Barbee's World: NWAC Tournament loses its home team
'Didn't Like That' – Red Devils don't win (it's a shame); and other notes from Story Field
College Baseball
Editor’s Note: It was an eventful Saturday at the park as the NWAC Baseball Tournament continued to roll along at David Story Field near the civic heart of Longview. The Blast Zone Media crew was in attendance once again and came away with a heap of photos and opinions to share with the world. Below is the best, and worst, of what they saw.
Sam Barbee for Blast Zone Media / blastzonenews@gmail.com
Things I liked
On and off!
.College baseball is for sickos.
Lots of people like pitching and hitting and catches and throws and stats and walk-offs and yada yada yada. But if you like baseball, you like college baseball.
I love watching guys burst out of the dugout after the third out. Some guys have an armful of hats and gloves. And still they run out to their spot like they’re late, like they should’ve been there already and they’re not, so they have to get there. I played with a guy who was running onto the field before the out was even made. He was at his spot before the runner gave his helmet away.
Everyone does it. Everyone. There is no time to mope or pout. You’re late.
It creates a momentum of focus. That’s the reason. You’re playing in the field, you’re hitting, then you’re playing in the field. When you’re in the field you gotta get out there, get as loose as you can and know what to do in every situation if the ball is hit to you every pitch. Then the inning is over and you’re hitting. So you gotta get over there and hit, which sometimes means watching and learning and sometimes means hitting and running. Then the inning ends.
Stacking innings of intently moving from job to job leads to successful baseball. It’s what people mean when they say play the whole game. You do that for seven or nine innings. It works at every level, in every permutation.
I liked that.
What a time for it!
There haven’t been a ton of extra base hits this weekend. It never seems like there is. It always seems like pitcher dudes come in and shove, and catching a barrel becomes a rarity. So everyone wants to work at-bats, get guys on, run and bunt them around, and get a sac fly and win 1-0. Or 2-1.
That’s the model.
And if you’re a sicko, you love it. A guy threw 9.1 innings the other day, and it wasn’t the only one to get through nine frames! Lots of little numbers in the score. Lots of games where the runs were all scored at the end.
Scratching out runs.
Get a guy to second with two outs and to third with one. Baseball is so much more interesting when extra base hits are that: extra. You’re not planning on the double. You’re capitalizing on it.
It hasn’t been crazy to see a bunt in the first inning. Every other baseball league in the world is trying to go double-double in the first inning. But at David Story Field they’re trying to steal a single to second and bunt him to third.
And the absolute rarity of the homer, too. There hadn’t been one. Just a couple of ‘Ooh! Maybes.’ But nothing more.
Until Saturday at the park. Saturday had some big-time swings.
But there were some really good swings on Saturday. Ollie Hogan got the first one, even though Umpqua ended up beating his Bellevue Bulldogs 9-2. Hogan’s two-run job cut the Riverhawk lead to 3-2, but Payton Smith later hit his own two-run dinger in the eighth, a dagger to be sure.
Eight games, no homers. One game, two homers.
It didn’t stop! Make it stop!
Garrett Cooper hit a two-run back-breaker to beat LCC. Didn’t have a hit all weekend. Until then. Didn’t have a homer all season. Until then.
And Andrew Demaniew from Linn-Benton got one to finish the day, even as that game went sideways. More on that in a second.
I liked most of that.
Linn-Benton! Wait, no. Tacoma!
That, that was something.
This’ll be some fun numbers. Tacoma used a second eighth-inning or later multi-run comeback to clinch a spot in a Monday game for the third straight season in a bid to win its first NWAC baseball title in school history.
That was fun, huh?
If you were there and you were sure there was no way Linn-Benton was losing, I’m right there with you. Not that no way Tacoma could win. There was no way the Roadrunners were losing. I can’t quite explain why, but I’ll try. There’s a sureness about them. Like you can ask them to play underwater or in outer space and they’ll score three runs. It’s not surprising they win games the way they do at this thing.
Which is why it was so wild things went sideways. Maybe it’s the Linn-Benton weakness: the bullpen. Not uncommon. Many a tournament has been won with a handful of pitchers who throw all the innings. Sounds kinda familiar, actually.
I must be honest with you all. I wasn’t really paying attention anymore. Long day. Work mostly done. A mostly boring game. Oh yeah, Linn-Benton the inevitable team. Who does Tacoma have to play next?
I look up and the bases are loaded and a guy gets clipped. That’s a run! Oh it’s 4-2 now. Two outs though. Huh. Next guy get gets clipped. That’s another run! Then Chase Cretti pinch hits.
And Linn-Benton must’ve watched the Umpqua right fielder run all over creation chasing routine balls against Tacoma because of his unorthodox positioning and decided that was a good idea, too. So, Cretti hits one that is too far for the center fielder to get to, but also too far for the right fielder to reach, too.
The ball was hit to right field.
It was a bases-clearing triple. By the way, do people ever say three-run triple? Or do they always say something about the bases being, once, full and, now, empty or clear? Because that’s what Cretti did. With a routine fly ball to right field.
A plot twist. I liked that.
What’re you willing to sacrifice? (again)
Lower Columbia got hit by 123 pitches this season. The Red Devils played 51 games. And got hit 123 times. That’s like, what, 2.5 a game or thereabouts? That’s absurd. One time a pitch got thrown behind and LCC batter and he didn’t move. Like, just stood there. ‘Hey, it might hit me!’
The eighth inning, which was ultimately the last, desperate gasp for LCC, started with bean ball number 123. A school record. The second time a Kurt Lupinski coached team has broken the school record for HBPs.
“That’s just one specific example of commitment and toughness,” Lupinski said. “I love that this group did that. And that's why it was fun coming to work every day.”
This is a really cool thing, and it makes the losses even harder to take for local fans, and the Red Devils themselvs. You’re told every day that if you do these things, you’ll be a champion. The coaches are on site at a quarter to five every morning, and you aren’t far behind. You sacrifice and you work, and every day you’re told that if you do these things, you’ll be a champion.
And you do this every day for a year. College baseball isn’t a spring sport. Common misconception. It starts in August. Next year is just a matter of weeks away, already. And it works. And all you do is win. And you continue to do these things, and you’re told every day that if you do these things, you’ll be a champion.
And then you aren’t. It’s over. Suddenly. Before you know it. All you’ve known is the grind and being told you’ll be a champion if you did these things. And you did. And you’re not.
That’s baseball.
Sometimes you do everything you’re supposed to and it doesn’t work out. LCC barreled as many balls as they did all weekend, and half of them were caught.
That’s sports. That’s life.
“It’s just always remembering the professionalism side of it,” Lupinski said. “I think that’s what we try to help these kids to continue to just grow and mature. Why sports are valuable, why we should not be cutting them from schools, why we should be promoting more young people to get into ‘em. It’s because it can help you in times like this, when the chips are down or you experience heartbreak or failure. That’s called adversity and baseball is a game that gives it to you about every pitch.”
Perspective. I like that.
Perspective!
What Lupinski said about the wins record is in response to the first question I asked him.
I waited awhile. It takes time for a season to end. Because that’s what happens when the team breaks up after the last game. That group will never fully, truly, be together ever again. And you gotta let that breathe.
I can be patient. Nothing else for it. Circle of control. So I wait. Parents are around, their sons go over in varying levels of emotionality. These people care. It’s not a game to them. I know that feeling. I remember it.
But these waiting times give you time to think. And after season-ending losses, I have to think hard. I rarely ask about the game in these spots, except if there is something about the game that is particularly interesting. Because the game becomes irrelevant. The game is now a point in a scatter chart. And I like looking at the scatter chart more than the one point, especially when it’s done.
So there’s that little bench facing the parking lot and the playground, and the Mark Morris High School fields behind them. It’s right there next to the hitting barn’s backdoor, and I sit down. The team finally saying goodbye and heading their separate ways home.
Thta’s when Lupinski sat down next to me. He’d probably been on his feet all day.
And I ask him, you’ve won 44 regular season games, 45 in total. A new school record. But you don’t have the thing you want most. Is that number empty calories? Hollow? Or can you recognize the achievement? I’d been thinking about it for 20 minutes.
He’d been thinking about it too. Because he talked about consistency, about work ethic, about pride in doing things that are hard, and how that number represents all those things. Anyone can have a good game, or a good day, or a good weekend, or a good month.
But to do it all year? That’s special. And even if you don’t get the big one, the effort and the journey is what makes them champions.
“When you’re in a scenario where you’re feeling like doing what you’re doing is taking away from other things that you’re doing, whether that’s your job, your family, your friends — we all know,” Lupinski said. “So many sacrifices that your family has to make and that their family has to make. It just epitomizes what this team was and how quick and easy this season went.”
Recycling!
Two years ago, on Saturday night, LCC was in the same spot. Back against the wall. Game getting out of reach.
Then Cayden Wotipka went big fly. It was a bullpen finder, and turned a big deficit around. The Red Devils went on to win the whole thing.
I had my story written that night. I talked about the nature of expectations and failure. I had conversations with Lupinski about the team before and during the season. Wasn’t the most on-paper talented. Pitch-ability (see: strike throwers) over stuff and velo. More underdog than you’d expect. How do you square overachieving with championship expectations?
And then they won that night and my story was useless. Trash. Digital trash.
But I couldn’t let good work go to waste. So I saved it. For a rainy day. For today, actually. Because I reused that puppy. No copy-paste. I’m not an animal. When you recycle paper, you break it back down into a pulpy liquid, then lay it back out and dry it and viola, new paper. It’s made from the same stuff as the last paper, but it’s not the last paper, it’s new paper. It’s recycled paper.
As was that gamer. Once trash. Now recycled.
Things I Didn’t Like
Reviews
I’m having a hard time liking the NWAC replay system.
Don’t get me wrong, I like getting stuff right. It’s important the rules are administered correctly. Otherwise you’d have chaos. Constraints are good. They are what dictate behavior. Or at least they should.
But I’m having a hard time with it.
It kind of takes the sting out of things doesn’t it?
Big play! Oh, it’s close. Whoa, he’s out! Look at the emotion. Oh wait. No, they’ll take a look. Five minutes. Six minutes. Seven min- oh here they come. Nope, he’s safe.
Then there were the multiple obstruction reviews, which took forever to look at and ended up being more confusing than ever.
My real problem, though, is the technology is getting too good. These things happen in real time, and lots of the things that happen are unconscious or maybe restricted by the laws of physics (constraints!). And I think the game has to be administered that way, too (constraints!).
On the obstruction call in the Belleuve-Umpqua game, which flipped an inning-ending play at the plate to a run and Smith’s two-run homer. The oh-no kind. You know what I mean.
It looked like an out in real time. The throw took the catcher into the baseline. It’s low so he automatically goes to block it, because he’s been conditioned to do that his whole life. But there’s the runner. He slides into the catcher. Catcher has the ball. That’s an out.
But then there was a review. Lengthy as can be. Umpires finally came back and said no, it’s obstruction. I found an umpire and asked why. He said they went frame-by-frame and determined the catcher reset in the baseline because of the bad throw and, therefore, was in the baseline without making a play on the ball. It met the criteria of the rule.
Okay. Fair. My argument is not with you. Except, sliding over to block/catch an errant throw sounds an awful lot like making a play on the ball.
Which brings me around to the argument. It’s with the frame-by-frame. If you look at any sports thing frame-by-frame you can see anything you want. Imagine if they did pass interference frame-by-frame. We don’t know what a catch is and we sure wouldn’t know what PI is, either.
But then there was a really similar play in the LCC game and they called it the other way, and LCC didn’t get the tying run. It mattered.
The umpires are just doing their job, trying to get stuff right. And they should be applauded. It’s hard. I just think if you’re doing reviews it should be with some urgency, and just a quick look.
Watch the replay and see what you can see and leave it at that.
Frame-by-frame court room analysis? I didn’t like that.
Small sample sizes
If you think about it, settling a 50-game season with a four-day tournament seems like madness.
It’ll never change. “But playoffs!” is an argument that works on me.
I’ve spent 2,000 words writing about one day of it. I wrote like 10,000 words last weekend for the NWAC Softball Tournament. Clearly we like it (we do!) but it feels like, an injustice?
Sort of.
Maybe you think I’m a homer now. And, truthfully, LCC baseball was never really on my radar growing up. No reason given. I went to the camp once. Kyle McCrady taught us how to rob homers. He was so tall! Coach Hippi (a HOF pitching coach) taught us how to bunt in the barn. It was my first time in there. Or maybe that was in the Mark Morris cage? I can’t remember.
But you play 48 games over the course of four months and you win 44 of them, that feels like champion territory. Maybe European soccer has this right. Play all the times a couple of times or more and see how things shake out.
Small sample size. This time, I didn’t like that.
Dogs, erm, dawgs?
Please, for the love of God, find a new descriptor other than ‘dogs.’
“We’re a bunch of dogs.”
Ya, dogs are cool. They chase stuff and bark and wag their tails.
Actually no, keep saying it. Make it cliche faster.
I didn’t like that. But I’d love that.
In Case You Missed It
College Baseball: Lower Columbia suffers early exit at NWAC Tournament
Sam Barbee for Blast Zone Media / blastzonenews@gmail.com
