NM State Aggies vs Mount St. Mary’s Mountaineers Baseball 2-25-17

The last game for the Aggie baseball team I was at went pretty well at 20-7.  In the meantime, they’d had a terrible loss on Tuesday to Texas Tech, 1-16.  I got to listen to some of that at work.  Friday’s game against “The Mount” was a good bounce back at 13-2 Aggies.  So, it’s been all or nothing this week for the boys. 

Adam Young and Nolan Fox were clearly freezing last night doing the radio call.  It was the wind more than the temperature.  Today’s double header was going to be a bit cold, but just a little breezy.  I came prepared with a heavy coat and blanket.  Ron’s wife, for some reason, was okay with him being at the ballpark all afternoon and evening.  After a heavy, but good meal at Schlotzsky’s, we were pulling into the parking lot, well away from any potential foul balls and fighting off a desire to take a food-induced nap.  The lot had some class today.  Along with a couple of RV’s, there was a pretty yellow Porsche and a Subaru Impreza with a rally package.  I wonder who these belong to, hopefully boosters. 

This time, I grabbed both new baseball posters on the way in and didn’t wait like I did last time, when I missed getting them.  With the weather being a bit better, I was expecting a good crowd.  The fans came in a bit late, but filled in to an “okay” crowd.  Maybe, you need that bunting out to attract people.  There were a few attractive young women there, some of them in shorts and t-shirts and completely insane given the temperature.  Look for more girls to show when it’s warmer.  An attractive lady was sitting in front of us that seemed friendly, but she made friends with another fan next to her, not us.  Unhappily, I could see an unlucky Aggie player, Trey Stine, was also a spectator.  He was on crutches in the Aggie dugout and will have to wait until next year to play. 

Game 1

The scoring didn’t start until the top of the second with a line drive homer by the Mounts.  (Hey, that’s what they call themselves for short.)  In the bottom of the third, their catcher mistakenly got the number of outs wrong after a strikeout.  Maybe it was because the umpire was making some dramatic calls on called strikes and strikeouts looking.  Too bad for them it wasn’t the last out, since the next hitter, Austin Botello, drove in the first Aggie run, trying the score.  The broken window challenge was on tap between innings.  A kid with a mitt and no arm gave it a shot, coming up empty. 

The Aggies flashed some leather in the top of the fourth.  Botello made a great play in deep right field near the line.  LJ Hatch followed that with a great snag on a grounder, deep in the hole, to throw out the runner at first.  Then, a hot shot foul straight back struck one of the hollow metal shade supports.  It rang loudly for several seconds afterward.  Between halves, I noticed Adam out talking to the radar gun guys.  No idea why.  Greg Popylisen would drive in a go-ahead run in the bottom with an infield hit.  2-1 Aggies. 

 

In the fifth, the Aggies scored a run off a couple of doubles.  At least, that’s the official scoring.  In reality, the Mount left fielder dropped a couple of fly balls.  It was ruled that the wind would have made those extraordinary catches, I guess.  With a home run and two multi-base non-errors, Mount left fielder, Zach Hostetter had an interesting game.  3-1 Aggies.  The top of the sixth was the third inning in a row that Aggie starter, Kyle Bradish, had allowed two batters on without allowing a score.  He ended his last inning of work by striking out pinch hitter, Damond Dixon, and stranding the runners again.  According to Nolan, Dixon doesn’t like using spoons.  Last night, we also found out that, as a child, one of the Mounts locked his mother out of the house so that he could eat a bowl of M&M’s.  With this level of opposition research, how could the Aggies lose?

The bottom of the sixth featured more questionable scoring.  A slow bouncer by Marcus Still went between second and short.  Somebody really should have caught that, but instead it bounced into shallow center.  And somebody really should have covered second afterward, as Still went ahead and took the extra unguarded base.  All this was ruled a double.  And this all happened after a great diving catch by Dixon on a popped up bunt, basically negating it.  Popylisen actually faked an attempt to steal home, but the inning ended on a strikeout and without any scoring.

In seventh, with Andy Frakes on the mound, the Mounts finally cashed in on having two runners on.  3-2 Aggies.  This didn’t last, as the Aggies manage to plate a run without a hit after a bases loaded walk.  4-2 Aggies.  Not to be out done, the Mount did the same in the top of the eighth, getting a run without a hit.  Not to say it was without hard effort, as one of their players took a rubber pellet in the eye from the artificial infield surface.  4-3 Aggies.  The Aggies weren’t done and scored two more runs in the bottom.  Still actually managed to beat out a sacrifice bunt and get to first in the inning. 

Ruger Rodriguez came in for the ninth and struck out the side in an overpowering fashion.  He’s really starting to impress me.  Our final was Aggies 6, Mountaineers 3.  Bradish had a good, gritty game, giving up one run over six innings.  I’d pick Botello as my offensive player.  Dan Hetzel and, catcher, Jason Bush also had good games.   The Mountaineers played a pretty good game.  The two outfield miscues probably cost them.  By using their Game two starter as a reliever here, they at least slowed down the Aggie offense and gave themselves a chance in this game, but it would come back to haunt them in the next game.

Game one took about three hours, which isn’t bad by college standards.  Unfortunately, it was three hours out in the cold.  My fingers and nose were numb.  Ron wasn’t doing much better.  We spent the intermission in his car, warming up.  I took my blanket and heavy jacket, and Ron took his light jacket back inside.  We took separate bathroom breaks.  I saw the team in the dugout while waiting and smiled and gave them a thumbs up.  One of the catchers did the same back.  I suddenly also noticed that there were stadium seats outside the men’s bathroom.    That seemed unnecessary. 

We ran into a bolting Adam Young on his way to the bathroom.  If you’re talking for three hours, you probably need to drink quite a bit.  Then you’re in an open pressbox, getting the cold full on.  Also, there’s not enough time between innings to go from the pressbox to the bathrooms.  Bottom line, Adam and Nolan likely have iron bladders.  I picked up a welcome hot chocolate and a small popcorn, which I offered to Ron.  Back at the seats, I put down the blanket and sat on it.  My rear end, at least, was warm for the rest of the game.  The announced temperature was 61.  Ron said it felt more like 31. 

Game 2

The crowd had thinned out.  Aggie fans and Mount fans were about equal in number.  In the first, the Mount fans and the Aggie dugout were actually competing with each other in cheering.  The players on the field were certainly playing with some purpose in the cold.  In what felt like a blink of an eye, the Mountaineers scored two runs and then the inning was over.  I looked over at Ron to get the popcorn back and found him with the cup upended over his mouth, finishing it.  Good thing I wasn’t hungry.

The cheering competition ended in the bottom of the first.  Take a look at my sloppy scorecard.  I’m not going to try and recap all those runs.  The Aggies scored 25 runs in the game.  They scored in six of their eight innings and batted around in two of them.  All of the starters scored and got a hit.  Okay, so the game was basically over after the second.  That established, I’ll just bring up the interesting events during the innings. 

The sun was going down in the bottom of the first, and Adam mentioned the lovely sunset lighting of Las Cruces’ Organ Mountains in the background of the stadium.  Austin Botello cranked a monster home run to center right afterward.  Nolan Fox chipped in, “That ball may have hit the Organs.”  Also adding to the scenery, some large flocks of birds circled around the trees beyond the outfield.  There’s more to life than baseball.  Not much more admittedly. 

The new ump seemed to have a bigger strikezone.  Not a bad idea in the cold.  LJ Hatch initiated a double play to end the top of the second.  Marcus Still again beat out an infield single trying to advance a runner in the bottom of the second.  Sacrificing in this inning would not be necessary.  I couldn’t even figure out the Mount pitcher lines after what happened next.  The Game two scheduled starter was used in long relief in Game one.  Trey McGough just didn’t seem ready to start this one.  He was pulled in this inning after starting off with a walk and three straight hits.  Josh Little was brought in, throwing between 59 and 72 mph, a soft-tosser.  By and large, the Aggies weren’t hitting him hard, just often.  There was some good base running too with Brent Sakurai scoring from first on a single as he was off with the pitch.  By the time the smoke had cleared, nine runs had crossed the plate.  “13-2 was the same score as on Friday, but that was after nine innings!” exclaimed Nolan.

From here it was an endurance contest, mostly for the crowd.  An Aggie basketball game started during the game, and I began flipping between them.  Little did I know that I was draining the battery on my radio in a rapid manner by doing so.   That’s what I get for sports infidelity.  Between innings, they ran the broken window challenge again.  This time the little kid had a legit pro wind up and won a hat.  By the fourth, about half of the Mount fans had had enough and left.  Concurrently with that, their team started putting in their reserves.  Mitch Sprignoli came in and rapped an RBI single to the cheers of the remaining fans and the dugout.  He must be well-liked.

About 10 minutes into the basketball game, the score was 16-6 Aggies, pretty close to what it was at the ballpark.  The Aggie baseball team would score three more runs in the fourth, though the inning ended on an unassisted double play by the Mount first baseman.  There were kids running up and down the aisles for foul balls in this game.  Two little girls came up with a couple of balls and carried them around with big smiles.  If you can believe it, in spite of the six runs, the Aggies weren’t trying to run up the score in the bottom of the fifth.  Coach Green kept holding up runners at third, but the guys kept getting hits.  That must have been a good problem for the coach.  The guys in the booth start looking up school records for runs and hits. 

In the sixth, our female PA (I should really find out who these people are) took the inning off.  She must have gotten tired from calling all those at bats.  Meanwhile in the second half of the basketball game, Jack Nixon declared that, “The mustard is off the hot dog,” as the Aggies were up by 20.  The women were also announced to have won their basketball game on the road.  (All I needed was a softball update to complete my Saturday sports.) 

In the seventh, Vaughn Parker II for the Mount was injured diving for a foul ball well away from the field.  It was a great effort.  The Aggie dugout applauded him as he came off.  I finally lost power on the radio in the 9^th, right before both games ended.  Austin Bryan finished the game on the mound for the Aggies.  He’d had a very rough outing against Texas Tech and the team cheered him on from the dugout with every out.  Our Game two final, Aggies 25?!, Mountaineers 4.       

Ron felt sorry for the other team, but I thought the Mountaineers played pretty well in the field in this game, and they didn’t get shut out.  Their pitching was just not there for this game, perhaps because of the sudden spot start, and the Aggies tee’d off on it.  For the Aggies, Matt McHugh gave up four runs in five innings, but had nine strikeouts with only one walk.  Offensively, Austin Botello went five for six with four runs and four RBI’s.  His bat was so hot, it glowed.  With 29 total hits, obviously the rest of the team had a pretty good night too.

Our attendance was announced at 680, including a couple of popsicles, which were me and Ron.  The running time was a surprising three hours and 12 minutes.  I’ve seen much lower scoring in longer games.  No team batting records were broken tonight.  Myself and Adam disputed the official scoring.  The scorer had the team at 26 hits, which was wrong.  They also had the Mount with two errors, but I never saw anything like an error on the field.  The basketball team won 86-53.  That game let out at the same time, leading to some traffic getting out of the university.  We were off to What-a-Burger, as the team had won (twice) and handed out coupons.