Mat-Su Defends Hermon Brothers Field on Fourth of July

Lately, the Miners have had a flair for the dramatic. Their wins have been grand, their losses agonizing, their fanbase simply along for the ride. Such a team might be fun to follow for short stretches, but over a full season, it can get exhausting going into every game with the uneasy feeling that anything, positive or negative, can happen.

It was a relief, then, that Mat-Su came into Thursday's matchup with the Peninsula Oilers – a team against whom the Miners have experienced more than their share of wackiness – and took care of business, securing a surgical 10-4 victory.

Fireworks metaphors on the Fourth of July are the lowest of the low, so I'll instead invoke… a strictly non-firework-related explosion to describe Mat-Su's offense in the first three innings. Jacob Tabor (1-1) started the game off falling for the oldest trick in the book: giving Drake Kerr a pitch to hit in his first at-bat of the game. The speedster tagged one into center field and was rewarded with a triple when a diving Colin Robson gamble came up empty. Kyle McCausland drove him home with a single two batters later to give Mat-Su a lead they would not relinquish.

That sequence would be one of the final "normal" runs scored by either side. Christian Perez advanced McCausland to third on a single of his own, before both of them would eventually come around to score thanks to the first of many miscommunications between Tabor and Oilers catcher Braden Smith. A wild pitch drove the Middlebury slugger in and advanced the soon-to-be Sacramento State Hornet into scoring position, which would culminate in him scoring on a fielder's choice.

The first inning was also the first of three straight three-run frames for the Miners' offense. The second inning would see the floodgates of weirdness truly open and engulf Peninsula. Ryker Schow led off the inning by reaching on an error. A groundout advanced him to second, a passed ball got him to third, and a pair of his teammates joined him on the bases after Kerr and Blake Balsz both got free passes – a hit-by-pitch for the former, a walk for the latter. Tabor, after loading the bases with no one out, proceeded to throw another wild pitch to score Schow and allow another RBI single, with Christian Perez driving Kerr and Balsz home.

In the third, the gaffes continued. A duo of errors and a walk once again loaded the bases, this time with no one out. Tabor would not allow a hit this time; he would, however, see all three come home to score on a passed ball, wild pitch, and sac fly (in that order), the first two of which came during the same at-bat.

After that sequence, the score was 9-0, thanks to more brilliant Miners pitching. After getting tagged for nine runs in the first two innings against Chugiak on Tuesday, the Mat-Su starting pitchers returned to form, with Noah Kendrick (1-1) tossing four innings of four-strikeout, zero-run ball.

After he was removed, Robert Burk III got the ball for just the fourth time this season. His first inning was a breeze, but he got into trouble in the seventh. After a spectacular putout by Ryan Cochran to get the first out, Burk would allow five straight hits before walking in a run and plunking in another. Aidan Dolinsky came in to record the final two outs of the inning and stifle the Oilers rally, which he did with a strikeout and a heads-up play to catch Peninsula DH Eddie Leon attempting to steal home during a Cole Wilson plate appearance. I mention his name for no reason in particular.

After Oilers backup catcher-turned-emergency reliever Brock Wirthgen walked in Mat-Su's tenth and final run in the bottom half of the seventh, it looked as though the game was winding down. However, one more round of fireworks (sorry, couldn't help it) was in store.

Since Eddie Leon was caught stealing at the end of the last inning, the man at the plate during that putout led off the eighth. That was Wilson, whose name I so thoughtfully included. With the first pitch, Dolinsky struck Peninsula's right fielder square on the shoulder with a high fastball. Wilson stood in the box for a moment, before saying something to Dolinsky that, whatever it was, caused both the Miners pitching to shout something of his own and the umpire crew to assess warnings to both teams. It's unclear if the hit-by-pitch was intentional, and any reason for Dolinsky to have done it on purpose is a mystery, but Wilson seemed to believe it was.

At any rate, the hit-by-pitch would be the final baserunner in the game for the Oilers, who succumbed to Nolan Murphy in the ninth (and in so doing preserved his title as the lone Miners pitcher to not allow a hit this season) and fell to 10-9 on the year, the exact same record as Mat-Su. The squads have also split their head-to-head thusfar, but the Oilers do retain the tiebreaker thanks to their superior record against the first-place Anchorage Bucs (3-6 to Mat-Su's 0-2).

With rain set to make the Mat-Su Valley its victim this weekend, the Miners hope that all the exciting baseball action soon to come will be played. That slate begins Friday at 6 when the Anchorage Glacier Pilots return to Hermon Brothers Field. To watch, head to the ballpark, or visit the Mat-Su Miners' YouTube channel!

Charlie Fellows, 2024 Broadcaster
Mat-Su Miners