In the ebb and flow that is a minor league baseball season, there will certainly be streaks. Hitting streaks, consecutive scoreless innings streaks, winning streaks and losing streaks.
The key to having a successful season is to extend the good streaks as long as possible and to limit the bad ones from lingering for too long.
We are proud to be a well-balanced club this year. We pitch well, have athletes in the field and are diverse offensively, with speedy table-setters and veteran sluggers to drive them in. For the most part, that formula has worked. A team with a workmanlike approach, we have been able to play rather steady most of the season, running off a couple of small winning streaks and avoiding slides.
But heading out of July and into August, our team hit the skids hard. First we stopped playing defense, then the runs were tough to come by, and then our pitchers struggled to get outs. All of a sudden, we went 3-9 in a 12-game stretch and saw our lead in the American Association’s North Division evaporate.
Our poor play was very frustrating to us all. Losing was one thing, but we were giving away games most nights. After taking a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the third in our series opener against the Gary RailCats on Monday, we watched as the Central Division leaders rallied for four runs in the top of the next inning to take a commanding lead.
In the bottom of the seventh inning, our frustration finally came to a head. After watching our deficit grow to four runs in the top of the frame, our speedy right fielder, Justin Justice, stepped to the plate to lead off as we still held out hope for a late rally. Justin quickly drilled a pitch back up the middle, where it was deflected straight up into the air toward the left side of the infield. Gary’s third baseman quickly ran over, collected the ball when it came down and fired over to first. With Justin running hard out of the box, it seemed like there wouldn’t even be a play at first. But a nice play made it relatively close, with our guy clearly beating the throw by a step.
But as things seem to go when you’re down, the call did not go our way and Justin was called out. That started a chain reaction of events that clearly displayed the mounting frustration for our club.
Justin threw up his hands and argued in disbelief. Our hitting coach, Tom Vaeth, flew out of his first-base coaches box to protest the call, and then our manager, Rick Forney, ran over from his third-base coaches box to make the umpire aware of his missed call.
In an instant, Rick and the first-base umpire were toe to toe in a screaming match in short right field. The umpire refused to back down and gave Rick the old heave-ho. He had been ejected for arguing the call, and the fans loved it. A longtime minor league player, coach and manager, Rick had seen enough. He couldn’t take it anymore. As he walked away from the argument, he figured the umpire didn’t know where first base was anyway, so he calmly walked over and pulled the bag out of the ground and walked off the field with it. Our fans went crazy, giving him a standing ovation.
The frustration was not over for us that night. Somehow, as we had most of the past week and a half, we still found ourselves in striking distance in the late innings after rallying for two runs in the bottom of the eighth to pull within two runs at 5-3.
But in the top of the ninth, a potential inning-ending double play was botched when our second baseman wrongfully thought we already had two outs and ran toward the dugout after receiving the feed from our shortstop instead of throwing to first to complete the turn. Gary rallied for six runs after that mistake.
We can laugh about it now, because after our victory on the road over the St. Paul Saints, we are back in first place in our division. Things seem to be back to normal and with just over 20 games left in our season, it couldn’t happen at a better time.
Brendan Sagara, a former Leilehua and Hawaii-Hilo pitcher, is a veteran minor league pitching coach in his first year with the Winnipeg Goldeyes.
