verdugo288

The weekend STILL wasn’t over.  We had knocked off Quartz Hill on Saturday, punished North Hollywood 10-0 Sunday morning, and now we had yet ANOTHER road game.  This one was at Stengel Field.  Stengel Field?  That’s right, Stengel Field, against the Glendale team.  Glendale had refused to share Stengel Field with us after the pre-season dispute over Vic, so now we had an AWAY game…..at Stengel Field!!  It didn’t matter…our guys just wanted to play ball…and it showed on this night.

Glendale had beat us pretty badly in our third game of the year 13-2.  I was thrown out of that game.  There was a routine pop fly hit in the third inning….that’s when I got thrown out.  We actually led at that point 2-1.  Eric Berger had hit a pop fly towards Hank, who was playing first.  As Hank waited for the ball to come down he was about 70 feet down the line from home plate with his right foot in fair territory and his left foot in foul grounds.  Before the ball even came down Berger mowed down Hank.  It was a cheap shot.  Berger was called out on the play but I got run when I argued he should have been ejected from the game.  It always amazed me in the four years I had that team that when I argued about shit like that it always somehow got twisted into ME being the bad guy………

So that ejection kind of took the wind out of our sails and they ended up blowing us out.  But honestly, I wasn’t that impressed with their ballclub and I not only knew we could play with these guys…I felt we could beat ’em.  We were coming into this game on a high note, and at the very least I wanted to leave the yard that night with a little respect.  And I was happy we had gotten through the Quartz Hill and North Hollywood games without using Hank on the mound.  So everything was lined up pretty well for us going into this one…..we were playing well, and we had HANK on the mound.

Hank didn’t disappoint, shutting them off for the first three innings and we had a 2-0 lead.  We came out swinging….five hits in the first two innings.  Doubles by Weapon and Sammy and singles by Canale, Frost and Chili.  Canale came up in the third and doubled, and after Hank laced a base-hit Glendale pulled their starting pitcher.   Damn I was fired up with the way we were playing!!!!!!!!!!  We had these bitches on the ropes!!!!!!!

Hank said he was hurting in the third inning.  We sent him out to pitch the fourth.  He threw a gutsy inning.  But before the inning ended they scored an unearned run.  Chili came in to relieve Hank with two outs and the bases loaded and got us out of the jam.  We still led 2-1.  

Glendale scored another unearned run in the fifth to tie it 2-2. 

We started a rally in the sixth.  The first two guys of the inning reached base and Sammy bunted them over perfectly.  Second and third with one out.  Up came Cal Frost.  Frost hit a sharp ground ball to the Glendale  shortstop Aguilar.  There was no way we could score on that play so I held the runners.  But don’t forget…Frost could motor.  He came out of the box like a demon, and put enough pressure on Aguilar to make a bad throw to first.  The throw pulled the Glendale first baseman Aviles off of the bag.  Frosty made a great slide to elude the sweep tag but the umpire was totally out of position.   General saw it, I saw it…hell, everyone at the field saw it EXCEPT the base umpire.  There was NO TAG.  Aviles made a great sales job and they called Frost out.

I went down to discuss the call…..with the PLATE UMPIRE!!!  I remember telling him “C’mon that guy was in no position to even make that call you saw what happened.”

But he wouldn’t budge.  Fuck I was pissed.  After getting run in the first game we had with Glendale…I backed off.  Like every game I ever managed….I wanted to win this one BAD.  I decided to play it cool and stick around……..

This was a huge turn of events.  If Frost is safe, we now have the bases jacked with one out.  Frost was in the nine hole that game so VIC was coming up to hit.  Now, it’s second and third with TWO out with first base open.  If the bases were loaded, they would have HAD to pitch to Vic.  Instead, they intentionally walked him and struck out our next hitter to end the threat. 

They scored another weak unearned run on us in the bottom of the sixth to take the lead 3-2.  Hank reached base in the top of the seventh with his second base-hit of the night with two out………but we couldn’t bring him in.  It was a very tough loss.  I felt we had clearly outplayed them.  They scored three unearned runs and had seven hits.  We had banged out ten hits, played our asses off, but just couldn’t close the deal.  But we did leave the yard with one thing that night..respect.  We battled that overrated team big time and I was very proud of the way we played.  I wasn’t surprised when playoff time came around at the end of the season that Glendale was knocked out of the tournament early. 

While it wasn’t a perfect weekend….it kind of WAS a perfect weekend.  We took two out of three.  We beat a team that went 19-4 (Quartz Hill) at their own yard and we put the fear of God into another team that went 18-5.  We damn near SWEPT the three games we played that weekend….at THREE different Fields! 

One of the players came up to me after the game, sat down next to me in the dugout, and apologized for the way he played. It must have been hard for him to do that…but he did it.  It was kind of a heavy moment.  But this was the great thing about Verdugo.  We had players who had heart and took responsibility for whatever happened on the field.  He felt pretty bad about that game.  I just asked him “Were you physically ready to play?”  His answer was yes.  Then I asked him “Were you mentally prepared?”  His answer was yes.  “Then you got nothing to hang your head about,” I said “Just keep doing what your doing.”

I will never forget that it was THIS GAME that started another great tradition for us.  It was the phone calls I would get after the games we lost.  I must have got AT LEAST six calls that night from different guys who wanted to talk about that game.  Guys who were pissed we lost and wanted to vent about it.  It was good for the players, and it was good for me.  Sometimes I wanted to vent, too.  This is where I think I did more coaching than I ever could have done on the field.  I never liked kicking players when they were down…..as long as they were playing hard, it was always my style to pat ’em on the back.  I saw the effort they gave for us, and I appreciated it. 

When I went to bed that night I looked at the ceiling for about an hour and thought about how cool it was that we had some guys that wanted to win as badly as I did.  Little did I know, that this was just the tip of the iceberg.  And while all of this was going on, we were developing this image around the League as “The Bad Guys.”  Hmmmmmm…….people were labeling us “THE BAD GUYS”….and I got guys calling me up and venting after a loss?  Guys coming up to me and apologizing for the way they played?  Guys that took responsibility and weren’t pointing fingers at their teammates or blaming anyone but themselves?   You call those guys “THE BAD GUYS?”……….well then, I got one word for you…………Bullshit.