Welcome to The Pregame Lineup, a weekday newsletter that gets you up to speed on everything you need to know for today’s games, while catching you up on fun and interesting stories you might have missed. Thanks for being here.

 

The date was September 7, 2008. The mound matchup on the scorecard? A 24-year-old Max Scherzer vs. a 20-year-old Clayton Kershaw. Two pitchers just embarking on what would become surefire Hall of Fame careers, one not even yet of drinking age. Pretty cool, no?

 

But that’s not actually the story we want to tell today, because this game was never supposed to be Scherzer vs. Kershaw. According to legendary announcer Vin Scully, who was calling the game, it was supposed to be … Randy Johnson vs. Greg Maddux?

 

The clip of Scully discussing this has bounced around the internet for years, inspiring its own mini-mythos. Imagine showing up to the park expecting to see the Cooperstown-bound Johnson vs. Maddux, but instead getting the relatively unknown Scherzer vs. Kershaw.

 

Our own Steve Gilbert recently came across the clip again, and it got him thinking. Could Johnson and Maddux really have both been penciled in to start and then scratched on the same day? With a good deal of sleuthing through his own reporting records, as well as some help from the dusty notebooks tucked away in the garage of longtime Dodgers beat reporter Ken Gurnick, Steve had a breakthrough in the case.

 

Johnson had indeed been scratched a day prior with a back issue, but Maddux had never actually been the probable starter to oppose him. Though he should have been in line to start opposite Johnson, manager Joe Torre had said that week – via Gurnick’s exhaustive digging through files – that he was pushing Maddux’s start back a day. It certainly could have been Johnson vs. Maddux. By all rights it should have been. But it’s unlikely that anybody showed up to the park thinking that’s what they were going to see.

What they did end up seeing, though, was the first matchup between two generational pitchers … just of a generation that had yet to arrive. Neither pitcher got a decision that day, and Scherzer and Kershaw have only faced off two other times in the regular season, most recently in 2021 (they are each 1-1 in their three starts opposite one another). The 54,000 fans at Dodger Stadium that day had no idea how lucky they were, had no idea what they were witnessing or what the future would bring for the young hurlers. But we know now. Case closed.

 

— Scott Chiusano

• Nationals @ Pirates (6:40 p.m. ET, FREE on MLB.TV): It’s Skenes Day, which is always reason enough to tune in, but it also happens to be the Lord’s Day (he’s being opposed by Nats rookie Brad Lord and we’re trying to make this stick). Added intrigue: Skenes is coming off the worst start of his career.

• Royals @ Yankees (7:05 p.m. ET on MLB.TV, MLB Network): Aaron Judge is now a captain twice over after he was named to the post for Team USA in the 2026 World Baseball Classic earlier today, making tonight the perfect time for him to crack his first homer since April 4. Judge and Bobby Witt Jr. will be opponents tonight, but if Witt reprises his role from the 2023 WBC, they could be teammates next year in red, white and blue.

• Cubs @ Padres (9:40 p.m. ET on MLB.TV): The Padres are 10-0 at Petco Park and just shut out the Rockies in three straight games. The Cubs just took a series from the vaunted Dodgers, including a 16-0 shellacking in the middle game. Immovable object vs. unstoppable force, here we go.

• The Dodgers were able to salvage some levity from the aforementioned 16-0 blowout loss to the Cubs when shortstop Miguel Rojas stepped in to pitch and offered his best impressions of other (actual) pitchers on the Los Angeles staff. You can judge for yourself, but the Yoshinobu Yamamoto one was pretty spot on.

 

• Bo Bichette may have been at the plate, but Dough Bichette was in the stands. You have to see this Fenway Park fan corral Bichette’s foul ball with his powdered-sugar-slathered treat. He had his cake and caught it too.

 

• Young hurler Jackson Jobe is the son of a pro golfer, so it was only fitting that he picked up the first win of his big league career on Masters weekend. Jason Beck has the story of how Jobe grew up around the game but eventually gravitated to other greens, and the Tigers are thankful for that. Also be sure to give a listen to the Detroit booth calling part of Jobe’s outing as though they were golf commentators.

The Rockies’ new City Connect uniforms, inspired by the picturesque sunsets and sunrises in Colorado, supplanted their previous green City Connects. But more so than the new jerseys’ appearance — I think they’re pretty, for what it’s worth — the materials caught my eye.

 

The uniforms are made with something called “ripstop,” a fabric typically used in snowboarding gear in a nod to the outdoor pastimes favored in Colorado. I personally have never tried snowboarding and am terrified at the thought, so I reached out to my friend Will Hollinger, a sales rep who has worked with winter sports companies, to see what he thinks.

 

“Ripstop is made with reinforced threads, so if it catches or snags on something, it doesn’t tear a big hole in the material,” Hollinger said. “So it’s just supposed to be a more durable, more outdoorsy, more functional fabric. It’s generally pretty lightweight, too, but it’s reinforced with a grid pattern so it can be durable at the same time.”

 

So if Ezequiel Tovar wanted to go right from the game to the slopes, he could potentially do that?

 

“I mean, it’s not going to be waterproof,” Hollinger said, humoring me. “But yes, it would function as an outdoors-type, more rugged article of clothing.”

 

Might a Padres jersey that can double as a surfing wet suit be far behind? Almost definitely not, but you never know …

 

— Bryan Horowitz

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