Game 57: At Long Last

Ballers Win First Visitors’ Series in LBC in Knockout After Wild 10-10 Tie; Moore and Burkett Precocious

by Joe Horton

“Does it have the distance? It falls short! It’s short! Ballers win! Ballers win! Tristan Moore delivers in his third pro game! It takes three knockout rounds, another four-hour marathon, but at long last, the Ballers have taken a series over the Coast.”

As usual, the Great Gareth Kwok gave all the chills on his call. When the Coast’s Jacob Jablonski saw his last gasp to tie Tristan Moore’s one homer fall short in the knockout round, it gave the kind of joy only teams and fans who have been on the other side of such joy can fully appreciate. You could say the Coast fell Too $hort.

It was another game against a titanic (ok, Queen Mary) Long Beach squad where the breaks finally went the B’s way and Oakland refused to give in or tap out. In the end, the 10-10 tie and one-homer winner after three knockout rounds goes down as one of the best and most exciting wins of the season and a sorely needed series victory against the best in the league.

Coming off their 2-1 pitchers’ duel win last night, it was an unpleasant surprise to be back in an early hole when the Coast sent six men across in the second inning against B’s starter Aidan Risse. It was Risse’s fourth start against the Coast, who have stymied him so far this season. Oakland managed to erase that 6-1 deficit in the fifth with all brands of small-ball: Nick Leehey singling, a Jeter Ybarra hit-by-pitching; Jake Allgeyer reaching and pinch runner Myles Beale scoring on an error; Moore singling home Ybarra and Cam Bufford doubling to plate Allgeyer. A story of the game was the normally sure-handed Coast committing four errors, most of them costly to scoring plays.

In the sixth, it was the same Moore/Bufford combo that briefly gave the B’s the lead 9-8 with a pair of scoring singles before Long Beach retook the lead with what mercifully ended up being Jablonski’s last ball to leave the yard on a two-run homer in the sixth. It was Bufford who again came up big in the eighth with a sac fly that knotted the game at 10-10.

“These two wins definitely feel different for the team,” Bufford wrote to Dispatches after the game. “For us to come off a 7 game losing streak to win the series against the best team right now is huge for us and lots of momentum going back home.”

Tristan Moore, who only yesterday recorded his first professional hit and RBI in his second-ever pro game, decided this week that learning curves aren’t for him. He was dynamite at the plate, going 3-for-4 with three RBI before his game-winning homer in the extra frame.

“It feels great to be a part of this group, we have a really good group and it was pretty awesome win tonight. We were all just feeding off of each other and it was pretty amazing to be a part of!” wrote Moore after the game.

Though six batters between two teams could only hit one home run out in the late night sea air knockout, Blair Field has been hell on the long ball for the Ballers. In last week’s series, they only hit one homer, and in this weeks’ series, none. One tonight when it counted most was most welcome; one was enough.

Moore wasn’t the only Baller stretched to new limits. After pitching a five-out save last night on 23 pitches, closer Langston Burkett threw another two innings and 35 pitches tonight, allowing no runs in the eighth and ninth while striking out two through a Coast order that has no heart, only muscle. In these two tremendous efforts, for one fan in the YouTube chat, Langston’s father Todd, the stress was understandably extra. “Not sure Langston has a second inning in him on back-to-back nights,” he wrote, and once his son showed that he did, his response was dignified, dadly, brief: “damn.”

Wrote the younger Burkett to Dispatches after the game, “Lol that’s my dad. It’s always a boost of confidence when it’s a close important game and you get the call from the manager that you’re in the game and that they trust you to go out there and get the job done. Add that with a good defense behind you and it makes it a lot easier to do my job and fill up the zone.”

I asked Gareth, the man who’d called the magic, whether it was the most exciting game to call all season or just the most exhausting. “Can two things be true at the same time?” he wrote. “Yes and yes!”

“I would say our two best wins of the year in my opinion,” he added, referring to Wednesday’s 2-1 squeaker. “I have to sleep at some point, but it won’t be for a little bit.”

The Ballers become the first team to take a series from the Coast in Long Beach this year. The B’s return to Raimondi Park on Friday for a weekend series with the Boise Hawks in the birds’ only visit to Oakland this season.

Odds & Ends, courtesy of Long Beach’s Jesse Cook

• Coast pitching coach Jerome Williams, an 11-year veteran of the majors and ten years removed from his last big-league appearance, was the marketing player opener for the game tonight. He struck out one and didn’t allow a hit in his inning.

• Coast LF Eddy Pelc set a team record with five walks, now four shy of the Pioneer League mark of 86, set by Evan Scavotto of the Grand Junction Jackalopes in 2025, with almost half a season to play. Early congrats, Walk-King Pelc.

Video recap from Ben Verhoek.

Press and info from Jesse Cook’s LBC recap.

Joe Horton is the editor of Dispatches from Raimondi.