Xavier Nady Finally Has Some Bad Luck

After a rough spring, things had been going pretty well for Xavier Nady in the early goings of the 2007 season. On opening night he hit a two out, two strike, game tying homer off of Brad Lidge to help the Pirates erase a deficit and win their opener in extra innings. On the second night of the season he hit another homer, he had a key RBI in the Pirates third win over the Astros, and he knocked in a run in the first inning of today's game against the Reds. That's a pretty good five games for a guy that only had three homers and 23 RBIs in 55 games after being traded to the Pirates on last year's deadline. The karma gods got their revenge on Nady today while he was trying to track down an Adam Dunn fly ball in the bottom of the first inning of the Reds' 7-5 win. From the AP report:

Dunn's high fly got caught in the swirling wind and drove Nady within a step of the green-padded wall. Nady reached for the ball, which smacked the middle of his glove and then deflected into the first row of seats, hitting a gray-coated man wearing a Reds cap.

Luckily for Nady there weren't many people in the stands to see this one. The game was originally scheduled for a 7:10 start, but the wintry weather in Cincy forced the Reds to move things up to 1:05 this afternoon. It was still ridiculously cold for the game (the temperature hovered around 30 the whole game), but at least there wasn't much snow. The paid attendance was around 16,000, but the Pirate radio announcers estimated it be "closer to 6,000 than 16,000." I suppose some Pirate fans may want to blame Nady's strange play for the loss since it provided the margin of defeat, but that would be overlooking the nine walks the pitching staff issued.

For the Reds, Aaron Harang threw a decent five and two-thirds innings, especially given the incredibly cold temperature, to earn his second win of 2007 and Edwin Encarnacion added three hits, two RBIs, and a run scored to Dunn's homer to lead the charge for Cincy offense. The Reds also used the win to end the Pirates' five day reign of terror as division leaders and take over first place by themselves.