Buckethead's Noodle

The Padres swept this week's three-game series against the Dodgers by proving they could beat their NL West rival in a variety of ways. But last night's win made use of the Padres' secret weapon: the noodle inside manager Bruce Bochy's gi-normous melon.

Monday's 4-2 win was marked by AAA farmhand Tim Stauffer's arrival at Petco Park just two hours before gametime after a last-minute scramble to the Portland airport and an all-day flight to San Diego. A last-minute replacement for the injured Chris Young, Stauffer swooped in and twirled a six-inning 3 hit gem to best the Dodgers.

Tuesday's 1-0 victory saw Jake Peavy return to dominant form after an injur-plagued season. Peavy tossed seven innnings of shutout ball at LA, allowing only 3 hits and fanning 7.

But last night, with the game on the line, the Padres pulled out their big gun: their manager's colossal head. Bruce Bochy, whose head is so large that he had a specially made batting helmet that he carried from team-to-team and repainted and was known by teammates as Buckethead during his playing days, used a little known rule to foil the Dodgers last night by getting manager Grady Little and picher Brad Penny tossed from the game. The San Diego Union Tribune's Tim Sullivan elaborates:

In the bottom of the fifth, Penny's fourth walk – this one to Adrian Gonzalez – brought Little out of the dugout for a conference. At this point, the Padres' lead was still tenuous – just 4-2 – but the Dodgers' disposition was clearly combative. Little's primary purpose in going to the mound was to calm his fuming pitcher (and, to a lesser extent, second baseman Jeff Kent). But one of the game's time-honored tactics is for managers to draw plate umpires out to the mound as an excuse to excoriate them. “Brad was pitching his heart out and none of the pitches were going our way,” Little said later. When Reed approached to bring closure to the conference, Little seized the opportunity to vent. But once Little left the dirt, his visit to Penny was officially over. When he subsequently returned to Penny, Little had effectively called the bullpen. “I thought Grady was looking for some TV time,” Bochy said: “Once he went back, that was his second trip. That's what I was arguing. I was at the point where I was going to protest the game (had Penny continued)"... Following Bochy's protestations, Reed conferred at length with his umpiring colleagues. He then returned to the mound and handed Penny a ball. Rule 8.06 stipulates that in a case where a manager visits the mound twice with the same batter at the plate, the manager is removed from the game and the pitcher is required to pitch to one (and only one) batter.

While I've had my doubts about Bochy over the years, last night he showed that if he's got rocks in that large cranium of his , there may also be enough room for some brains too.