his players after play gets temporarily suspended, and the ninth inning incident between him, the home plate umpire and catcher Yorvit Torrealba.
On whether he thought Monday’s earthquake at Petco was bigger than the one that occurred on Easter:
“This one bigger. This one was immediately felt by everybody – the players, the fans, I mean, right away you knew what was going on. It was legit. Within seconds guys jumped up off the bench on the steps, players stopped looked around, Chase, he was in the batter’s box, he looked around. It was a good one.”
So this one was more intense but not as long in duration as the one that occurred on Easter:
“Yeah, not as long. You know, the stadium on Easter, the foul pole was shaking, you could see the scoreboard sort of moving. But this one was, I think from the feet up you felt it a bit more. I mean, you really felt the Earth move.”
On what you say to a player in the batters box who’s just had his at bat interrupted by an earthquake:
“Shake it off! Come on, rock him! Let’s go! I also thought it had the same effect as when the Chicken showed up on that ballgame and we went on to score like 17 runs, we had an 11 run inning…I thought it would have the same effect but it didn’t.”
On the exchange between him and the home plate umpire in the ninth inning:
“It was a build up of what happened the entire game from the first inning on. We thought that the home plate umpire maybe wasn’t at the top of his game the entire game. We had a lead off walk, and Yorvit was in a position to maybe get to a full count there in the ninth and then that breaking ball was called a strike. I think it was just frustration that he had felt the entire night, along with John. John was pretty frustrated the entire night too. Then as players, emotions set in. He wanted to express one or two of his feelings about the call and with that, the umpire told me that he had billed him, or that he beaked him. There’s two terms. And when he went back into the locker room, and wrote out his report on the incident, I felt as if he didn’t beak him.”
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