Daily Log of a Fresh-faced College Graduate
May 3, 2013

Pearl Jam’s “Alive” is playing as we leave Grand Junction the next day, taking Interstate 70 into the sun.  Annie seems to still be feeling the altitude, but Don-o feeds her another quart of oil and, by early afternoon, we make it to Aurora, Colorado, home of Buckley Air Force Base and at least half the population of what everyone else probably knows as Denver.

Northern Lights Park is south of town, built along the shores of a body of water called Cherry Creek Lake, near the Kennedy Golf Course.  I didn’t know they still named junk after JFK, so I guess that’s cool.  Despite the park’s relatively short dimensions and Aurora’s crisp altitude, the place has been a pitcher’s haven.  The league’s been investigating the grounds crew for some time, checking to see if they use too much water to wet down the field, or finding some slick and underhanded way of raising of the mound, or doing something even more wonked out like cold-soaking the balls before giving them to the umps.  So far, though, they haven’t found nothing.

There’s 44K at the game on Friday night, and the place is rocking.  Aurora won 114 games last year, which is damned good, though not even close to their franchise record of 125 in 2009.  But the team came up with the short straw in the playoffs, and truth is that the team has been steadily slipping the past four seasons; from 125 wins to 120 to 115 to 114.  The fans are asking for more this year.  The Borealis are finding it tough sledding, though, as Bakersfield and Tempe don’t seem to want to take backseats.

It’s José Reyes for the Borealis against Alberto Semblano for my Duluth Warriors as the game starts.  Reyes is a junk-balling right-hander who came to Aurora in the infamous John Roach deal, and the fans are interested to see what they got.  He gets Powell Clark to fly out, then walks John Mayer, but picks him off before throwing a pitch to Miguel Cortéz.  Cortéz strikes out swinging on three pitches.

“Looks better than Roach,” Don-o says.

“Maybe now,” I reply, “but he’s got a hitch that won’t go away.”  I’ve been watching him, and I can tell his fastball, never awesome, was down at least a mile or two because he is hesitating at the wrong place in his wind-up and it drops his arm in the slot.

None of that matters when Semblano takes the mound.  His 14 wins with us last year were rewarded with a fresh $5M one-year deal in the spring.  He’s 1-4 so far this year, but he’s been throwing in bad luck and hasn’t given up more than three runs in any outing to date.  He gives Aurora three walks and a base hit in the first, and the Borealis turn them into two runs.

“Three freakin’ walks,” I say.

Don-o just shakes his head and says, “I’m going to get a couple polish.  D’ya want relish?”

“Yeah.”  Relish would be good, I think, but a few freakin’ strikes would be better.  Reyes provides them, dispatching of the Warriors in 13 second inning pitches.

It stays 2-zip until the 4^th, when Steve Williamson drills one of Reyes’s 89 MPH fastballs for a double that scores Stan Gill, who had walked before.  Sembalano can’t stand prosperity, though, and the Borealis strike back when En-guo Guao puts one into Cherry Creek Lake.  We manage to get to Aurora’s bullpen for a pair in the seventh, and things are looking okay except that Flores sent Francisco Freakin’ Rúbio to the hill for a lucky scoreless sixth, then tempts fate by sending Johnny Hunt out there for the seventh.

Now, Don-o and I watched Rúbio throw the same 55 innings in 43 games that Flores watched last year.  We both saw back then that every time Rúbio hit the hill, absolutely fantastic things happened for the opposition.  Hunt is not much different, and we’re both wondering what team this Flores cat watches, because it certainly can’t be the Warriors.

Hunt has all the pitches – fastball, sinker, slider, and a splitter-like curve – and he uses them to get AAA hitters out.  Unfortunately, Aurora cheats Flores’s strategy by sending actual major league hitters to the plate.  Hunt walks a pair – one intentionally – that’s all on Flores.  His defense lets him down with an error.  Then he caps it off by giving John Knight a first-pitch grooved slider that turns into a two-run double.

Remember what I said about Aurora having real major league hitters?  Knight is an example, as is Guao.  Guao is truly exciting to think about.  This is his third year in the league and, at 23, he could be a long-time star.  He’s showing power he hinted at in the minors, and that arm… that arm is golden.  Add on 40 SB speed and you’ve got a special talent.

As is predictable, Hunt’s ERA is north of seven by the time the dust clears.

“Makes sense,” Don-o says.  “Hunt is this year’s Rúbio.”

The game’s pretty much over at that point, but Aurora takes no chances in the 9^th and calls on “Vulture” Suárez to close it down.

#

May 4

We’re down near the field while BP is going on when I see a guy interviewing Borealis manager Juan Toro.  Toro’s getting up in the years and folks are talking about him retiring.  He’s a throwback, though, and I doubt they’ll get him out of the dugout without an eviction notice – which doesn’t seem to be forthcoming, nor should it.  I hear him talking about their kids.  Aurora has a bundle of riches.  As I near, I hear him talking about their “firstbase situation”, which means he’s talking about Rod Johnson, a switchie hitting around .400 in AA who has Jim White more that a bit worried.  White’s been there before, though.  He’s been at first base for the Borealis since midway through the PEBA‘s inaugural season.

White makes $11M a pop, though, and his contract is up at the end of next year.  Can anyone say trade bait?  I knew you could.  But that $11M tag is going to make problems in movement, I would think.

Anyway, I get an autograph after the interview, and before long the game is ready to start.  It’s a Saturday afternoon, the sun is out and the sky is that vivid blue it gets when the atmosphere is thin.  We’re lucky enough to get to see Bill Bradley on the hill tonight – though I’m pretty sure none of the Duluth hitters share my enthusiasm.  Bradley is 25 years old with a fastball that could qualify for the Indy 500.  He’s also got an A+ cutter and a slider that’s not far off.  If he were left-handed and about ten inches taller, you might mistake him for the Big Unit from back in the old MLB days.  He struck out 327 batters last year and has hit double digits in three of his last five starts.

Miguel Cortéz becomes his first victim today, striking out to end a silent first.

Yams is on the mound for us and, true enough, he walks the larcenous Knight, which is a huge mistake.  A pair of steals and a base hit later, Yams and my Warriors are behind a run.  We’re spared more bloodshed by a strike-’em-out, throw-’em-out end to the inning.  I have to admit I like Knight.  The guy doesn’t make mistakes.  He just gets on base and doesn’t make mistakes.  He doesn’t run quite as much as he did earlier, but he only got caught five times last year.

Aurora gets another in the second, and then a pair of shots by Al Edwards and Augusto Quiñones makes it 4-0.

Don-o and I just sit back and call for more beer because we understand what this all means.  And, yeah, we enjoy the sights.  Aurora women all seem to be tanned and have bodies honed by ski slopes and hours in the local fitness center.  Their eyes are all covered by purple-sheened sunglasses that ride just under shocks of hair that cascade down their foreheads in waves.  We talk about this pair and that pair and what we should do to get close to them, but let’s get serious… we both know we’re way, way out of their league.

Yams give up another in the 6^th before Flores calls on this year’s Rúbio, who makes Edwards a gift of a full-count fastball that Edwards sends swimming.

It’s 8-1 when it’s over.

I watch Flores walk back to the clubhouse, scratching his head – obviously perplexed about where he’s going to get his next seven-hundred-thousand dollar-a-year job.

#

May 5

It’s the 52^nd anniversary of Alan Shepard’s space shot, and the air force base celebrates with a missing man fly-over before the game.  It’s another beautiful day and the F-15s, ancient as they may be, look brilliant if you’re into that kind of thing – which I secretly kinda am.  I think it would be hella cool to loop in one of those things.

Given my sea legs, though, I assume I would be barfing the minute we went upside down.

Regardless of all that, the Borealis pick up right where they left off yesterday, scoring three times in the first two innings against Warriors starter Otis Mathews – two of the runs coming on a 425-foot shot from White.

“He’s showcasing,” Don-o says as the veteran rounds the bases.

“Could be,” I reply.  It’s White’s second of the year, Mathews’s fourth given up.  “I think he would like to face Otey a few more times.”

Duluth comes back this time, though.  We get a run on John Mayer’s double in the third, and Ronald Elmore hits a two-run blast in the 5^th.  I have to like Elmore.  He plays a damn fine right field, and his 110 OPS+ and 18 VORP are nifty enough.  At 27, he’s just hitting his prime.

“I like this guy,” I say.

Don-o shakes his head.  “Fool’s gold.  His minor league numbers don’t say nothing big.”

“Maybe he’s just a late bloomer.”

“Maybe.”  But Don-o’s not so convinced.  I find, though, that I’m now a bigger Ronald Elmore fan than I was a minute ago.  I like the idea of a late bloomer – that you might just as likely be more than the numbers you put up as s 23-year-old in some place like Gatineau or Jersey City or wherever.

Aurora’s gone with Kijuro Kojima today, and they stay with him through the sixth.  Stan Gill takes him deep to left to give Duluth their first lead of the series.  Me and Don-o, though, we don’t hold our breath.

Indeed, Aurora gets a run back in the eighth and has the bases loaded with only one out against Oliver Mejía –  a 25-year-old kid whose 2.34 ERA in AAA last year has given the bullpen some hope.  Both Don-o and I figure this is where Flores will play the Hunt card, but instead he stays with the kid and Mejía gets out of the jam with a pop-up and a backward K.

The ninth inning cements my newfound love for Ronald Elmore.  Pat Holmen starts the inning with a strikeout, but Martin Griffin drives a Francisco Garza curve into left for a hit and Elmore takes a 2-1 pitch over the fence in right to give us a 6-4 lead that Ben Thomas puts in the bank after giving up a leadoff single.

#

At the end of the day, Aurora beat us two of three.  That’s good for them, but truth is that losing to the cellar-dweller of the Great Lakes division doesn’t make the fans particularly happy.  Don-o turns on Annie’s radio and listens to the call-in show to find opinions are mixed.

“They’re desperate,” he says.  “They think their chance to win it all is passed.”

I rub the stubble on my chin.  “Yeah,” I say.  And I can hear it, too.