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Loud crowd not enough
to keep ’Bows winning

HEARTBREAK. Heartache. The organ music was mournful after third outs yesterday.

The crowd. The crowd wanted it for these guys. The people tried to push the Rainbows over home plate. Mostly to no avail.

Rainbow baseball fans can't wait for Rainbow baseball to be back. And so the people believed it was possible in the late innings, yesterday, seeing a miracle coming with every at-bat. They got louder in the later innings. They clapped hard when Matt Inouye beat out a throw in the first to take half the sting out of a would-be double play.

But, no. Bulldogs were hot and Hawaii was not, and there it was. Streak over.

Oh, it was officially snapped Friday night, but now we know it for sure. Up-and-down. Here we go again.

"Nobody was a hero," UH coach Mike Trapasso said. "Nobody stepped up."

Just when you thought the woes were over. Just when you thought it was safe to believe in miracles, yes.

One streak over, another begun.

You can't expect a team to stay at the level that saw Hawaii win seven in a row. But this? Out-hit 16-5?

Hey, it happens. That's baseball. You lose sometimes. They're kids, sometimes. Welcome to college sports.

"This team has a hard time keeping on an even keel," Trapasso said. It goes on streaks, good and bad.

"It is what it is," he said.

For the record, Trapasso said he hasn't done a very good job this season, and he's probably right. Nothing's worked. Not butt-kicking, not back-patting. For long stretches this team simply hasn't played as well as it should have. No answers. The Rainbows win, then they lose.

"We're fragile," Trapasso said. "But we're better than that."

It isn't easy, of course. These guys want to win. You should have seen them when it was over.

"We'll be all right," Inouye said, saying it because that's the kind of thing you have to say, saying it while his face was a grim, stone mask.

And the Rainbows are 25-25.

Yeah, this program is still undergoing some growing pains.

It's mid-May, they're in a race and the home crowd is ready to race with them ...

It just never happened. There were promising moments yesterday. Hawaii played hard (it was UH's toughness that kept the score close in that early going). The Rainbows competed. They threatened. They fought.

But there were too many pop-ups, for a crucial conference game on a sunny day at home in a race in mid-May. Too many runners left on ("in the 30s," Trapasso would say, with bleak, laugh-so-you-don't-cry humor). Too many pitches taken for a ride.

You can play horseshoes in February. On a day like yesterday, close no longer counts.

So now they're .500 with six games left to go, all on the road.

THE GAME BEGAN with a Ferris-wheel soundtrack; it looked like those keeping score were going to run out of ink. Fresno State started that hot. Fresno State was spraying hits everywhere, nine of them before two innings were through.

The Bulldogs were killing the ball and slicing it and dropping it in. Ground balls slipped through the gaps and pulled balls nestled just inside the line.

Tough to beat a team that's hitting like that.

The closer, Darrell Fisherbaugh, entered in the fourth inning and went the rest of the way. He stopped the bleeding.

"We were in the game," Trapasso said. And the Rainbows were.

But no rallies. No heroes. No answers. It is what it is. No, not today.

And when the Bulldogs won it, they sprinted from their dugout, hugging, pumping fists. The Rainbow seniors had to end their home careers with this.

What happens now? Anything. Who knows.

"We feel good still as a team," Inouye said, and I give him credit for saying something like that.

But they've got to get that winning record. They have to rally. They can't tank now, they just can't. Some sign of progress is necessary.

Growing pains are acceptable. Just plain pain, that's no good.

The crowd was with them all day.

But in the end Fresno State was hot and Hawaii wasn't. And that was that.

You win some. You lose some. That's not just a saying; that's been this whole season. And the Rainbows are running out of time.