Life in the Minors
Brendan Sagara
Even the worst defeat
is followed by a fresh startWhen it rains, it pours.
Although it hasn't rained more than a drop or two over the past week and a half, it has been pouring in Mammoth land. To our displeasure, losses and injuries have been our precipitate of late.
After winning 15 of 21 games heading into our final, pre-all-star-break series on the road against the Cook County Cheetahs, we were blazing hot. Going 15-6 after an 8-13 start had us atop the Frontier League West Division and on a roll. Winning three of four extra inning games in that span reminded us just how hot we were. Every ball bounced to our advantage, every hard-hit ball by the opposition found a Mammoth fielder's mitt. The sun was shining 24 hours a day and the skies were a glorious, cloudless powder blue. Even the birds of Kenosha seemed to be chirping.
But beginning with that series against the Cheetahs on the south side of Chicago, the skies seemed to turn a dark charcoal, as the proverbial clouds of doom swelled and swooped together in formation to rest just above our heads, following us around like in those cartoon scenes.
Dropping two in that three-game set with Cook County sent us reeling just a little bit heading into the all-star break. But to our consolation, we did end the first half of the season tied for first in our division with the Gateway Grizzlies. To the Kenosha Mammoths, the glass was still half full, and the break was just the baseball gods' way of telling us to slow down a bit and rest up for the second half. "Take a load off," they said.
To our dismay, the skies have opened up ever since, as we have struggled to a 4-7 record. Opening the second half with a crucial road series against the Rockford Riverhawks, we choked. Swept in three straight games.
Limping home we took care of the River City Rascals, winning two of three before opening our series at Mid-Missouri with a 3-2 win Thursday night. Adding injury to insult, we lost our all-star catcher, Dennis Pelfrey, and our all-star first baseman and clean-up hitter, Todd Leathers, within a two-week span. Dennis suffered his broken clavicle I spoke of two weeks ago, while Todd strained his knee in a bizarre play at first three days ago.
In Thursday night's win, our manager, Greg Tagert, was snipered in his third base coach's box by a line drive off the bat of one of our sluggers. The foul liner bore down on Tag's left ankle, flooring him right in his tracks, about 5 feet wide of third base.
Our trainer, Honolulu's own Josh Seligman, even forgot all of the meal money he usually hands out to all of our players and coaches, all $1,000 of it or so. Poor Josh had to make numerous trips to the ATM at the shopping mall across the street from our hotel to get cash for the players, driving him into a mild beer-drinking binge.
I say mild because after having to dole out all of that money, he couldn't afford more than a beer a night.
Friday night, the skies opened up and dumped every drop of doom and defeat one team could possibly absorb. Or at least we hope so. Absolutely every ball our opponents hit found a spot in the open outfield grass, or worse yet, cleared the outfield fence.
Pick the poison and the Mavericks applied it that night. A grand slam, a two-run homer, two two-run rallies and a 13-run fourth for goodness sake, spelled our fate.
Heck, they even shut us out on five hits, one courtesy of Kaiser High grad and Hawaii Pacific product Bryce Uegawachi. At times, it felt like the fourth inning was never going to end. With our top starter, Matt Huskey, on the hill, we never thought in our deepest, darkest nightmares, that we would ever be losing 17-0. One after the other the Mavericks clobbered hit after hit in that fourth inning. It seemed as if they had a thousand hits and scored 500 runs within those three outs. We all thought it would never end. But it did. Almost an hour later.
But when the final out was made on Ray Goirigolzarri's scorching line drive into the left-center field gap, which, appropriately, was caught on an amazing play by the Mavericks' left fielder, I did not despair.
To be quite honest, I was rather relieved. The massacre was finally over. The downpour had halted, and now it was just time to let the flooding subside. When I wake up this morning or, to be more truthful, this afternoon, I will peek outside my hotel window and hope for a rainbow, looking for shore, hoping for an olive branch and a new start.
Brendan Sagara, a former University of Hawaii-Hilo pitcher, is in his first season as pitching coach with the Kenosha (Wis.) Mammoths.
