Sunday was a rare chance to soak up sun in Seattle in March, and humans weren’t the only ones who took advantage. Walking along Walla Walla Road where the UW campus meets Lake Washington, I spotted a small pond where a few turtles were sunning themselves on a log, watching two colorful wood ducks engage in a loud, flapping fight nearby. A trio of black-and-white hooded mergansers floated past, unperturbed. My own sunny day activity would be only slightly more exciting–watching baseball.
Husky baseball games have for my entire lifetime been played in front of just a few hundred diehards, giving them the feel of a low-end minor league game. On Sunday, while 8,508 were steps away inside Hec Edmundson Pavilion watching the Husky basketball team play Washington State, only 367 of us turned out to see the Husky baseballers play Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Given how miraculously sunny Sunday was, I’m happy to have been in the minority.
The Husky baseball team has a long history, but not a very successful one. Though the team began play in 1901, it was not until 2009 that a UW product (Tim Lincecum) played in the MLB All-Star Game. The Huskies has still never advanced to the College World Series — they were one win away in 1994, but lost to a Georgia Tech team with Jason Varitek and Nomar Garciaparra. As Cubs fans say, anyone can have a bad century!
Still, baseball is baseball. When I spied the green turf through the grandstands after walking in, a huge smile spread itself across my face and there was nothing I could do about it. First baseball game of the year! Makes you feel like a kid again.
Husky Ballpark has a FieldTurf infield and a grass outfield. The warning track is purple, a nice home team touch. Fans may sit in the wooden bleachers rounding first to third bases, or stand along a chain link fence down the foul lines. (The Huskies will get a new, $15-million stadium for next season, including a permanent entrance and facade, outfield berm seating, and a beer garden.)
I sit in the third row behind home plate, a felicitous choice when the respective teams’ radar gun operators sit directly in front of me. No guessing the speed of the starters for me, I could lean down and see that Washington starter Tyler Davis threw about 85, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo starter Bryan Granger topped out at 90.
Both pitchers struggled to throw strikes. College baseball teams typically throw their best pitchers on Friday, second-best on Saturday, third-best on Sunday. So Sunday games — often, not always — are high-scoring affairs. This one was not. Though they had plenty of baserunners, neither team was able to put up a “crooked number”; baseball talk for an inning where your offense posts a number other than a 0 or a 1 on the scoreboard.
The music was an entertaining jumble. Before the game we’d been treated to a classic rock marathon, heavy on Van Halen. But once the game began, each player’s unique intro music as they came to bat meant that we were dipping in and out of disparate genres every few minutes. From Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop,” to the Southern rock manifesto “Whistlin’ Dixie” by Randy Houser, it was an uptempo audio tour of American culture.
The game itself came down to one fateful pitch. In the top of the fourth inning, with the bases loaded, UW coach Lindsay Meggs brought on righty reliever Zach Wright to face Cal Poly 3B and three-hole hitter Jimmy Allen.
Wright started the right-handed hitting Allen off with a slider that dove out of the strike zone as Allen swing through it. Wright took something off of his second pitch, also a breaking ball, also a swing-and-a-miss by Allen. My companions and I chatted about what Allen would throw next. Slider, way away? It seemed to be Wright’s best pitch and Allen hadn’t gotten close to it. The obvious choice.
Then, we saw UW’s catcher set up inside. Instead of staying away with his best pitch, Wright was going to try to sneak by an inside fastball. The pitch came in…and Allen turned on it, ripping it into left-centerfield. All three runs scored, and with the Huskies’ offense clearly ineffectual, the game was decided.
If you would like to check out some baseball this March without boarding a plane, you have plenty of opportunities. The Huskies host Seattle U tonight at 5 p.m., and play four more home games this month. (Macklemore would approve of the ticket price — only $6.) Seattle U, which plays at Bellevue’s Bannerwood Park, has home games Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday-Sunday next week. High school baseball season kicks into high gear next week as well, games are usually Monday, Wednesday or Friday and start at 3:30 or 4 p.m. Here’s the schedule for Seattle’s 3A schools.
