Beavers Complete Homestand with 6-5 Victory over River Cats
A Beavers Victory in Three Acts.
Act I. Getaway Day
On a beautiful Tuesday afternoon at PGE Park, the Portland Beavers rallied for a come-from-behind victory against the Pacific Coast League’s best team, the Sacramento River Cats. The Oakland A’s top farm team boasts a .613 winning percentage and a handful of soon-to-be-minted Major League players, so the prospects of coming back from a five-one deficit were slim. But the Beavers exhibited some pluck and gave its work-weary faithful a fine show.
I arrived at the park with several free hours, a press credential, and a fresh scorecard, ready to take in some weekday afternoon baseball. In my head I was calling it a businessman’s special, a term used for those day games that convince local businesses to allow fanatics to play hookey and drink beer rather than sit behind their desks. This was a Tuesday in August, for crying out loud. Why wouldn’t you head down to the ballyard? Turns out the game also attracted a much younger demographic in large numbers, but more on that later.
I settled into my seat–my aforementioned 8.5″ x 14″ scorecard, a 2009 media guide, stats sheets, computer, notebook, and 12oz. can of A&W spread out before me–absolutely stoked for the game. I must admit that while I’m a lifelong baseball fan [1], I’m new to the Beavers. I’ve been doing my homework, I’ve been to the park (notably the Triple-A All Star Home Run Derby), and I’m excited to watch professionals play the game I love. But when I looked out at the gorgeous PGE Park and considered the many layers of impermanence hanging over this team, I felt a twinge of sadness. Let’s recount: the Beavers must leave the urban confines and ivy monster of PGE Park in order for the Timbers to satisfy their MLS requirements; the 2009 season will soon come to an end; Beaverton is threatening to steal the team; and every time a player truly breaks out and starts mashing the ball, he’s bound for San Diego. I’m with Spinoza on this one–at least as a fan of sports teams–in that “each thing, insofar as it exists, endeavors to persist in its own being.” Basically, I am trained to follow a team precisely because of the players on that team, and it’s the grave responsibility of that team’s management to retain a certain personality, a certain individual consistency to that team’s roster year after year. Not easy tasks for minor league squads.
Aaron Poreda, a tall lefty out of Walnut Creek, California, threw the first pitch at 1:09pm. It was his first game, so I certainly wasn’t alone in having no idea who this man was or what to expect. But I, like many others in the stands, was here to watch the game I love being played by truly dedicated professionals: mostly born in the mid-eighties, mostly without a chance of playing for any sustained time in the Bigs, mostly being paid less than you can imagine given the astronomical salaries of the men one league up.
Poreda impressed in his first inning. A ground out and two strikeouts isolated Chris Denorfia, who’d hit a one-out double, and the Beavers’ Drew Macias (one of Portland’s five starting left-handed swingers and a man with a sweet natural swing) hit a convincing home run into deep right field. Things were looking good at the outset.
(Aside: between innings, while the PGE staff paraded out an embarrassment of contests to keep the people clapping, I thought more about the plight of these players. Mike Merrill and I previously used these pages to muse; on the future of professional baseball in Portland. With miniscule salaries and somewhat disappointing turnout for the games, where is the joy in AAA ball? Well, now is an exciting time for players on a team like the Beavers. Silver lining example: the Beavers’ parent organization, the San Diego Padres, currently occupy the NL West’s cellar with a rough 44 wins and 65 losses, which places them in the running for worst record in baseball this year. Combine that fact with San Diego’s financial woes and the impending September MLB roster expansion (teams may increase from 25 active players to 40 starting at the end of the MiLB season), and many of your Beavers can hope for, at minimum, a first-person look at the Big Show. September is something of an auditioning period for MLB teams, especially those teams whose next meaningful game might be opening day of the next season.)
With the first inning on the books, Portland on top and the high fructose corn syrup from my root beer taking effect, I was feeling pretty good about our chances for taking the last game of this homestand from the lofty Cats.
Act II. Dire Singles
Then the hits starting piling up for the opposition. Poreda gives a free pass to Travis Buck and coughs up a big fly to Jeff Baisley to give Sacramento the lead. After a scoreless bottom half of the inning, Poreda retakes the mound and gives up four singles in a row followed by a bases-loaded walk. Four hits, a walk, and bases still loaded with nobody out. Not good.
Poreda managed to escape the inning with a double-play and a flyout, but suddenly the Beavers found themselves down 5-1 with former major league pitcher Shawn Chacon on the hill for the Cats. And this team, mind you, is largely the work of Billy Beane, mastermind of “Moneyball” and frequent burglar of other teams’ best farm talent. (I was in the exciting position of seeing two of St. Louis’s finest young (former) talent in the persons of Brett Wallace and Clayton Mortensen, both of whom were traded for Matt Holliday.) I resigned myself to completing the scorecard and keeping tabs on the strategic successes or failures enjoyed by both sides. I mean, if Portland is going to sell baseball, it has to sell the intellectual side, seeing as the players will come and go in direct relationship with their skill level.
Act III. Regaining and Holding the Lead, or, Future Fireballers of San Diego
So it’s Tuesday afternoon at 2pm, a couple of tough innings have come and gone, and I look around to see who else has shown up to enjoy the game. I’m ecstatic to see at least three sections filled with just the kinds of fans the Beavers need: kids. Yes, the YMCA Day Camp, Learning Tree, ZONE Summer Day Camp, and the Boys and Girls Club were all in attendance. (Intel and something called the Moreland Manor Mens Club also had groups in attendance, but that seemed far more predictable and less interesting, save the possibly bizarre nature of that mens group….) I waned to pick up the phone and call Mike straight away and say, “They’re doing it! The Beavers are bringing up a new generation of fans!” Nevermind that they were more interested in the T-shirts being tossed into their section, and nevermind that most of those groups disappeared by the 6th inning. There was fresh blood in the stands, and they were cheering.
But then another thing struck me. While the upper sections were impressively full, attendance in the more expensive lower sections was spotty at best. Groups of five or ten, mostly males, and the occasional couple occupied patches of seats, but there were far too many empties. Now I’m no economist or minor league franchise owner, but shouldn’t the Beavers do everything in their power to pack the house, including dropping the price on those seats? I mean, it’s a day game in August. You want to sell hot dogs and $7 beers. Open the gates! Sell every seat for five bucks! Bring the noise! And in the meantime, start educating the kids on why baseball is different from every other sport. Give out scorecards and help them follow the game. Define a sacrifice fly and explain why it’s important to move the runner from second to third with no outs. I digress, but I’m also serious. Baseball is a different sport when you realize that what happens between pitches is as important as the pitch itself.
My ruminations on cheap tickets and small ball were broken by what had previously seemed impossible. The Beavers started mounting a comeback. Craig Stansberry’s single was followed by another Macias RBI hit, this time a double into right field. Poreda pitched an impressive fourth (his last), and the Beavers’ hit parade started again. Two walks, a single, another Macias RBI (this in the form of a bases-loaded walk), and a sinking line-drive double off the bat of Danny Putnam put the Beavers ahead 6-5. Stately, plump Shawn Chacon, who looked absolutely beaten by this time, was removed from the game, but the Beavers had done all the necessary damage. It was time for Portland’s fireballers to close things out.
Portland deployed three pitchers for the fifth through ninth innings, and in that time they allowed a total of three hits and zero runs. Especially impressive was Adam Russell, a 6′ 8″ righty from North Olmsted, Ohio, who pitched the last two innings and kept Sacramento’s batters off-balance. The way San Diego’s season is shaping up, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Russell or his teammate Ryan Webb facing National League hitters a month from now.
After Russell coaxed a soft groundout from Wallace (who will certainly be playing in Oakland come call-ups) to end the game, I collected my possessions and watched the Beavers’ back-up catcher toss more shirts into the stands. A bunch of kids filed into the lower section and jockied for the loot. The sky remained totally blue. And I found myself looking forward to the remaining 2009 games and a final season here in 2010. I would have loved to watch the kids file out after the last pitch was thrown, but their chaperones had probably played it just right. They’d seen all the scoring action and left before the game was turned over to the bullpens. When those same fans start showing up by their own volition, hopefully a few of them will ask why a manager might call for a pitch-out with a one ball, one strike count in a tie game, yet let a runner steal second uncontested when his team’s up by a few runs late in the game. That’s the kind of question that will keep the Beavers in Portland, wherever their new home may be.
Disclaimer: This space does not claim to cover games in objective detail. Although the game is covered here with complete respect to the proceedings, the fact-hungry fan might also try OregonLive.
[1] I was weaned on St. Louis Cardinals teams from the 1980’s, teams that played a brand of baseball called “Whiteyball,” which is named after one Dorrel Norman Elvert “Whitey” Herzog. Whitey’s preferences swayed toward the hit-and-run, stolen base, plate discipline, and tight defense–tactics that helped him win scores of games in the spacious artificially turfed Busch Stadium of that era.
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