With a 100-game schedule, every minor league baseball team will undoubtedly hit hot streaks and cold streaks, as we all have this season. The key for a successful team is to find ways to prolong the good streaks, and cut short any potential slides before they get out of hand.

This is especially important when you are in a pennant race, and even more so when you are playing a fellow contender.

Our game Friday night on the road against the Lincoln Saltdogs promised to be a good one. We entered the game five up in our division with 11 games to play, while Lincoln came into it just a game-and-a-half out of the wild-card lead. Both teams had a lot to play for and it showed.

With a band of strong thunderstorms expected to arrive at the ballpark around 9 p.m., both teams certainly hoped to build an early lead. But it turned into much more of a marathon than any of us could have predicted.

Lincoln got on the board first in the bottom of the first inning when their slugging first baseman, Phil Hawke, drilled a two-out solo homer on a hanging 1-2 breaking ball.

Lincoln held onto the 1-0 lead until the top of the eighth, when we finally pulled together for a run when our center fielder, Fehlandt Lentini, drew a bases-loaded walk against Saltdogs reliever Santo Luis.

Unfortunately for both teams, that would be the last run scored for another five innings. One by one, we ran our relievers to the mound to hold us even until we could scrap for a run. And one by one, they all did a tremendous job of holding the Saltdogs scoreless in a ballpark where the wind wails out to right field, making any ball in the air to that side of the ballpark a potential homer.

We were on the verge of coming through with a run in the top of the 12th, after loading the bases with no outs. Ridge Carpenter, a former Kalani High standout, led off by lining a hard single to right. After another base hit and a walk, we were 90 feet from going ahead for the first time in the game. But two strikeouts and a flyout shut down our potential rally.

The 13th inning was lucky and unlucky for us. We took advantage of two errant throws and a bobbled grounder by the Lincoln defense to score two runs and take a 3-1 lead into the bottom half of the inning.

But our closer, Jamie Vermilyea, could not finish the game, surrendering back-to-back homers to right field after quickly recording the first two outs of the frame.

And so the game continued into the 14th, when our hitters scrapped for another run on Luis Alen’s RBI hit to left with two outs.

This time Jamie would not be denied. He closed out the 14th to pick up the win and reduce our magic number to clinch the American Association’s North Division to four, as the team behind us in the standings lost that night.

Once the final out was recorded, I hit a wall. I was exhausted. It took 14 innings, 4 hours and 50 minutes of baseball, and 204 pitches thrown by our guys to bring home this win, but it was well worth it.

Brendan Sagara, a former Leilehua and Hawaii-Hilo pitcher, is a veteran minor league pitching coach in his first year with the Winnipeg Goldeyes.