I returned home this weekend to hear the sad news that Jose “Lima Time” Lima died of a heart attack at the way-too-young age of 37. The one-time all-star who spent four seasons in Detroit, on two different occasions, was a quirky ball of energy and full of joy. Even though he only had a few good seasons in the MLB, he made every start and relief appearance in his 13 seasons as exciting as possible. I legitimately enjoyed watching him pitch for his antics.
Ironically, I will remember him most for a game he did not pitch in 2005 against the Detroit Tigers. It was my brother’s birthday and we were all at the game against the Royals in Detroit to see my boy, Mike Maroth, start on the mound. The game was getting chippy, three batters were already hit, when Carlos Guillen angrily thought he was drilled in the foot in the 6th inning. The umpire called him back, thinking he wasn’t hit, but Guillen was promptly drilled in the head on the next pitch. The benches cleared and the Tigers looked like they wanted to kill somebody. Guillen had to be restrained on multiple occassions and at one point, Kyle Farnsworth speared Jeremy Affeldt, which was actually fucking awesome.
Anyway, the relevance to Lima was him rushing out of the Royals dugout and trying to break up the fight. I got a pretty good view of him holding Guillen back while shouting, trying to calm things down between both teams. For as fired up as he got in all the games he pitched, he seemed like he was a good guy and did not want tempers flaring out of hand in this situation, which proved true as he was the voice of reason while holding back the Tigers instead of trying to fight them like the rest of the Royals. For some odd reason, when I heard this awful news, that was the first memory that came to mind. I think it’s oddly fitting, too.
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