NMSU Aggies vs Maine Black Bears Baseball 2-28-16

For the Sunday rubber game, I again invited my boss, Ron, to the game.  He was pleased to be anywhere where he could relax for a few hours.  We sat about where I was for the double-header Saturday.  The crowd might have been a bit smaller.  It’s hard to get a good sense of attendance sitting up front.  Several of the same people were there from yesterday, including the Volleyball team, the lady collecting foul balls, and the heckling girl (who was pretty quiet this time, but for a good reason).  The Aggies’ quarterback and a couple of players from the Women’s basketball team were also in attendance. 

Even better, a couple of the good-looking girls from yesterday were back, unfortunately they weren’t seated anywhere nearby.  The highlight of the game was seeing one of the “fashionable and glamorous” girls in a pair of very, very short cut-offs walking up the grandstand stairs.  There wasn’t much left to the imagination.  I felt like the wolf character from a Tex Avery cartoon with my jaw hitting the floor and my eyes bugging out.        

Joining the crowd next to us was one of the more vocal Aggie fans.  He was a late middle-aged fellow who seemed like he was a coach of some sort.  The benches were once again pretty vocal with the home plate umpire.  He wasn’t helping himself by making slow calls on pitches.  The “coach” started giving it to the Maine dugout, telling them to shut up and stop whining.  He occasionally got into the players, “Nice sunglasses, 2-2!  Take a seat!”  (Fan etiquette lesson: Refer to on field players by their number and use only single digits, for example when heckling or encouraging #13, call them “one-three.”)  Before the game, there’s a long announcement telling the fans what is unacceptable language to shout out during the game.  This just makes the loudmouths more creative.  I thought I heard someone from the Visitor’s section answer him back.  At some point the “coach” left his seat for a while and then returned.  The taunting then stopped both ways.  Maybe this was because the Black Bears shut everybody up, or maybe something else happened.            

It was a beautiful day again.  There was a great trivia question given out during the game.  The PA announcer asked what the temperature difference was between Las Cruces, New Mexico and Maine today.  The answer was 43 degrees.  It was 81 in Cruces and 38 in Maine.  The Black Bears had to be at least a little pleased to be here playing.  While you can’t control the weather, but you do have some control over attendance.  The baseball program here should promote itself a little better.  They’re offering $1 hot dogs for Sunday games for the season, which is usually enough to get people to the ballpark.  Ron had a tub of popcorn.  I was boycotting ballpark food after last night’s nacho-induced indigestion.  I’ll reconsider in future outings. 

  

We had the radio call for this game, as I had brought two small radios.  Ron had trouble with his and finally decided to stream the game over his phone.  He didn’t mind, since the business was paying the bill for it (an activated FM chip in the cell phone would have been useful).  Once again, Adam Young and Nolan Fox gave a great game call of what was unfortunately not a great game.  A good radio call enhances a good ballgame and can make a bad one bearable (heh, playing the Black Bears, pun, heh).  This is why you should always have your radio for a game, because you never know what kind of game you’re going to get.  They had an entertaining guest on for a couple of innings, and unfortunately I didn’t catch his name.  More guests wouldn’t be a bad idea for future broadcasts. 

I’ve been avoiding talking about the game because it was a 13-3 trouncing of the Aggies.  The Black Bears managed to score in seven out of nine innings.  The Aggies managed to have one good offensive inning in the third and took a brief lead.  After the Aggies loaded the bases in the fifth with one out and failed to score, Maine piled on in the sixth and never looked back.  The error-making came back with a vengeance in this game.  The six Aggie pitchers were pretty uniformly not able to stop the Black Bears from getting on base and scoring.  The Aggie bats were mostly quiet.  It was a bad day pitching, hitting, and fielding. 

Even worse, the game also dragged along with a lot of pitching changes, throws to first, and team meetings with many of the pauses on field.  I found myself yawning continuously as the game got progressively more out of hand.  I could hear Ron breathing like he was asleep, but I swear his eyes were open behind his sunglasses.  (Sleeping with your eyes open?)  There were scouts in attendance.  I saw three of them leaving in the 8^th.  One of them had a stopwatch, which was kind of a give way.  They did stop at the stairs to watch Aggie #7 Daniel Johnson take his last at bat for the game.  From the radio call, I learned that 9^th inning pinch hitter, #27 Joe Galindo, who had pitched well the day before, was being also being scouted for his pitching and his hitting.

I was trying so hard to keep a good scorecard and this was just not the right game for the effort.  Things really broke down for me in the sixth inning as the Black Bears scored four, and I had trouble keeping up and didn’t hugely care.  The frame mercifully ended as #4 Brent Sakurai made a backhanded glove flip of the ball to short to get the final out at second.  That little bit of showmanship was about all fans had to cheer about in that inning.  Still, keeping the scorecard had some value.  When #7 Danny Casals of Maine took offense to getting hit by a pitch, I knew, even when Adam on the radio forgot, that he’d been hit the previous inning.  I also knew that over three games that the Aggies had been hit nine times, sometimes good and hard, four of them that afternoon.  It’s amazing Casals was the only Black Bear hit over the three games.   

After the game, we went out for pizza at Zia Pizza.  They’ve changed how they make their pies there to a more New York-style thin crust, and I approve.  While waiting for the meal, Ron asked about keeping score.  As he had listened to the game call, which I think he enjoyed as he listened for the whole game, he was getting confused by the numbers.  I could at least explain the positions (1 Pitcher, 2 Catcher, 3 First, 4 Second, 5 Third, 6 Shortstop, 7 Left Field, 8 Center, 9 Right Field).  I tried to explain scorekeeping and realized how useless a scorecard is if you didn’t actually see the game.  Trying to reconstruct events from it gets confusing in a hurry.  Saturday night, after questioning the official scoring on several plays, I went to my baseball rules book.  (Yes, I own one.  Yes, I’ve read it before.  Yes, I am a geek.)  I came away even more confused.  At best, I get the gist of how it’s done.  For long games with lots of scoring, pitching changes, and substitutions, it gets the better of me.  Sometimes even the pros have their problems.   

This time, Ron didn’t take pictures of the ballpark or send scoring updates to his wife.  I assumed that meant she was okay with not having him around the house.  As I found out later, I may have gotten him in a bit of trouble by making him unavailable for chores for the last two Sundays.  I decided not to broach the idea of going to Arizona to see a couple of Spring Training games next weekend.  Hopefully, after some roses or something, he’ll be good to go to a softball game this month to see the girls play.  It may have been a brutal 3 ½ hour game today, but it’s still never a bad day at the ballpark.