He banged a ball off the left-field wall and slid into second base to start the fifth inning.
Reading is not a sexy leisure activity, like banging a squash ball about in one of the company's David Lloyd clubs.
The A's may have known they were in danger of losing when Minnesota's No. 9 hitter, Luis Rivas, banged a ground-ball triple past Long to lead off the third inning.
Some of the guys have to start banging the ball a little better".
By that stage, he could reasonably have had a hat-trick, but perhaps tired of overcomplication, he settled for banging the ball past a possibly unsighted Van der Sar after Iniesta had found him on the edge of the area.
DOOM is the least serious of all this generation's very-serious-actually Guys With Guns shooty bangs, just a ball of ultra-violent abandonment that rollicks along like a mega-budget Hollywood blockbuster with the script of a cat food commercial.
At 38, Charlie Shreck has five years on his Australian team-mate and a few more wickets too, banging the ball in from a great height for Nottinghamshire, Kent and now Leicestershire.
But I know somewhere now, on a perfect wicket, Patrick will still be banging the ball in off a perfect length.
When I doubted whether Ntini's skimmy action would be likely to cause as much havoc as the pinpoint accuracy of a Pollock, or the height and banging the ball into the pitch of a Flintoff or Steve Harmison, Smith demurred, suggesting that Ntini could bowl well on the present pitch.
Just as culpable, his bowlers had apparently performed in defiance of team orders, banging the ball in short on a pitch crying out for a full length.
