I'm starting to like the little Hacienda del Sol booth on the main concourse at Gesa Stadium.
During the last homestand, they had a special for $2 ceviche tostadas, and I love my ceviche. For $2, I was expecting some smallish little things, but they were huge! And they were good, too.
Today it was $1 tacos, which were quite tasty. For $3, I walked away with a good amount of food. I actually bought one for my press box neighbor and Dust Devils play-by-play man, Jason Schwartz, but he turned it down.
Tough luck, Jason. You're missing out, buddy.
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A couple nights ago, I wrote about "borrowing" bits of information overheard from Jason, who sits just to my right. He came up with another good one tonight.
The Yakima Bears have 11 home runs this season, but all of them are solo shots. In contrast, Tri-City has 18 homers, and three of them are grand slams — by Jordan Ballard, Brian Humphries and Tyler Massey. Jason pointed out that with those three Dust Devils home runs, they have driven in more runs than all 11 of the Bears' dingers.
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Tri-City didn't waste any time getting on the board tonight. Tri-City leadoff man Jaron Shepherd singled up the middle to start things off against starter Brad Wilson. The next batter, Tim Smalling, looped a triple into the right field corner to bring home Shepherd and give the Dust Devils a 1-0 lead.
But they wasted a chance to bring in Smalling, who was stranded after Wilson struck out Massey and Jared Simon, and then got Taylor Featherston to ground out with the bases loaded to end the inning.
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Tri-City starter Christian Bergman didn't allow a hit through the first three innings and then gave up five consecutive hits to begin the fourth inning, and now the Dust Devils trail 3-1.
Funny thing happened after the fourth hit. TC pitching coach Dave Burba came out to calm Bergman down, and the PA started playing "Some Kind of Wonderful" by Grand Funk Railroad. Not sure why DJ Luke chose that song for the occasion, but it is a good one, nonetheless.
Problem is, he didn't stop it when Burba left. It kept going until Bergman finally reared back and threw a pitch. By that time, home plate umpire JJ January (great name) had turned around and was giving the stink eye to the press box.
Luke, no doubt affected by his grief after the U.S. women's soccer team lost to Japan, finally turned the music off.
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Bergman appears to have hit the wall. After retiring the leadoff batter in the sixth, he gave up two more runs on three straight doubles and now trails 5-1. It may just be that he's not locating his pitches as well or maybe he's losing some velocity, but the Bears are teeing off like they know what's coming.
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In the seventh, Ching-Lung Lo walks the lead runner, who comes around to score to make it 6-1.
Some ugly similarities to last year popping up now. Lackadaisical defense, poor discipline at the plate and I have no idea why Yakima — the worst offensive team in the league — is looking like the 1927 Yankees against our pitching staff.
Maybe chalk it up to a bad day. Hopefully, there's not more to it than that.
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Final score: Yakima 9, Tri-City 6.
Here's the problem with live game blogs: Once the game is done, you pretty much have to start hustling on your game story. There's deadlines to hit, after all. As a result, any live blog wrap up is going to be quick and boring. The problem with that is if there's a great finish, like there was tonight.
So here are some highlights from the last few innings.
Dust Devils trailed 6-1 in the eighth inning but got two runs off reliever Mike Blake, courtesy of a two-run single by Jared Simon. Unfortunately, Yakima bounced back with three more runs in the ninth off reliever Chris Dennis to make it 9-3.
As it turned out, those three runs off Dennis were pretty important, because Tri-City then turned around and rallied on closer Evan Marshall in the ninth. Ryan Casteel led off with a bloop single to right. Featherston lined out hard to center field for the first out. Yakima third baseman Carter Bell then fielded a grounder from Blake McDade, tried to force Casteel at second and ended up throwing the ball into right field for an error. That put Casteel at third and McDade at first with one out.
Jayson Langfels then struck out for the third consecutive time for the second out. Then a wild pitch by Marshall to score Casteel (9-4) and send McDade to second. Shepherd then walked, followed by an RBI single by Smalling to make it 9-5.
Massey then hit a tough grounder to Yakima first baseman Jimmy Comerota, but it went under his glove for an error. That scored Shepherd, put Smalling at third and Massey at second with the tying run coming to the plate in Simon.
Simon is on a nice run. Heading into that at-bat, he had driven in five runs over the last three games, including the game-winning hit against Eugene on Saturday night and another RBI last night.
But he just missed another chance tonight, just getting under a 2-1 pitch from Marshall and flying out to center field to end the game.
Tough loss. Wonderful finish.
