Off Topic
“It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark and we’re wearing sunglasses.”
“Hit it.”
May 5, 2046: STUCK IN SOME DES MOINES CORNFIELD – After what can only be described as an ugly 3-4 start to the season in the comfort of Utopia Field, and an additional three-game sweeping by the suddenly racy club from Madison a trip to Chicago later, the Yellow Springs Nine were facing a crisis.
The defending Heartland champs were 4-9, and most of those losses weren’t particularly close.
It was a disaster, really. A de-back-le of the worst kinds. A curl-up-and-weep-for-San Antonio moment, except that the Nine didn’t even have a Landis to use to dry their tears.
Looming ahead was a brace of 19 road games in their next 22.
Such a sense of doom hadn’t loomed over a team since Sam and Frodo first set eyes on Mordor. There was a sense in the air that someone was going to lose more than a finger, and that the power of the One Ring may not be staunchable this time.
Sometimes, though, it’s best to just get out of the house, you know? Sometimes you break a streak by simply putting your eyeballs on a different scene. “I do may best writing on the road,” said Bench Coach Lucas McNeill’s pop-star wife Mikki Manning once. “When you’re on the road you just look at everything differently.”
Admittedly, the trip isn’t over. But the club that’s currently playing in Des Moines certainly has a different vibe to it.
A three-game sweep of Vancouver started with a classic five-double, two triple barrage that gave resurgent starter Ernesto Ramos his second victory of the year. Carlos Valle won the next day, shutting out the Mounties while three teammates provided solo homers. Then late inning heroics from Dong-po Thum and Arvin Duggan stole the capper.
Three games in Valencia saw the Nine pummel the Stars by a combined score of 21-3 before returning home for a brief 3-game brace with Omaha, which left town after giving the Nine a pair of shiners. But the bats prevailed in three slugfests at Twin Cities, and Nashville saw the club score four more runs than the Bluebirds, which was just enough to sweep the four-game series.
Two days ago the Nine blasted out 17 hits en route to a 12-3 victory, and last night the same bats erupted for five runs in the 12th inning, which seems to suggest that a dozen has a new mojo to it. For now, anyway.
Tonight the Nine will finish their set with the Kernels, then hop onto a plane to visit Portland.
Is a road trip just what the Nine needed?
It’s too early to tell for sure, but the fact is that the team is winning in a lot of different ways again--which is a Nine trademark. And the faithful are breathing easier with a record of 20-11, two games back from the surly Chicago Black Sox. Fifteen of the next21 games will be on the road. In the past, that would be concerning. But today? Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
“Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Looking for adventure
In whatever comes our way.”