5-28-22
WAC Championship Game
I write fiction now.
Just fiction. Here we go. The New
Mexico State Baseball team are the 2022
WAC Champions. Whoa there, J! That’s too much of a suspension of
disbelief. We’re veering right into High
Fantasy. So this team that basically
only got into the tournament because a couple of teams ahead of them were
ineligible has won the championship. Ron
even wished GCU “Good luck,” in the tournament, convinced the Aggies wouldn’t be there.
And yet while listening to the game, it felt
inevitable. NM State’s surprise opponent
was Abilene Christian, another #4
seed, but a definitely better team. They
got into the championship game the hard way.
They lost to #25 GCU in the first round.
They had to play twice on Friday, including a late night walk off win
against GCU. Because of the weird
tournament format, ACU had to beat GCU again on Saturday afternoon in an
elimination game, which they did resoundingly.
By contrast, the Aggies had played the minimum number of games.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that ACU was tired, but 4
errors and a parade of ineffective pitchers betrayed them. Clearly, that wasn’t the kind of play that
got them to this point in the tournament.
Pablo Cortes and Ian Mejia combined for five innings of
1-run ball. Offensively, Nolan Funke led the way with a solo
home run in the second and Cal Killgore,
who caught all four games in the tournament, drove in another that inning. The Aggies scored 3 more in the fourth and
another run the sixth. Alex Bustamonte gritted through the
final three innings for a save. Adam Young, calling the game on the
radio, was losing his voice as he announced the 7-1 Aggie win for the championship.
You only really need to know two Aggie stats about this
tournament. They never trailed and they only
gave up 5 total runs in four games. They
dominated. Speaking of domination, Cal Villareal was the tournament MVP.
Cal went 4 for 5 today and 11 for 17 overall, but really didn’t deserve
the award since they were obviously pitching him underhand. Cortes, Mejia, Tommy Tabak, and Funke, the only player to hit 2 home runs in the
tournament, were also recognized on the All-Tournament
team.
Their bus broke down twice on the way to Mesa. I found that out from the TV highlights. I’m still wondering what happened to Brandon Dieter. Villareal taking over his leadoff spot worked
out well. The team did have plenty of
family and fans there to celebrate with.
I heard some fireworks going off outside. Maybe somebody here was celebrating the
victory, too. If I could have seen the
future, I would have wanted to have been there, but Ron has been out sick this
week, so it wasn’t going to happen for me.
On to the NCAA Tournament. Nobody knows where or when yet. The selection committee is doing some serious
erasing right now on their brackets after this result.
Obviously, this is going to be the highlight of this
Memorial Day Sports Weekend for me.
Earlier this Saturday, I continued the tradition of going to McAlister’s for a BLT+ Avocado. (From rereading some previous years’ entries,
I discovered I’d been doing this for a couple of years without realizing it.) I also had an unfruitful shopping trip at Barnes & Noble, as I walked off the
surprisingly filling sandwich.
While the Aggie game was going on, I pretty much ignored
an MLB game on FOX between the Dodgers
and Diamondbacks, and missed
tonight’s Chihuahuas game. I did check out a Mexican League ball game on a Juarez station. The teams looked like a bunch of NASCAR drivers with all of the
advertising on their uniforms. There
also seemed to be a bunch of American players on those teams. I saw the weirdest ground rule double, where
a ball got stuck in the wire fence protecting the scoreboard. After the MLB game was over, I randomly ran
into Evil Dead 2 on This movie channel, which I hadn’t seen
before. I had sound off, but still enjoyed
the most wacky horror movie I’ve ever seen.
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