Baseball (and a little NASCAR) Journal June 2025 Part 5

6-16-25

Big day in the MLB.    Shohei Ohtani would be returning to the mound for a big matchup between the Dodgers and the Padres.    I actually got a little appetizer right before that game started with an 11-th inning 0-0 tie between the Yankees and the Angels in NYC.    The Angels took it, 1-0.    They held on in the bottom of the inning with the Yankees threatening.

Ohtani looked hittable in his one inning outing, but limited the damage to Fernando Tatis Jr. scoring on a sac fly with a great slide.    I ended up not being able to watch much, but it was back-and-forth game early.    In the fourth, the Dodgers busted out.    Ohtani, still the DH, drove in a run to make it, 6-2 Dodgers.    In the fifth, Padres starter, Dylan Cease was still pitching.    I question him not being taken out in the previous inning.    In the ninth, with the Dodgers still up, 6-3, with two outs, Dodger Stadium organist, Dieter Ruehle, played a rift from Time to Say Goodbye.    Cold, but very talented.

6-17-25

The Orioles beat the Rays, 5-1, in Tampa Bay tonight, but the story was in the stands.    A guy proposed to his girlfriend during the game.    Rays mascot, Raymond, was there lending his support for the event.    (I would have requested DJ Kitty.    And, I found out they have a third mascot, Stinger.)    The coverage included shots of happy fans and kids.    They even focused in on a couple, who were O’s fans, wearing matching Orioles Hawaiian shirts.    Dare I say, Steinbrenner Field is going over well with the fans?    The team’s playing pretty well (not tonight).   

Elsewhere, I didn’t see it, but saw the score.    The Angels beat Yankees again in the Bronx, 4-0.    In El Paso, we had the play of the night.    The Chihuahuas were down, 3-1, to the Reno Aces in the bottom of the ninth.    Rodolfo Duran homered with two on for a 4-3 pups’ win.    Given it was over 100-degrees when the game started, the result was a nice treat for the fans there.    Reno had four errors in the game, but only one unearned run, so the loss wasn’t too much of a surprise.   

6-19-25

Ahh!    A day off.    I pretty much wasted it, but that’s sort of the point.    I went out with dad to help him wash his car and then went to Weck’s for lunch, which was next door.    Dad had raved about the restaurant.    I was unimpressed (and it was expensive).    We also took takeout to his neighbor, Lamae.    She was content to let us stick around.    I found an MLB game on to watch, the Rockies and the Nationals.    However, dad wanted to go back home.    This was too bad.    The Nats won in extra innings and broke an 11-game losing streak.   

In dad’s apartment, I put on an episode of Almost Paradise, which dad seems to get a kick out of.    He slept through half the episode, but not the end where the bad guy sets a timer on a nuclear bomb for six hours and starts making demands to disarm it.    The hero shouts, “You idiot!    You set it for six minutes!”    It was ridiculous, but entertaining (and about as realistic as any other cop show on TV).

Also ridiculous was the Rangers and Royals game I was listening to on my portable radio.    The Royals were on a six-game losing coming into the series in Arlington and were about to sweep the Rangers.    Once again, the Rangers couldn’t score.    After the show, I made a short 100-degree walk back home and listened to the end of the game, which was a 4-1 Rangers loss.    (I like all four teams I’ve mentioned here, so I’m not too happy or too sad.)   

I decided to take another short 100-degree walk over to the mall and bought a couple of comic book trades and a snow cone.     After bleeding out money today, I settled down for the evening to read the comics and listen to the Chihuahuas.    I think I mostly drifted out of paying attention, as the Reno Aces had run up an 8-run lead.    Broadcaster Tim Hagerty did say at the time, “I’ve seen the Chihuahuas come back from worse.    Never fear.”     

In the seventh, suddenly Tim was shouting, “Grand slam home run, Mason McCoy!”    The Aces’ manager was out on the field arguing the call, as the ball was near the foul pole apparently.    Tellingly, Tim had no comment on whatever replays he was seeing.    An inning later, he’d relate a couple of messages from unnamed park employees, who said, “The Chihuahuas may have gotten away with one there.”    After this, another run was doubled in and the pups were now only down, 11-10.

A fan in the stands started yelling encouragement to the Chihuahuas in the eighth.    Tim chuckled and urged him to continue.    He said players have told him that they hear it and it helps.    Mike Brosseau obliged and hit a tying home run.    In the ninth, both teams had two runners on, but failed to score.    In the 10-th, Chihuahuas reliever, Eduarniel Nunez, came in shooting peas at 100+mph and kept the game tied.    In the bottom, an error on a hit-and-run got a runner to third.  Forrest Wall then singled him in as the winning run, 12-11 Chihuahuas.    What a comeback!

6-22-25

So, it was a boring weekend, except for the war.    Funny, I was talking with a friend on Saturday about the possibility and, at the same the time, the attack was going on.    We didn’t find out about it until a couple of hours later.    I was at dad’s apartment at the time.    I’d went into the back bedroom to talk on the phone.    I guess about an hour later, I came back into the living room and startled dad.    He’d forgotten I was there.

Friday night, the Chihuahuas got clubbed by the Aces hard enough that they had a position player pitching in the ninth.    The team didn’t get the first out until the tenth batter of the inning.    (That wasn’t all the position player’s fault.    He didn’t start the inning.)

Saturday morning, oddly, the same thing almost.    On the MLB.TV Free Game, I came in for the eighth with the Yankee starter out and a reliever trying to preserve a no-hitter against the Orioles.    Of course when I’m watching, he gives up a hit, the only O’s hit in the game.    The Orioles put in a position player to pitch in the bottom of the eighth.    He was lobbing in 35mph pitches, but got a double play and was unscored on.    9-0 Yankees win.    I’m sorry they didn’t carry the postgame show.    Manager Aaron Boone was going to have to answer for taking a pitcher out of a no-hitter.   

I was watching this over at my dad’s apartment.    I watched an entertaining NASCAR Xfinity race at Pocono.    Yes, really.    I’ve ragged on that track unmercifully in years past for being boring.    Dale Earnhardt Jr. won his first race as a crew chief, filling in for a suspended crew chief.    After the race, he looked so relieved.    Thank goodness, I didn’t screw this up.    Connor Zilisch, all of 18 years old, did a good job impressing his car owner with the win.   

I went back Sunday for the Cup Series race, but couldn’t get it to come in on Amazon Prime on my iPad.    (I was able to watch a live ball game on it, but not the race.)    That was too bad. However, I did get a couple of hours of an IMSA Sportscar race at Watkins Glen.   In the time I watched, the race went from a little damp, to a deluge, to bright sunshine.    Lots of wrecks.   

With no race distraction in the afternoon, I saw the Baseball College World Series between LSU and Coastal Carolina.    It was a bad sign for CC when their manager and first base coach were ejected in the first inning for arguing balls and strikes.    LSU won the game and took the series and championship.    CC did play hard in the game and didn’t quit.    Congratulations for being there playing against a major program. 

Onate Knights vs Carlsbad Cavemen Baseball 5-9-21

Actual picture of a ballfield at The Field of Dreams in Las Cruces, NM

If you haven’t heard of either of the teams in the title, you’re not from around here (Las Cruces, NM).  They’re high school teams.  Ron, apparently desperate to do something on the weekend, suggested going to this game this weekend.  You know I love baseball, but even I wasn’t sure I wanted to see a high school game.  I put off the decision for a couple of day hoping something else would come up.  Nothing did.  There wasn’t even anything on TV.  I agreed to go.  

 

Before leaving for the game, I saw this weekend’s episode of Ring of Honor wrestling.  Yes, we’ve all seen this show, whether we’ll admit it or not.  In my area, it’s on three different stations, including daily showings on Stadium.  It’s hard to avoid.  The show is discount, low-rent, knock off WWE professional wrestling.  My main interest in watching is seeing adorable host, Quinn McKay, introduce the program.  Well even the hosts have arch enemies in pro-wrestling.  Quinn has a grudge against the Women’s champion, Angelina Love.  Love pranked Quinn once and took over her backstage interviewing.  Then Love beat up Quinn in an interview.  After knocking her out, Love then wrote on her forehead. 

This set up a match between the two.  I knew that, even though she wasn’t wrestling on the show, Quinn had some experience.  During the prefight, she also said she’d been in roller derby.  For the match, Love was completely disrespectful and didn’t even know why she was lowering herself to do this.  The early match proved Love was much more experienced.  She did make a couple of mistakes, which Quinn capitalized on.  The plucky heroine had a chance.  However, outside the ring interference distracted Quinn until Love could finish her with her signature move, the Botox Injection.  (If you saw her, you’d understand immediately.)  Quinn was left beaten, broken, and humiliated.  Her co-hosts gave her a standing ovation for the effort.  She did a good job and really sold it. 

 

I was raving about all of this after Ron picked me for the game.  “It’s all fake,” he basically said.  “It’s not about the competition; it’s about the performance.”  (Like the NFL, except it’s not about the competition or the performance; it’s about the betting, and it’s just as fake.)  You don’t go to The Nutcracker hoping the Toy Soldiers dominate the Rat King and his minions because you bet $10,000 on them.  You just appreciate the graceful athleticism.  In any case, I think this was the first women’s match ROH has done in a year.  They’ve briefly shown some female wrestlers, but not in new action.  They had a show last year that was a tribute to a deceased female Japanese wrestler (and I didn’t get her name), but that was it.  Going back to fighting in front of a crowd and having the ladies go at it on a regular basis would help the appeal of the show.

 

You can probably tell how much I want to talk about this high school baseball game by now.  I should rename this post.  Ron has met the Onate coach at Aggie Baseball several times and thought he’d support him here.  We left about an hour early to get to the other side of town.  Ron had been to the Field of Dreams football stadium, but not the other adjacent playing fields.  We pulled into the baseball complex, except it was actually the softball complex.  Oops.  We got directions from an attendant.  We drove past a couple of soccer fields in use, drove past the football stadium because the road was blocked for construction, drove all the way around the block, and then drove past the softball complex, the soccer fields, and the stadium again before finding the inlet road.  This is a huge complex altogether, by the way.

 

It was $5 to enter.  There was no program and no ticket.  Your hand was stamped.  There were three fields.  One, which had a covered grandstand and was facing away from the gusty wind, had a game in progress.  That wasn’t our game.  The other two fields had teams warming up.  A group of parents were sitting on collapsible chairs under the shade of the small trees outside of one of the other fields.  They were all wearing Carlsbad Cavemen t-shirts.  One field had an Onate team getting ready to play a Carlsbad team, but some of the kids were really small.  We asked a fan and found out this was the JV game. 

 

Next door was the Varsity game.  The field had two small dugouts, a chain link fence surrounding the outfield, and a small electronic scoreboard.  There were four small sets of bleachers surrounding the field.  Netting covered the front of the stands and the top to protect from foul balls.  NMSU’s Presley Askew Field was a palace by comparison.  I thought the bathroom here was really big, until I realized it was the men’s and women’s rooms joined together without separate doors.  Be careful.   

 

I was wearing a turquoise-colored mask, since that’s one of Onate’s colors.  There were a half dozen security guards around.  Their only job was seemingly to make sure everyone was wearing a mask and making their rounds about the stands every five minutes to enforce that.  It was a bit like a baseball game held in a prison yard.  All of the players were wearing masks while playing, too. 

 

I suppose I also have to bring up that I’m not sure if the school is still named, “Onate.”  Because of BLM, they didn’t want the school named after the Spanish explorer who started the colonization of New Mexico.  I don’t follow the logic there either.  (Onate, admittedly, did not have good relations with the natives.)  I’d heard they were going to change it to Organ Mountains High School, after Las Cruces’ signature natural monument.  The school is located in the foothills of the mountains.  Also, the team wouldn’t have to change their logo, which is an “O.”  But then, that name was called cultural appropriation of Mother Nature, so I don’t know where this all stands.  I’ll go with Onate for the post until told different.     

 

We were there right at the scheduled start time, but the game was delayed for a half hour anyway.  The Onate Varsity team was on the other field wearing plain whites with no numbers on them.  They’d change to gametops after.  The stands were fairly crowded.  The fans seemed mostly for Carlsbad.  A couple of Mayfield High School players, baseball and softball, done with their games, came in a sat with their family.

 

No point in discussing any pretty girls there.  They’re all either married moms or under aged.  This is a definite strike against high school sports.  There was no Anthem before the game and only two umps on field.  It was in the 80’s for the game with no clouds.  The wind was gusting.  Every time someone moved on the infield, it kicked up a shower of dust.  On the other hand, the wind did keep it from getting hot.  I reminded Ron that the softball game we went to first was free and not facing the wind.  He was aware of that.

 

With no program, I decided I wasn’t going to bother with scorecards for the game.  Given later substitutions, this was a good call.  I could have gotten at least the first names of the Onate team from parents shouting them out during the game.  Regardless, I’ll be making up some names for this report for comedy purposes.  That said, I do have immense respect for these high school athletes.  These kids are showing, sometimes painfully, how hard this game is to play.  College and pro players only make baseball mostly look easy because they’ve had so much practice.  Watching warm-ups here, I was hearing strains of Carmen in the background.  (Bad News Bears reference.  I won’t be explaining the rest of the references.  I'd link to a video, but Youtube doesn't have it.)      

 

The Onate pitcher looked tall, but we were sitting at near ground level close to the field.  For the top of the first, he struck out the side, but also had two wild pitches, and hit a batter.  Amanda was a bit wild, but had her curve ball working.  By the bottom of the first, I’m complaining about sand in my eyes in my notes.  Good thing I wasn’t playing.  Onate had a single and a walk in the inning.  A great diving play by Kelly in the outfield ended the frame.  I’d seen him park his motorcycle outside before the game.  There was a definitely leisurely pace to this game.  It felt like the first inning took over 20 minutes.   

Carlsbad sent up Bob Horner from the 70’s Atlanta Braves as the first batter.  He got hit on the back.  Man, no respect.  There was another wild pitch.  On this one, Schroder twisted his knee.  He gamely tried to take practice pitches with an obvious limp, before the coach finally took him out.  He had to be helped off the field, but thankfully he could still play piano.  Shermy, the first baseman, took over.  We haven’t seen much of Shermy since the early 60’s.  The Carlsbad coach immediately took advantage of this change and called for a squeeze play.  Bob Horner scored.  The coach argued to no avail, as always.  Why do they bother?  A single drove in a run.  A . . . ah . . . developmentally disabled woman in the stands started yelling incomprehensibly.  It had all turned into some Avant-Garde movie. 

 

The coach went out and talked to the pitcher, but this resulted in a stolen base and a passed ball, which also advanced the runner.  There was another mound visit.  Obviously, they weren’t counting visits like they do in college and the pros.  I’d forgotten how much time these things took up.  Ron was getting bored.  A run scored on a wild pitch.  There was an infield hit, but finally a flyball to left field ended the inning.  3-0 Carlsbad.  In the bottom, there was an error by the third baseman that let on a runner.  Benny on the mound worked around that and a wild pitch by getting two strikeouts and a popup.  Coming off the field, he confronted his third baseman, “You’re killing me, Smalls.”

 

Dear God, we’re only starting the third inning and we’ve been at this for an hour.  I suddenly remembered why I knew that Carlsbad’s team was called the Cavemen.  They have a famous alumnus in Cody Ross.  He played for the 2010 San Francisco Giants during their World Series run and did well.  There is a dropped third strike, but the new Onate catcher does throw out the runner.  There’s a walk and another wild pitch.  A bad pickoff move sent the runner to third, who came home on a wild pitch.  After a conference with the coach, an outfielder exchanges places with the pitcher.  I’m guessing the teams only have a limited number of players.  Right after the exchange, there’s another successful squeeze play for a run.  A single drives in another run.  An overthrow by Lupus advances the runner to third.  The inning ends on a caught-looking strikeout.  6-0 Carlsbad.                    

 

They should really be serving beer here.  I don’t drink, but I might take one right now along with all of the Onate parents.  There’s a senior Carlsbad couple sitting in stadium chairs that are more like loungers.  They even have canopies over them.  This is the way to view games like this: in comfort (and taking a nap).  I’m getting a stiff back like I never get with my stadium seat when I’m watching Aggie Softball.  I have to keep getting up.  We should have watched the JV game.  It’s already over.  The side struck out in the bottom of the third.  Not much to talk about there.  Ron pointed out that the dugout players were the ones retrieving foul balls.  You could hear the clatter of their cleats on the pavement walking after them.

   

A hit went over Tanner’s head at short to start the top of the fourth.  The runner stole second soon after.  The catcher made a good play on a high foul popup for the first out.  Right after though, the runner took third for another stolen base.  A wind-aided double drove in that run.  The pitcher then made a good play on a comebacker for the second out.  Ron left for the bathroom a while ago.  He better not be sitting at a better game right now. 

 

There’s another hit batter.  A wild pitch advances both runners on.  A single drives in another run.  My rear end is getting real uncomfortable sitting here.  I keep shifting around, but can’t get comfortable.  The runner at first is picked off, but still stole second.  This is not Onate’s day.  Another hit brings in another run.  We get another new pitcher when a couple of players change positions.  I wouldn’t have been able to figure this out on a scorecard.  A sacrifice brought in a run.  There’s another wild pitch advancing the runners.  A diving rolling catch in right field mercifully ends the inning.  10-0 Carlsbad.

 

In the bottom of the fourth, the hot player girlfriends make an appearance.  From high school, to college, to the pros, you can rely on seeing hot player girlfriends at the ballpark.  Boy, were these girls smart not showing up for the beginning of this one.  Onate got a runner on via a single.  Lucy, playing out of position in centerfield, dropped the next flyball maintaining her .000 fielding average.  (“The sun got in my eyes.”)  The runner at first was still thrown out at second on the play.  Linus tripped on his blanket.  A strikeout ended the inning.

 

On to the fifth, the Onate coach warmed up the Charlie Brown on the mound, as the catcher had made the last out and was still gearing up.  The first baseman made a good play on a grounder down the line for the first out.  There was a strikeout and then a strikeout looking to end the inning.  Or not, the ump had the count wrong.  It’s been a long day for everyone.  A fly out ended the inning.  It was a bad sign that the scoreboard already had a zero showing for the bottom of the fifth.  I was over note taking by this point.  Onate went down quietly in the frame. 

 

Game 1 of this double header was scheduled for seven innings, but thankfully it ended on a 10-0 run rule after the fifth for the Carlsbad Cavemen.  Their pitcher got a big hand from the Carlsbad parents.  Some of the Onate players came out and hugged their moms.  I felt like I needed a hug, too.  This was two-and-a-half hours I really didn’t want to relieve writing.

 

Ron was back and asked if I wanted to wait in his car during the intermission.  I agreed.  We walked past Game 2 of the JV DH.  They didn’t even have anyone operating the scoreboard.  That brings up questions.  As soon as we got to the parking lot, I asked, “So, are you feeling real committed to Game 2 here?”  And with that, we left.  I’d wanted to go to Dairy Queen, but Ron was pretty sure they were packed.  I brought up What-a-burger next, but somehow we ended up at the downtown Coas used bookstore by my request.  I think I was too hungry to think straight.  Ron and I both got books.  (Well, I got a comic trade paperback.) 

 

Only because it was nearby in walking distance, we went to Zeffriro’s for pizza.  We’d had a great pizza there a couple of years ago, but now they were under new management.  The prosciutto one we’d had was no longer on the menu, but the one we had with pepperoni, bacon, ham, and mushrooms was really good.  I just didn’t need a pizza, since I was planning on getting one with dad on Sunday.  I didn’t need to overeat on it, but I didn’t think this pizza would survive microwaving as leftovers.  I really didn’t need to spend $27 on dinner.  The friendly waiter chatted with us about high school baseball.  He did confirm that Carlsbad fans did travel well.  He’d seen a game recently where they’d had a prospect that was about to get signed to a big deal by a scout.  I can’t imagine the horror of having a job scouting high school baseball in person. 

 

What have we learned?  High school baseball is for parents and under aged hot player girlfriends.  I’m sure there are many better high school games than the one we went to and Onate has played better, but now I’m totally scared off.  I told Ron I’d prefer to only see a more polished product from here out.  Ironically, I only went because I thought this might make for an interesting blog post. 

Memorial Day Weekend Saturday, 5-25-19

I’m pretty sure I overdid it this year.  Like the last few years (all Memorial Day posts), I went on a sports-watching binge for the three-day weekend.  This time I’m not even going to count the number of events.  I was kind of thinking I wasn’t going to be doing much sports writing this summer, because of some burnout over doing Aggie sports this year.  I may have subconsciously decided to go out with a bang.  This is what happens when I don’t have an Aggie game to go to. 

I started off with a splash at noon watching Women’s Diving.  This is because I have fetish issues.  One quick cure for that was the looks of the competitors.  There was only one attractive diver out of 12 and no underwater cam, so I lost interest pretty quickly.

Did you know there was a National Lacrosse League?  I found this for reals while flipping stations.  Instead of playing on a field, they were playing in converted hockey arena.  This was a championship game.  The game was sponsored by a beer company and there were a bunch of people there.  They were even running special lacrosse commercials.  Living in the Southwest, I’m not familiar with how big the sport is in the Northeast.  Unlike the field sport, the goalies are decked out like hockey goalies with massive pads, and there’s a shot clock.  I don’t know how anyone scores.  I missed the end of the game, so I don’t have a final outcome.   

Now this was really unexpected from just scanning the channels: Women’s College Softball from Mexico.  It was Chihuahua versus Tamaulipas.  Unlike Mexican League Baseball, there wasn’t any advertising all over their uniforms.  The field they were playing on wasn’t that great.  It seemed like a converted Little League field.  The field had the dimensions of one.  The mound was flattened and the circle was put out in front of it. 

What was the same were the girls and the fans.  They were loud and into it.  I saw one thing I’ve never seen.  A pitcher hit a batter on the head with a pitch.  The batter took first, and the pitcher went over to check on her and bumped fists with her.  Not to say the game wasn’t unapologetically rough too.  On a play at the plate, the catcher and runner were both flattened and trainers had to come out for them.  Later, another girl may have gotten hit in the face by a foul liner while she was a runner at third.  She had to come out of the game.  The Chihuahua team made a comeback in the seventh, but lost 7-4.  A guy ran out waving a big team flag.  The girls lined up and shook hands, just like here.

Meanwhile, I finally found an MLB game on Mexican TV.  I’d started watching games on a Mexican network on Saturdays last year, but I couldn’t find the games this year, except totally randomly.  I found the Reds and Cubs playing on a different Mexican station than last year.  I’m not sure when these games are on, because I can’t find a schedule for this station.  Though I’d been scanning around this afternoon, I didn’t happen on the game until it was in the third inning, Cincinnati up 2-1.

The wind must have been flying out of Wrigley, because homers were rampant.  Yasiel Puig hit one out on to Waveland Avenue behind the stadium, which was filled with fans.  Yu Darvish pitched into the eighth for the Cubs, but came out with the score tied at six after giving up another home run.  The Cubs won 8-6, though they worked into trouble in the ninth before closing it out.

I’d noticed on the TV schedule earlier in the week that the WNBA season opener was on Saturday between the Seattle Storm and the Phoenix Mercury.  I’d marked it to watch, because I was hoping to see Brooke Salas on the Storm.  Researching their roster later, I found out that she didn’t make the team.  They had an article about it.  They were basically full at the guard position already.  Watching a little of the game, I have to admit that all of the players looked significantly bigger and taller than Brooke.     

I did have Aggie Baseball at in the WAC Tournament playing on the radio later in the afternoon.  However, I was watching more MLB on FOX in the evening.  The Red Sox and the Astros were playing . . . for the second week in a row.  (The Red Sox will be on for a third time next week.)  George Springer had just gone out with hamstring injury for the Astros before this game.  However, Red Sox starter, David Price, left the game in the first with flu-like symptoms.  Back in the day, that meant he was hung over.  

I missed him leaving the game.  I wasn’t paying close attention.  I also missed the first scoring in the game in the bottom of the sixth by the Astros.  I missed the Red Sox scoring in the seventh, but I did see the Astros score in the bottom.  I actually thought the biggest story of the game to that point was Josh Reddick’s new shave and a haircut.  He was almost unrecognizable.  At some point, I did actually really watch the game and take note of the score.

Roberto Osuna blew his first save with the Astros since being acquired last year in the ninth.  Wasn’t this the guy that people were #metoo protesting?  Funny how winning fixes that.  He loaded the bases and allowed two runs to score, which tied the score at 3.  He then reloaded the bases, but got out of it.  In the bottom, the Red Sox’s closer, Matt Barnes, loaded the bases with nobody out.  Carlos Correa singled to win the game, 4-3 Astros.  The Red Sox are not missing Craig Kimbrel at all.  (In fairness, they might not have brought him in with the score tied in the ninth.)     

Late in the MLB game, almost unbelievably, college baseball came on the Stadium Network as scheduled.  I’ve had my issues with the network not showing scheduled college baseball games.  This was the Mountain West championship game between UNLV and Fresno St.  Their tournament is like the WAC tournament being double elimination.  However, the Mountain West only invites four teams, not six.  One other difference between the tournaments, the Mountain West does have the run rule in tournament games.  I seem to remember, the WAC doesn’t.  

I guess I should have been rooting for UNLV to win, since that would have forced a Sunday game, which was also scheduled.  UNLV had just beaten Nevada on a walkoff homer into the wind to advance right before this game.  There wasn’t a much of a crowd for the game.  That’s another thing, Nevada was hosting the tournament.  I’m thinking that means they don’t have a central tournament site like the WAC.  However, it’s a very nice facility.  Maybe this is their central site.  In any case, the home crowd just left with their team’s defeat.  It was also cold and windy.  There was snow on the mountains in the distance.  Not surprisingly, the field features a turf mound and field.     

The two team’s announcers traded off doing the game call, which was nice for a championship game.  The Fresno St starting pitcher had big hair.  Between his pitching motion and the stiff wind, he kept losing his hat.  Finally, the pitcher and two infielders did a three-way hat swap to find one that would fit him more securely.  Only in baseball, folks.  The Bulldogs built up a four run lead early, but UNLV tied it later on a blown double play that scored two.

Fresno bounced back in the fifth and scored a run to take out the UNLV starter, 5-4.  Later in the game, Fresno brought in a 6’9” 220 lbs reliever, or a center off their basketball team by mistake.  The guy was seriously huge.  Fresno scored again in sixth to make it 6-4.  In the seventh, Fresno got a leadoff triple that was cashed in with a ground rule double.  The Bulldogs scored 6 in the inning to make it 12-4, close to a run rule.  The game did go all nine and Fresno St won 12-6, for their first conference championship.  My favorite comment by the announcers was a hirsute Fresno player being said to have an “All-Conference mustache.” 

The MLB.TV free game today was unexpectedly a late game between the Rangers and Angels.  I was planning on trying to listen to that on the radio anyway, so I watched instead.  Or tried to.  What happened was I had to manually reload the page about 50 times as the MLB connection kept dropping.  Their website is not that great without a real steady connection.

I wouldn’t have been trying so hard to watch, except it was the Rangers and it was a really close game.  Ranger starter, Mike Minor, gave up a solo home run to Kole Calhoun in the third.  That was all of the scoring until the ninth.  In the fifth, the Angels did load the bases with two outs.  Mike Trout popped up to end it.  Angels starter, Tyler Skaggs, was chased in the sixth after hitting Joey Gallo in back and leaving two on.  The reliever walked the next batter to load the bases with two outs, but a popup ended that inning as well.  I did learn that Shohei Ohtani uses Game of Thrones walkup music.

In the ninth, Ronald Guzman doubled in a run to tie it for the Rangers.  Hansel Robles blew his first save of year for the Angels.  (It was a bad day for closers.)  A sub .200 hitting Roughned Odor singled the Condor in for a 2-1 lead.  There was a popup on the infield earlier that the fielder dropped to in order to throw out the lead runner.  Apparently, I still don’t understand the infield fly rule.  The Rangers brought in Shawn Kelley in to close.  With a runner on, Calhoun doubled in a run, as Luis Rengifo ran through a stop sign to score easily.  (It was a really bad day for closers.)  Elvis Andrus then dropped a popup behind third, which allowed Calhoun to score the winning run, 3-2 Angels.  How disappointing.

I actually missed a game today.  The Chihuahuas were playing Fresno late.  I was saturated with content at the time.  I tuned in for the end of the game, but the stream cut off before the last out.  The pups lost 5-2.  Did any of my teams win today?  Ouch! 

On to Sunday.