Keep Hope Alive - Improbable baseball

Tonight the Sacramento Rivercats defeated the Portland Beavers 12-11. It was an odd game. For the last four home games the Rivercats have not had any zip. But in this one they seemed to have winning on their mind. The game started out OK - we went ahead in the first and then added two in the third. But then Portland added 5 in the fourth, 4 in the sixth, and 1 in the ninth. So we came into the 9th six down. We decided to leave at the top of the ninth- based on their performance in the last four games against Las Vegas we could get home on time and listen to the inevitable.

But the inevitable was not to happen tonight. Ron Flores who came back down from his major stint at Oakland - won the game. And in the 9 th we started to come back. In the game Perry got two home runs and McClain got one too. But the key one was Perry's in the bottom of the ninth. The set up was wonderful. Clark started off with a walk, then Beattie got on - Espy hit and Clark scored. Ginter must have hit a ton of fouls and then got a hit - one more run, Then Kiger got up and added one more. But we still needed three runs to tie. And by that time we were down to our last out. But then Jason Perry got up and after a bit, hit his second homer of the game - with two on. That tied us up.

In the tenth - Flores came in and pitched 2/3 of an inning with two strikeouts. Tony D came out and it looked like he would pull Flores - but he kept him in. Flores faced and then struck out Johnson. We went into the bottom of the tenth and after some prelims we got some guys on base. A balk by the Portland pitcher moved Clark to third and when Scott McClain flied out - it was enough to allow Clark to score.

Baseball is an odd game - by any standard no team comes back from a six run deficit - but they did. What is best about leaving a game like this (if there can be something) is Johnny Doskow - he is the Rivercats' Ace announcer - like Vin Scully he does not get into the game but he gets you into the game - so as we were driving home we heard the last inning and we got into the house in time to listen to the 10th.

This game puts us back up to 1 over .500 - but to get into the playoffs we will have to be a lot better in June, July and August. Tonight gave us some hope. The win gets us to one under at home (14-15). Tomorrow is a double header.