For the 30 percent of Dodgers fans who were able to watch Tuesday night’s Dodgers-Giants game at AT&T Park in San Francisco on Time Warner Cable (or those who have creatively found away around local blackouts on MLB.TV), you undoubtedly heard Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully repeatedly talk about the excessively watered down infield (I’d say ad nauseam but nothing Vin Scully says is ad nauseam). In fact, at one point Scully even linked the nickname of “Swamp Fox” once given to former Giants manager Alvin Dark to the condition of the ballpark’s infield.

Scully repeatedly commented on the muddy condition of the AT&T Park infield during Tuesday night’s broadcast. (Photo credit – Brant Ward)

Scully described the infield as “mud” or “muddy” or “muddied up” while sharing stories of how the Giants’ grounds crew would water the infield at old Candlestick Park to the point of being mud back in the early ’60s in an effort to prevent Dodgers legend Maury Wills from stealing bases against them which, of course, didn’t work. And while Scully, who would never say a bad word about anybody, couldn’t understand why the present-day Giants grounds crew would muddy up the infield against the team with the fewest stolen bases in the National League (6), the only explanation that Vin could come up with was that the Giants were trying to cut down the number of ground ball base hits by their opponents – which is akin to falling on your own sword.

According to the official box score from Tuesday night’s 2-0 loss to the defending World Series champions, the three Dodgers pitchers (Carlos Frias, Adam Liberatore and Chris Hatcher) induced 16 ground outs and only one fly out, while the Giants five pitchers (Tim Hudson, Jean Machi, Javier Lopez, Sergio Romo and Santiago Casilla) induced 14 ground outs and four fly outs. In other words, if the Giants were trying to muddy their way to an advantage over the Dodgers, it backfired.

Although we may never know for sure, it’s hard to believe that the excessive watering down of AT&T Park’s infield wasn’t intentional. (Photo courtesy of sportsfieldmanagementmagazine.com)

The Giants did, however, capitalize on their extremely wet infield when center fielder Angel Pagan was able to leg out a first-inning infield single to Dodgers second baseman Howie Kendrick on a ground ball that Scully described as having to “travel a long way through the mud.”

While Scully never came right out and said that the Giants were trying to gain an unfair advantage over their most hated rivals, nor did he (or would he ever) call the Giants grounds crew incompetent, it was rather easy to see the picture that the greatest broadcaster of all time so eloquently painted with his golden tongue – as he so often does.

Here’s mud in your eye, Giants.