San Francisco Angels
Wood Bat Baseball Team
Recap of 2003 games
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San Francisco Angels Wood Bat Baseball Team Recap of 2003 games |
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For the full itinerary, click on thumbnail. The Angels travel director was on suicide watch Tuesday June 24 when some players irrationally chose work, school, and family commitments over Wednesday night baseball on the road. Using his network of contacts in the Church of Baseball, the travel director procured volunteers from Redding and Lake County to bolster the Angels lineup and keep the pitchers out of unfamiliar positions for the first game against the Humboldt Crabs. Some of these new players apparently will bring superhuman skills with them, and so will fit right in. Forty year-old Willie Gomez, Angel Hall-of-Famer and Crab-killer, was still being recruited for duty. See story from the archives: 1998: San Francisco routs Humboldt Crabs. A wave of current Angels will appear for Thursday's twilight doubleheader against the Crabs, and then another wave on Friday for the first of three against Medford's Southern Oregon Riverdogs. The final stage of the trip is in Bend, Oregon, where the Angels will play a twilight doubleheader Sunday against the Bend Elks. When playing the Crabs, be very careful near Shorty Ames, the tight-pants Humboldt manager and, by the way, don't forget to wear a protective cup at all the games. All eight games are on good fields against good teams; six are twilight or night games. All three home teams draw crowds. Bend could have over a thousand fans actually in the seats.
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June 25 & 26, 2003 Strange nights in Arcata
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The Angels' architecture and film critic Jerome Walker Huxtable provides a dazzling analysis, and then answers some questions: Hemmed in by a freeway, a police station, and the city streets, "The Ballpark" at Arcata fastens the angular peculiarities of its cityside layout onto the warped psychic dimensions of a Humboldt Crabs baseball team which plays all of its games at home. Why are they always home? Are they kept here? The visitor feels a certain strangeness setting in right away.
An obscure sense of the unusual cannot be avoided. A newcomer might notice that The Ballpark contains two ball fields. A dirt softball diamond lies in the right field area of the baseball field, and a baseball diamond lies in the left field area of the softball field. There is no single fixed frame of reference: there are two home plates and three foul lines.
When coming to the plate to hit at the baseball diamond, the innocent visitor cannot help observing, if only subconsciously, a clearly marked foul line drawn in white on the centerfield wall. A disturbance takes place in his brain. What is a foul line doing there? Like the Mark of Cain, the foul line suggests sinful separateness, disassociation from the main field of play, confusion, failure, a strike against you, and perhaps something evil lurking. This gives the pitcher for the always-home Crabs just enough advantage to distract the hitter into a strikeout or routine groundout.
Little quirks make their appearance during the game. Although not readily noticeable, the distance from the plate to the backstop is significantly shorter than regulation distance for college games. Or is it moving? A visiting base runner may attempt to score from third on a passed ball. The knowledgeable home team catcher can slide into the backstop, pick up the ball, pivot around, and toss it a few feet to the pitcher for the tag. The runner is confused the rest of the series: What the hell happened?
That backstop wall has small angular serrations see-sawing within the normal trilateral formation. A visiting catcher might attempt the same feat but ends up tumbled over with his head on the ground and his ass facing the sky with the ball rolling off in the wrong direction. What the hell happened?
When you look at the outfield walls, they appear to be sliding in different directions, on different horizontal planes. Advantage through idiosyncrasy includes the walls which don't quite converge in left centerfield. The one on the left starts close-in, way off the side. It reaches the foul line 304 feet from home plate, and then drifts away, seeming to slide under a wall from the right 398 feet from the plate, not dead center but far to the left.
The field too, dips and rises in the vast left center gap. On the field or at the plate, the visiting ballplayer obtains a palpable unsteadiness, vertigo, fear. The normal sense of assurance from the standard frame of a baseball field is ripped away by these very odd dimensions. What is happening here?
Very strange things have happened here. It has been reported that a dazed centerfielder on the visiting team began screaming after a routine flyball bounced past him. The player hit his head on the left field wall, then proceeded to climb over it and run onto the freeway, still screaming, never to be seen again. The Crabs must actually purchase liability coverage for this contingency every year (see the clauses under "Ballpark Insanity" in the insurance policy posted on their website).
The same queer behavior holds
true with the umpires: they are professionals and yet they break away in
startling fashion from objective standards! It's as if they all heard a single
voice directing them. Indeed, a microwave dish hangs above the stadium that
appears to keep the blues under the command of a single mind. The umpires (or whatever force controls them) help manage the game to favor
the economic needs of the Crabs' community. You talk to
them, and they look at you as if you were some meal. Some are members of the
Crabs' board, or whatever they call themselves in this odd, isolated place.
Still stranger are the fans. They are civil, indeed friendly, until the Crabs gain a clear path to victory, then they are an insulting, virulent mob of cannibals. (The sociopathic dimensions of the Crabs experience are described in my book "Humboldt County Cannibalism and the Ephedrine Contagion" (1996).) The newcomer at first is attracted to their friendly manner. Then he realizes that perhaps he is food to them. He steps back from the fence when the kids ask him for a ball. What if they ask for a hand or an arm? There is only one exit out of the field, through the gauntlet of ravenous fans. What if they don't go home after the game? What if we can't go home after the game? It's hard to concentrate on playing baseball with such weirdness around.
So does this mean that the Angels lost all of its games at The Ballpark? The Angels have won many games at The Ballpark. In 1998, we won by the score of 16-4. A couple of years later, on the 4th of July, we won by the score of 11-0. (Click here for article) Even in 2001, on the 4th of July, we split in two tight games. (Click here for article)
But what about 2003, didn't the Angels just play the Crabs before moving on to Medford? The Angels took a tour of the "shrine" at Arcata just as any baseball fan or player visits Yankee Stadium or your average American visits a haunted house during Halloween: It's part of baseball lore. But the Humboldt Crabs' success is based on huge built-in advantages. What's wrong with you, didn't you just read my report!
Yes, but how did the games go? The San Francisco Angels Wood Bat Baseball Team is a hard-working team whose players have many dimensions to their lives and must interact successfully in all of them. We respect the decisions of many of the players regarding their attendance at this significant series, which successfully marks the lifting of the ban imposed by the Crabs two years ago due to commotion at an Arcata motel. Starting pitchers Mickey Coughlin and Matt Flaherty threw very effectively in Arcata. Great respect will remain with all the players who took time off to participate in this pilgrimage. The remaining games on the 8-game, 5-day road trip will be better attended and will result in great achievements. |
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Above: Mickey Coughlin keeps on truckin'. Matt Flaherty's skate step.
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Stevens Lances Elks ( box score below)
Make That 15 Straight Wins for Lance Stevens
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HotDogg's Automated ScoreBook
San Francisco Angels at Bend Elks (Game 2)
Jun 29, 2003 at Bend, Oregon (Genna Stadium)
San Francisco Angels 4 (32-14-1)
Name (Pos) AB R H RBI BB SO PO A
Keian Davis cf............ 3 1 1 0 1 0 2 0
Dan Kingman 1b............ 3 0 2 0 0 0 7 0
Mike Mukuno 3b............ 3 1 1 2 0 0 1 0
Chris Scrogings rf........ 3 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
Brad Shannon c............ 3 1 0 0 0 0 5 1
Nick Dianda dh............ 4 0 1 0 0 1 0 0
Mike Ryan ss.............. 3 0 2 1 0 0 5 5
Craig Stringham lf........ 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Jake Holt 2b.............. 3 1 2 0 0 0 1 3
Lance Stevens p........... 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4
Totals.................... 28 4 9 3 2 2 21 13
Bend Elks 1 (11-10)
Name (Pos) AB R H RBI BB SO PO A
Curfew cf................. 2 0 0 0 0 2 0 0
Montgomery ph/cf.......... 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0
Norris 2b................. 3 0 0 0 0 0 2 4
Kamigawachi ss............ 3 0 0 0 0 1 2 2
Gardinar 1b............... 2 0 1 0 1 0 11 0
Wagner rf................. 3 0 0 0 0 0 3 0
Balmer 3b................. 3 0 2 0 0 1 0 5
Ramsey dh................. 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Rundle ph................. 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Bond c.................... 2 0 0 0 0 0 1 1
J Wagner ph............... 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0
Jones lf.................. 3 0 1 0 0 1 1 0
O'Dell p.................. 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Dusan p................... 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Totals.................... 23 1 4 1 3 5 21 13
Score by innings: R H E
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San Francisco Angels 000 130 0 - 4 9 2
Bend Elks 000 000 1 - 1 4 1
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E - Mukuno; Stevens; Kamigawachi.
DP - SF Angels 2; BEND 2. LOB - SF Angels 8; BEND 5.
2B - Kingman; Mukuno; Ryan; Holt; Jones.
SB - Davis; Montgomery; Wagner.
SH - Kingman.
San Francisco Angels IP H R ER BB SO AB BF
Lance Stevens....... 7.0 4 1 0 3 5 23 27
Bend Elks IP H R ER BB SO AB BF
O'Dell.............. 3.0 3 0 0 0 1 11 11
Dusan............... 4.0 6 4 3 2 1 17 22
Win - Stevens 5-0. Loss - Dusan. Save - None.
HBP - by Dusan (Mukuno); by Dusan (B Shannon); by Stevens (Rundle).
Umpires -
Start: 7:30pm Time: 2:10 Attendance: 522
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 Above: Angel dh Nick Dianda waits on pitch. Below: Elk crossing on foul side of right field pole. Why would they want to hit fouls? Angels Christian Aguirre and Craig Stringham give autographs to female athletes.
Click here for Bend Bulletin article on games
Above: A large fire south of town darkened the sky and dampened attendance, despite the dog tricks, such as the first game when the Angels rolled over, 10-2. Below: In the booth with owner-announcer-dj Jim Richards (standing in black shirt and cap) . Music was mostly 60s- could open up a bit, like maybe backwards and forwards 40 years. Despite this major shortcoming, the Bend Elks are a first class organization. Jake Holt and Bend scoreboard. Holt tried out the ubiquitous but clean Coach Nazar jersey. "He liked the jersey, but that name on the back has got to go," said his spokesman HotDogg. Nazar was unavailable for comment.
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