Late innings

Somebody up there must know that I don’t have a lot of baseball left to cover this season, because I got an extra helping last night.

The first five innings of the Charlotte Knights’ game against the Gwinnett Braves last night at Knights Stadium were nothing extraordinary and went by in a little over an hour. Then baseball happened.

By the end of six innings, the game was tied 6-6 and then, after nearly 3-1/2 hours of play, went to extra innings tied 7-7. Thankfully, because I had to meet a 9:30 class this morning, it didn’t last much longer.

The Knights’ Tyler Flowers, a 23-year-old catcher who played in the Atlanta Braves’ organization last season, ended the game close to 11:30 p.m. with a two-out, three-run homer in the bottom of the 11th, giving Charlotte a 10-7 victory. Time of game, 4 hours and 4 minutes.

That makes it tough on a deadline but I did have time enough to talk with Flowers after the game. I should have been paying more attention to the game notes, as I missed the "guy beats the organization that traded him" angle. But it did come out in, I think, a more interesting way than usual.

Flowers hit his home run off a former teammate in the Braves minor league system, pitcher Juan Perez.

"I had caught him before, so I knew he had a good breaking ball and I didn't want him to beat me with it," Flowers said. "I wanted to get in the position to get a fastball."

He got one on a one-ball, no-strike pitch and slammed it to right center field to end one of the International League's longest games of the season.

In addition to describing this game, the title of tonight's post, completely and totally stolen from one of the many wonderful books about baseball by Roger Angell of The New Yorker, is appropriate for this part of the season.

After tonight the Knights (62-69 after Wednesday night's win) have just 12 games left and only four more home games. They're practically, if not quite mathematically, eliminated from playoff contention. So how does a player give meaning to the last string of meaningless games?

"There's plenty to play for," Knights manager Chris Chambliss said after the game. "These guys are trying to position themselves well for next season, whether it's with this organization or another one. And we play the contenders, so the schedule gives us a lot to say about who will get in the playoffs from our division."

I'm not sure I've ever believed that a non-contending team gets a lot of satisfaction out of playing that "spoiler" role, unless the "spoilee" is a hated rival.

But to paraphrase John Lennon, whatever gets you through the last long nights of the season, it's all right. It's all right.

Baseball, fireworks and the American way of life

In almost all of the past 15 years, I've finished up the Fourth of July at Knights Stadium in Fort Mill covering a baseball game. (I've always wondered how the Charlotte Knights manage to get the July 4 home game nearly every year.)

As I've noted before, I always enjoy covering baseball, but the "event" that is the Fourth of July makes that game extra enjoyable. And so it was last night. The Knights have been plagued by low attendance in recent years -- near or at the bottom of the International League most of this season. (It's ominous to note that the teams that have kept Charlotte out of the cellar in recent years solved their attendance problems by moving -- Ottawa to the Allentown, Pa., area in 2008 and Richmond to Gwinnett County, Ga., earlier this year.)

But the July 4 game always brings out a crowd at the stadium near the N.C./S.C. state line. Crowd was 15,020 last night, third best in the stadium's 20-year history, and surpassed only by the previous two July 4 crowds. See the video for a look at the fans.



And it could have been just the number of people in the house, but it also seems like Independence Day brings out the best in the patriotic rituals that usually accompany an athletic event in this country. You could actually hear folks singing the National Anthem and a full-throated rendition of "God Bless America" at the seventh inning stretch was gratifying.

They were rewarded with a nice performance by the Knights, who beat the Durham Bulls, 11-2. Click here for my story in The Charlotte Observer. In addition to the offensive fireworks noted in my story, the Knights also got great pitching. Starting pitcher Carlos Torres (8-4) gave up four hits and struck out nine in eight innings. His strikeout total (93) gave him the International League lead.

I talked with Torres after the game and pursued this story line a little, but he minimized the importance. "The guy I passed has been in the major leagues for a month," he said. "I'd rather get them all out in one pitch. It's more of a tribute to my catchers for calling the right pitches in the right spots."

Gwinnett's Tommy Hanson, who was called up to the Atlanta Braves on June 3, had been the strikeout leader.

Then it was time to watch a little fireworks. I was glad that the comparatively brief game -- 2 hours, 22 minutes -- gave me a few minutes to go down to the bottom of the ramp the players take to the field and watch the pyrotechnics. Like everything else about July 4, the fireworks were bigger and better than the Knights' usual Saturday post-game fireworks -- which I usually miss because I'm working.

It was an appropriate ending to a good day in America.

Reporter's notebook, June 19

"This ain't football. We do this every day."

So said the legendary Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver, and the point was that -- unlike the big-event atmosphere of an NFL schedule, with just 16 chances to get it right -- baseball is a day-to-day grind and one loss is nothing to get excited about. And you have to ride out some ups and downs and roll with some changes. (Contest: how many cliches were in that last paragraph?)

Anyway, the same thing goes for covering a baseball team. I'm not going to as many Charlotte Knights games as I have in the past, and I can tell the difference when I do go to the ballpark. One constant at the Triple A level is change in the roster. Because it's the last stop before the major leagues, players tend to come and go more than they do at the lower levels of the minor leagues. So there are always player moves to catch up on.

The Knights added a couple of players from the Class AA Birmingham Barons to their roster the day before. I always start looking for a possible story angle early on, even before the game starts, knowing of course that that can change. I thought a good "first game in Triple A" from either of the newcomers, pitcher Brian Omogrosso and infielder Brandon Allen might be a possiblity.

I was hoping for an opportunity to write about Buffalo pitcher Lance Broadway, a former Knight recently traded by the Chicago White Sox, Charlotte's parent club, to the New York Mets, Buffalo's parent club. But I learned that he's pitching out of the bullpen for the Bisons. He didn't play in Buffalo's 10-3 victory over the Knights.

Omogrosso, who was second in the Southern League in wins (7) at the time of his call-up, didn't have a great debut. He gave up four runs in two innings of relief pitching. So that left Allen. He's a 23-year-old Texan who has been considered one of the White Sox' top prospects but had had some hitting struggles in his first minor league seasons before finally blossoming a little at Birmingham.

He had a nice first game in Charlotte -- 3-for-4 with two doubles and an RBI, about the only bright spot for the Knights at the plate. I arranged to talk with him after the game.

As I introduced myself, I tried a conversational gambit that I try to teach my students -- do whatever you can to establish a little rapport with the interviewee. I decided on the Texas connection. Allen is from Montgomery, Texas, a little town of about 500 people about 40 miles west of Houston. It's just down Texas Highway 105 from Navasota, a charming little town where Jayne and I both worked for the weekly newspaper when I was in graduate school at Texas A&M. The two high schools have often been in the same district for athletic competition.

I mentioned that connection to him and he took the bait positively. "Oh, yeah? Rattler Country," he said with a smile, mentioning Navasota's nickname. The rest of the interview went well, coincidentally or not.

I must also note that this doesn't always work. I was part of the coverage for the 1994 Major League Baseball All-Star Game at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh for my employer at the time, the North Hills News Record. My previous paper, the Pensacola (Fla.) News-Journal had contacted me to do a story for them about Travis Fryman. The Detroit Tigers' All-Star third baseman had been a Pensacola-area high school baseball star.

I approached Fryman during a media availability the day before the game, told him who I was and that I used to work for the News-Journal and even threw in a reference to Tate High School, his alma mater, for good measure. His reaction to all that was the same as if I had just told him I worked for the newspaper in Wausau, Wisconsin. A blank.

The approach may have fallen flat, but I suppose that's the difference between a young minor-leaguer and a major league veteran. Professional that he was, Fryman was cordial and gave me a good interview anyway.