Game 51 Recap: Day to Day
Oakland Pushes Long Beach to Limit Before Coast Land Last Punch 12-9; Cobb Injured
By Joe Horton
LONG BEACH—No burying the lede here. “I’m all good,” Tremayne Cobb wrote Dispatches after the game. “Just pulled sumn.”
Assistant Coach James Harris said after the game that Cobb was day-to-day (aren’t we all), and that the team was looking at a possible Sunday return for their do-it-all shortstop but that Tuesday was more likely. We’ll stay on the story, but that’s of course good preliminary news for Cobb, the team, and Baller Nation after witnessing a rough slide into third base on a double steal in the fourth. Cobb went to the locker room briefly before returning to the bench with ice around his knee for a couple of innings.
Cobb from Tuesday’s game in Long Beach
For B’s fans, Cobb’s injury was undoubtedly the story in a game that was full of them. It was the longest contest in Long Beach’s brief history at 3h55 (which is perfect if you have a five-year-old in tow, eons past his bedtime). It featured back-and-forth scoring, coaching chicanery, and late umpire drama. Though Oakland went down 12-9 after giving up three runs in the bottom of the eighth, there was plenty of energy and competitiveness in the third game of the series that could easily have been shadowboxed with a long drive back to the Bay and Modesto looming.
Returning Baller Reed Butz took the mound for the first time this season, going 3.0 with four runs, five walks, and four strikeouts. After his exit, the B’s tied the game at 4 in the fourth through Nick Leehey’s three-run homer, the first and only long ball hit by Oakland this series. Leehey finished 2-for-5 with four RBI; Brendan O’Sullivan added a 3-for-4 night with two driven in. The Ballers then battled back from 6-4 down and 9-7 down; in a four-hour game, it felt like anything was possible. Though the team left another 12 men on base, their seven drawn walks and 13 hits gave them numbers to play with. Coast pitching was hittable all night, but the offensive inefficiency finally caught up to the B’s in the eighth when they had men on first and second and only one out but couldn’t convert to untie the game.
B’s pitching issued 12 walks to a Coast team that needs no help populating the bases. Oakland has not won in Long Beach yet this season. Before his injury, Cobb added two more stolen bases, bringing his total to 27.
Dispatches caught up with Nancy Butz in the stands, who drove with her son out to Long Beach for his reunion with the team. “Mom and son time,” she said.
About her son’s return to his championship roots in Oakland, she added, “The Ballers have it on. They know how to treat the players, the fans, and the parents well,” Nancy said. “I’ve been through four teams, and hands down, Ballers are the best, how they do things. And I will tell you, it's like coming home…I think for [Reed], he loves Oakland. He said, mom, Oakland should not cost as much as it does, but we love Oakland. And that's how I just feel, like I'm at home.”
Odds & Ends
Noah Blythe made an incredible catch on a sacrifice fly by Cooper Vest in the eighth, after which Oakland manager Aaron Miles made a prologued and multi-stage appeal about Long Beach pinch runner Jaylen Edmonds leaving early to score. Fans listening to the Great Gareth on the broadcast got a detailed summary of the saga and ruling in the Coast’s favor, but for fans in the park, it played out like a silent film with the very loud Long Beach organist over top.
Also in the eighth, the light LBC crowd having thinned further, it was possible to hear anything shouted anywhere in the park. Home plate umpire Neil Turner finally had enough and chastised the Oakland bench broadly to quit it or leave. A fan behind the dugout then retorted that had actually been his jawing that had drawn Turner’s ire and that it was a bad sign that the ump couldn’t tell what was heckling from the team and what was from the fans (a scenario reminiscent of one from Yankee Stadium against a former Oakland team two seasons ago). I asked that fan later about the exchange. “Oh, I was covering for the team,” he readily admitted. In the end, no one took Turner up on the offer to self-eject.
Joe Horton is the editor of Dispatches from Raimondi.
