Continued from
Part 1
5-26-18
At this point, I
properly got excited about the tournament since it was for the WAC Championship. The Aggies
had already beaten the Sacramento State
Hornets on Thursday, but they'd be the opponents for the trophy. In the three games they'd played after their
loss to the Aggies, they'd scored 37 runs.
Opposing them would be Justin
Dehn on mound. He hadn't pitched in
a few weeks, but he'd beaten the Lobos three times this year and shutout Alabama.
It's kind of
amazing that the Aggies are in this position.
Four years ago, when Coach Green
took over, they won 11 games. I remember
that season; it was brutal. Now they've
had three years of 30+ wins and two years of nationally-ranked recruiting
classes. They're on the verge of their
fortieth win and a conference championship.
An even larger
Aggie crowd came for the game. It even
included some recent Aggie Baseball players who'd graduated. The scoring started in the top of the second
as Trey Stine put a ball in play and
scored Tristan Carranza from
third. (The Aggies were the visiting
team.) 1-0 Aggies. Dehn struck out the side in the second. He didn't appear to have any rust on him
after the long layoff.
The Aggies added
to the lead by a Logan Ehnes' sac
fly. The two runners on base had
advanced on a misplay by the Hornet catcher.
In fairness, he was catching his fourth game in two days. 2-0 Aggies.
In the fourth, Trey scored from third on a wild pitch (perhaps should
have been a passed ball). 3-0
Aggies. Though it was looking good to
this point, the coaches' wife was out nervously pacing in the concourse. Adam Young
had tried to reassure her earlier by saying that he thought the Aggies would
win in a run-rule. It was a small fib;
championship games aren't decided by run-rules.
In the fifth,
Dehn gave up his first hit of the game.
He worked out of a two on situation.
Dehn came out after this inning and finished with ten strikeouts. (He was over 90 pitches at this point. The Hornets may have been close to figuring
him out, too.) Matt Perea came in for the sixth and became the victim of a pair of
errors which scored two runs. One came
in with a close play at the plate, which went to review. Even Adam, calling the game, wasn't sure when
review could be used. The call was
upheld. Brock Whittlesey came in to finish the inning. He gave up a hit, which brought in the tying
run, 3-3. Well, surely this would get
resolved in short order.
This game was not
resolved quickly. We cut to the bottom
of the tenth inning. (Yes, we're
skipping over three fruitless innings.)
With two outs, a Hornet batter doubled and a runner on first attempted
to come home. Marcus Still got the ball in the outfield and threw it to Caleb Henderson in the infield, who
then threw out the runner at the plate.
Replay? You bet. It was the longest video review of all time
(or seemed like it). Ruling upheld. Exhale.
Things were getting very tense.
The thirteenth
inning ended for the Hornets on a strikeout and a caught stealing by catcher Braden Williams. He went back to the dugout pumped up. I need to mention the opposing pitcher here. Austin
Ragsdale came out in the fourteenth inning . . . after pitching seven and
1/3 innings of relief! Even Aggie fans
were cheering him. Austin Root, the Hornets' starter
from yesterday came in. (All hands on
deck, indeed.) The Aggies threatened,
but left two on.
In the bottom,
Brock Whittlesey finally came out!
Here's the Aggies' closer, who usually goes two innings, who tonight
pitched seven and 2/3 innings and 99 pitches.
He had 9 strikeouts and no walks.
Aggie pitching set a school record with 20 k's in this game.
We hit a crisis
point in the fifteenth. Adam was out of
space on his scorecard. Meanwhile, this
game started at 8:00pm MST. It was now
1:00am MST. My endurance and my frayed
nerves were being taken beyond human endurance. And I wasn't even playing! I was just listening. The Aggies got Henderson to third in the
top. Eric Mingus, off the deepest part of the Aggie bench, took his
eighth at bat of the year and worked a walk.
The Aggies didn't score.
In the bottom
with a runner in scoring position, a high chopper just got over Mingus' glove
at third and went into the outfield. I
turned off the game the moment after Adam said that the Hornets had scored the
winning run. 4-3 Sac St. This is another
double elimination tournament and this was the Aggies' first loss, so tomorrow,
we'd play again. There would be a
champion on Sunday. The game would start
in the early afternoon. Hopefully, the
game would end before Monday.
I attempted to go
right to bed (at 1:15am), but I would later be tortured in my sleep by thoughts
of this game. If you play a 15-inning
game and nobody wins a championship at the end of it, did anybody really
win? (Answer: No.) I'm not as nervous as Coach Green's wife, but
I'm close.
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