#7: Fo’, Fo’, Two

You’ve already read about my #7 moment on this list – it’s Jason’s #12, a game where Mark Teahen and Jason Michaels each launched grand slams in a 10-5 win over Rochester on April 25.  (Teahen also drilled a two-run single, leading to a: the Moses Mal0ne-inspired title of this post and b: the most offensively efficient Syracuse game of the season – 10 runs on three swings.  That’s approximately 3.333333333 runs per run-scoring hit.  Repeating, of course.)

I won’t delve into the details much, since Mr. Benetti’s already done that.  But it’s worth noting something about Teahen in that game.  His home run promised to be the first of many in 2012 for a former 18-home run-hitter in the major leagues.  But in AAA, Teahen’s power was mainly to the gaps, not over the wall.  In fact – Teahen hit just two more home runs throughout the entire remainder of the season.  The second came exactly three months to the day of the first, on July 25 – and guess where it was.

Was a power surge in order?  Not exactly.  It took more than a month for Teahen to hit his third home run, and his first home run at Alliance Bank Stadium.  Of course, it came against Rochester, the Tom Glavine to Teahen’s Mike Redmond.

But none of Mark’s home runs meant quite as much as that initial slam – the only homer that Teahen blasted in a Chiefs win.  And with the way that baseball goes, next year, he’ll probably hit 20, with none against Rochester.

Thanks for pointing out something that’s always annoyed me, JB.  Is it Hanukkah?  Chanukah?  Hannukah?  None of the Above?  A & B Only?  At least Christmas only gets mislabeled as “XMas” occasionally, thanks to John Lennon.

Regardless, let me join Jason in welcoming all our fine readers a Happy and Healthy New Year.  (Side note: why is New Year’s the only holiday that gets a “Healthy” tag?  Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to wish people a Healthy Halloween?  Or is that just too much of a lost cause to even consider?)

#8: Nine-Win Wonders

Moment #8 of this here countdown takes place on a sticky late-June day in Durham, North Carolina, at the beginning of an eight-game road trip through Durham and Norfolk.  I didn’t make the trip last season, but this year, I gladly tagged along.  (That whole “gladly” part dissipated a bit two nights later with the 100-degree weather and a press box devoid of air conditioning, but that’s for another day.)  And I wasn’t the only happy member of the Chiefs’ traveling party on this particular trip, since Syracuse was in the midst of a season-high winning streak – an eight-game run of wins that, as it turned out, had one more game to go.

It didn’t seem like a win was in the cards for the Chiefs until the eighth inning, though.  Rehabbing right-hander Kyle Farnsworth tossed a scoreless first before previously scheduled starter Matt Torra shut down the Chiefs for 6.2 Piccaso-esque innings, striking out six while walking just one in a dominant effort.  Dominant, that was, until he ran into Corey Brown in the eighth…

Thanks largely to Brown’s blast and a strong effort from starter John Lannan, the game headed to the ninth inning in a 1-1 tie.  But after Brett Carroll ran for Chris Marrero, Tony Beasley had a defensive decision to make that neither Abbott nor Costello would have envied – who’d play first?  Mark Teahen was DHing and Tyler Moore was up in Washington – so out came backup catcher Carlos Maldonado for the bottom of the ninth inning to man the corner.

This may not seem surprising at first, as most catchers typically have played at least a bit of first base in their lives.  But Maldonado’s inclusion certainly stretched the limits of “a bit”.  In 16 years and 1,245 career games in professional baseball, Maldonado’s played a grand total of eight – count ‘em, eight - games at first.  That’s .006%.  The man doesn’t even have his license to kill at the position.

He’s certainly no Alec Trevelyan. This isn’t a spoiler 17+ years later, right?

Thankfully for “Maldy”, the action largely stayed away from his position.  Outside of a harmless ground ball back to the pitcher, he could have been Peeves the Poltergeist for his two innings in the field and it wouldn’t have made a difference.  But after a Carlos Rivero RBI single in the 11th inning put the Chiefs ahead, Beasley threw the DH position in the trash to go with his best defensive lineup, tossing Teahen out at first.  You can probably guess what happened next – a walk, a single and a sacrifice bunt tied the game at 2.  And the DH spot was due up fourth in the 12th.

Well, with runners on first and second and one out, Tony Beasley had another fun decision to make.  And in the same guy that saw Maldonado play first base for the first time in a decade, Beasley sent starting pitcher Zach Duke up – in an American League game – to pinch-bunt.  The decision worked out beautifully – Duke got the bunt down, Teahen was intentionally walked, and Jim Negrych had a chance to play the part of hero.

That would all be the Chiefs needed in a 3-2 win.  It was also the capper of their longest win streak of the season – and in typically weird fashion, Syracuse did it with a first baseman who hadn’t played the position since Year Two of the George W. Bush era and a pitcher batting in the DH spot.  OMC would have been proud.

9. No One Man Should Lose All That Power

The 2012 Syracuse Chiefs had a few games postponed because of rain this season.  No surprise.  The Chiefs also lost a game to snow in Rochester – not a shock for an April day in Western New York.  And Syracuse even had a game postponed due to cold weather, which sounds outrageous but, again, shouldn’t come as a stunning result.  But on July 13, the Chiefs set a new bizarre standard for postponements.

It’s not all that uncommon to hear the words “power outage” in baseball.  They’re just a pair of words that typically correspond with a lack of team offense, or an individual’s lack of home runs.  Much like a pitcher’s “cheese” isn’t literally a dairy product or a “moon shot” doesn’t actually leave the planet, a baseball “power outage” doesn’t literally refer to the loss of electricity.  Except, you know, when it actually does.  Like on July 13.

At around 5:40, before a 7:00 game against the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees (now RailRiders), former Chief Matt Antonelli was taking batting practice on a day where the high temperature reached 93 degrees.  I was sitting in the radio press box, watching from overhead as Antonelli drilled one ball into left-center field – and suddenly, the music stopped.  The video board beyond the outfield shut off as well.  The Yankees turned around and started jeering at the press box, asking for someone to turn the music back on, and there was nothing anyone could do.  A rolling series of power outages on the North Side of Syracuse had hit Alliance Bank Stadium, and the entire park had gone black.

The day proved to be a tricky scenario for us in the front office, since a large crowd was expected for Donate Life Night.  And that crowd showed up, with nothing to do but mill about outside the stadium…

Just call me the Annie Leibovitz of cell-phone-camera photographers.

The game was also a television broadcast, with Time Warner Cable’s crew on hand.  In fact, one of the crew members ended up getting stuck in an elevator when the power went down, and the fire department needed to come and rescue her.  There have been better days to be claustrophobic than July 13.

The players and coaches sat in dark clubhouses and hallways, playing cards by whatever light they could find.  Tanner Roark, the day’s scheduled starter, set up a table outside the clubhouse and wondered aloud why every one of his starts seemed to get pushed back for some reason or another.  Had Tanner been scheduled to start today, perhaps we would have actually encountered the apocalypse.

Breaking news from Australia: we have!

Ultimately, the decision to postpone the game was made around 7:00, with no end to the power outage in sight.  It was the right decision after a thoughtful process…and, of course, 15 minutes later, the power returned.

It feels odd to include a countdown moment that wasn’t actually a game, but July 13 was just too memorable to leave off this list, JB.  Do all of your 12 memorable moments contain the proper amount of electricity?

10. In A Central New York Minute…

In the middle of June, it didn’t seem like 2012 was going to be the year of the Chiefs.  At 32-37 and losers of five out of six, Syracuse was floundering with the league-leading Pawtucket Red Sox coming to town.  The Chiefs were probably anticipating that visit about as much as the Griswolds anticipated seeing Uncle Eddie in the Vacation series.

You see, the first time the PawSox came to town didn’t go so well for the Chiefs.  The Rhode Islanders visited Alliance Bank Stadium from April 16-19, claiming a four-game sweep in excruciating fashion with a trio of late-game wins and one 11-7 slugfest mixed in.  But as the ever-calm Tony Beasley and the Chiefs’ staff knew well, everything can change at a moment’s notice in baseball.  And June 18 was the start of everything.

On that Monday evening, the Chiefs used a five-run seventh inning to launch an 11-7 series-opening victory.  The next night, Zach Duke squeezed out six innings of three-run ball despite 12 baserunners and no strikeouts, leading Syracuse to a 4-3 win.  But Wednesday would prove to be the crowning achievement of the series – and one of the team’s finest wins of the season.

There are some people looking ahead to the End of Days at the end of this week.  (By the way, I’ll bet anyone $1 million that the world doesn’t end before Christmas.  Just shoot me an email and we’ll work out the details.)  But on June 20, the End of Days stood on the pitcher’s mound at Alliance Bank Stadium, ready to mow down the Chiefs once more – right-hander Justin Germano.  You remember him, right?  You know – the guy who did THIS last year?

And then got this reward afterward.

Germano had already faced the Chiefs once early in the season, tossing seven shutout innings while allowing a mere three singles.  And he’d thrown more than 20 consecutive scoreless innings against Syracuse heading into the night’s third inning – when newly signed catcher Koyie Hill took him deep for a solo home run.  That wasn’t a sign of things to come, though, as Pawtucket took a 4-1 lead into the bottom of the eighth inning.

But Germano had to leave at some point, and the end of the seventh inning was his exit.  Not coincidentally, the Chiefs’ bats soon sprung to life.  With two runners on in the eighth inning, Corey Brown stepped up against Junichi Tazawa…

Syracuse would score no more in the frame, however, with Daniel Bard closing out the inning on a Mark Teahen fly out.

The Sox got another run in the top of the ninth, giving them a seemingly impenetrable 5-3 advantage with three outs to get.  But a word on Bard, in case you’re not familiar with him: he’s the flame-throwing uber-prospect who shot through the Boston system a few years ago, only to lose any semblance of control this year when the Red Sox attempted to turn him back into a starter.  His season fully came apart at the seams on June 3rd, when Bard gave up five runs in 1.2 innings against the Blue Jays…on a grand total of one hit.  (He walked six batters and hit two others in the game.)

So Bard was shipped down to Pawtucket and returned to the bullpen, where he attempted to close out the Chiefs on this Wednesday night.  But he allowed a pair of hits to start the inning – a Chris Marrero double and Xavier Paul single – before tossing a wild pitch to score Marrero.  5-4.  The right-hander, however, would flip the switch right after that.  He retired Carlos Rivero on a fly out and Koyie Hill on a groundout before going to two strikes on Jim Negrych, move along, nothing more to see here…and then, one pitch away from a win…this happened.

Down three runs with four outs to go, two runs with three outs to go and one run with one strike to go, the Chiefs had clawed their way back.  The final obstacle?  Former Syracuse hurler and aspiring app-creator Garrett Mock, he of the Bard-esque ultra-live arm and Bard-esque ultra-spotty control.  Mock loaded the bases with one out in the 10th inning – but, in Mock-esque fashion, he struck out Seth Bynum and flied out Xavier Paul for a head-scratching exit.

One inning later, the Chiefs had finally had enough.  With runners on first and third and one out, third baseman Jarrett Hoffpauir had a chance to be the hero.

The Chiefs had stolen a game they had no business winning, 6-5, and truly ignited a winning streak that wouldn’t end until six games later.  Just like that.

(Postscript: Mitch Atkins was Syracuse’s starter in this game, just as he’s been in the other two games of my countdown so far.  What the what?)

Wait, I mentioned “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”?

#11: Suspension of Belief

Today’s pick may be a bit of an oddball choice, since it involves a game where nothing of substance really happened.  The game was a 3-0 Chiefs loss to the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, that 2012 traveling road show of a team without a home park for the year.  The game featured only 11 combined hits, 10 walks, 12 strikeouts and no home runs.  On first glance, there’s nothing to see here.  But on second glance, there’s everything to see.  (Just like in the following video.)

Our story begins on an overcast, rainy April day in Syracuse – and yes, you should try exceedingly hard to visualize this, seeing as it never happens.  How rainy was April 10?  Rainy enough that after four innings, the game was called with the Yankees up 2-0.  Not to worry – the homeless  Scrantonians would return to Alliance Bank Stadium in three days, and the teams would surely pick it up then.  Simple enough, right?

There was just one chink in that solution’s armor: Scranton/Wilkes-Barre was the “home” team in the team’s next series since, again, the Yankees had no 2012 home.  PNC Field underwent renovations during the course of the season, and the Baby Bombers were forced to play “home” games in Syracuse, Buffalo, Rochester, Fargo, Allentown, Pawtucket, Batavia and Prague.  (Two of those are made up.  Batavia is not one of them.)  The International League didn’t want to finish the suspended game – a Chiefs home game – on the same day as a Yankees home game, for logistical purposes.  However, the next time the Chiefs would play Scranton/Wilkes-Barre in a Syracuse home game was on July 12, the day after the All-Star Break.

So, almost three months to the start of this Syracuse/Scranton duel, the teams took the field for the top of the fifth inning with a pair of wildly different lineups.  Consider the play-by-play below:

How different, exactly, was the Chiefs’ April lineup for their July one?  Let’s go through April’s…

• Batting third: Xavier Paul.  On July 12: A valuable bench member of the eventual NL Central-winning Cincinnati Reds.
• Batting fourth: Tyler Moore.  On July 12: 31 games into his rookie season with Washington, never to return to Syracuse.
• Batting fifth: Bryce Harper.  On July 12: Heh.
• Batting eighth: Jason Michaels.  On July 12: A Syracuse coach.  Just call him Bill Russell.
• Batting ninth: Chris McConnell.  On July 12: Out of baseball, after being released from the Nationals’ Double-A team.  We love you, Mac.

Three other starters (Corey Brown, Seth Bynum and Mark Teahen) switched positions, leaving only one starting position player in his original spot – catcher Carlos Maldonado.  I might as well have thrown blotches of paint at my scorebook.

But the game’s MVP truly belonged to starting pitcher Mitch Atkins, who’s now appeared in the first two moments of my countdown.  Coincidence?  (Yes.)  Atkins tossed the first four innings of the April game before Tony Beasley decided to send him back out to the hill.  On 92 days’ rest, Atkins gamely accepted the assignment, and tossed a gem that Roy Halladay would have been proud of.  He worked the full nine innings, scattering five hits and six walks to allow just three runs (one earned), while throwing a superhuman 151 pitches, 94 for strikes.  That’s right – 151 pitches!  After the game, Atkins was seen soaking his right arm in a bathtub filled with a mixture of herbal tea, whipped cream and unicorns.  And that is moment #11 on this magical countdown.

He also ate a can of this in between the sixth and seventh innings.

Postscript: There may have been a chance that Atkins actually threw the 151 pitches over TWO separate days, leading to a mere statistical quirk.  I can neither confirm nor deny this, however.  I can also neither confirm nor deny the existence of unicorns.