Last night's Dodger debut of Manny Rameriz ended in disappointment for Dodgers fans as the Arizona Diamondbacks defeated the Dodgers by a 2-1 score. With a chance to be the hero in the bottom of the ninth, Rameriz grounded into a double play on a great pitch by Brandon Lyon and Rameriz' opportunity to make his first night in Los Angeles a special one went out the window.
On this day in 1995 another Dodger trade deadline acquisition made his debut, but with much less fanfare that the Cooperstown-bound Rameriz. A July 31st trade with the Minnesota Twins brought veteran righthander Kevin Tapani to Los Angeles for his first assignment, he'd go up against the Colorado Rockies in Coors Field.
Things were looking up for Tapani when Eric Karros' three run homer staked him to a 3-0 lead in the top of the first, but the good feeling quickly vanished when Colorado touched Tapani for four runs (including a two run homer by Dante Bichette and a solo homer by Vinny Castilla) in the bottom of the inning. A Mike Kingery RBI triple in the second pushed the Colorado lead to 5-3, and it appeared as though Tapani's Dodger debut would be unsuccesful.
Then a funny thing happened on the way to what looked like a very short outing for Tapani; he righted the ship. Tapani held the high-powered Rockies scoreless over the next four innings, stranding two men in the fifth in the process, and saw his team regain the lead in the fourth with four runs. Tapani was removed for a pinch-hitter in the seventh, and a Roberto Kelly homer in that frame expanded the Dodger lead to 8-5. Back to back homers by Karros and Todd Hollandsworth pushed Los Angeles' lead to 10-5 in the ninth, and gave them enough runs to withstand solo homers by Bichette in the eighth and Larry Walker in the ninth as Los Angeles won 10-7.
Tapani's first Los Angeles win was powered by the bat of Karros, who probably wished he would have played all of his games at Coors Field. On his career, Karros hit 21 homers and drove in 65 runs in 208 at bats, with a .370 batting average and a 1.160 OPS.
Tapani would go 4-2 over his tenure in Los Angeles, and would leave the team as a free agent at the end of the year. His 143 career wins included a career high 19 as a member of the Chicago Cubs in 1998, a season that featured a 5-0 Tapani complete game shutout of the Dodgers at Wrigley Field on May 20th.
Esti Ginzberg
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