It wasn’t really planned this way, but yeah, my old friend and fellow get-off-my-natural-grass purist Scott Robbs is right. The University of Hawaii baseball team’s regular-season finale today against UC San Diego is huge.
OK, I’ll go there: HUGE.
“Lots of buildup,” said Scott, who handles a variety of radio and TV play-by-play and analyst duties for UH baseball. “I call this the biggest home game in decades, when you consider everything. First time I’m this fired up in a very long time.”
The Rainbows and Tritons enter today tied for fifth in the Big West, and the top five teams advance to the conference’s inaugural tournament. It’s been 15 years since UH played in the postseason (making it to an NCAA regional). Those WAC tournaments don’t count, since everybody got in.
Today’s loser goes, or stays, home.
It’s pretty simple: If the ’Bows play like they did in the first game of this series Thursday, they’re in. It they play like they did Friday, they’re out.
And that second possibility would be very disappointing, considering how much promise this team has displayed throughout the season, and how many fans — old and new — it has attracted. Coach Rich Hill has steadily improved the program in his four years here. It’s time for that milestone of postseason success.
Back on March 1, Hill reminded me about one of the sport’s truisms after the ’Bows had just lost their second game of the season to go with eight wins.
“The best word in baseball is ‘tomorrow,’” he said.
It is Saturday as I write this, 77 tomorrows later, and some of the ’Bows are in cap and gown instead of cap and jersey. The best word in college is tomorrow, too.
Friday is not a good word right now for Rainbows baseball. That’s when nearly as many UC San Diego batters walked at Les Murakami Stadium as new UH graduates did Saturday at the Stan Sheriff Center. Presumably, the grads went to dinner or a party; most of the Tritons went straight home.
Of the 11 UCSD plate appearances ending with a base on balls or hit batsman, seven resulted in runs during the Tritons’ 12-6 survival victory, when the ’Bows could have clinched their spot in the tourney.
Even a guy who struck out scored for the visitors — he reached on one of UH’s five wild pitches and passed balls. The Tritons scored twice as many runs than their six hits.
I’d never seen a game with stats like that, unless playing in a couple of them when I was 9 counts.
The Tritons made the most of their hits Friday, including a bases-loaded triple by Alex Leopard that gave UCSD a 6-3 lead in the fifth.
Despite all this, the ’Bows were still very much in it trailing 9-4 in the seventh. The top of the lineup loaded the bases with none out, bringing the potential tying run to the on-deck circle. But, with a 2-0 count, cleanup hitter Jared Quandt was charged with a strike when he took the next pitch that was nowhere near the strike zone.
After Quandt struck out, Elijah Ickes whacked a hard liner to left that looked like trouble. Indeed, it was trouble — for the ’Bows. Instead of finding a gap, the ball went straight into the glove of left fielder Cooper Thacker, who doubled up Shunsuke Sakaino at second to end the inning.
“This was not the Rainbows team I’d seen all season,” Scott said.
I agree, and you only have to go back to Thursday for a result more indicative of Hawaii’s 32-19 overall record — a solid 6-3 victory over the same Tritons.
The three-games-in-four-days caused by graduation helps UH because Thursday’s pitchers are available for today’s winner-take-all.
But Scott and I do see part of this differently. I think having the day off to reset after whatever that was on Friday is good for the entire team’s mindset. And it could slow UCSD’s momentum.
“I 100% disagree,” Scott said Saturday. “I bet there are (UH) guys that are antsy and want to get back out on that field today.”
Either way, whoever made the Big West schedule looks like a genius now.
“And, unintentionally, for the fans there’s more excitement and anticipation because of the day off for graduation,” Scott said.
Hopefully that is reflected in a smaller difference between the tickets distributed and turnstile numbers than for the previous two games of the series. All three have been officially labeled as sold out. Some third-party tickets were still available online Saturday afternoon, and as Scott reminded me, this will be a rare Sunday UH baseball telecast by Spectrum.
