<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
The following sequence of events you are about to read about actually occurred. Trust us, stuff like this cannot be made up.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The Long Beach State Dirtbags entered the ninth inning of yesterdays game up 5-3 after scoring runs in four straight innings (the fourth through the seventh) and shutting down the Cougar offense for the last four innings (only giving up two hits). <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Dirtbags reliever Dustin Rasco, who had just pitched a perfect eighth inning, gave up back-to-back hits to open the top of the ninth and was pulled for junior Charlie Ruiz. Ruiz has been the only Dirtbag to record a save this season but was greeted by designated hitter Michael Weber, who stepped up and smacked a RBI double over the head of leftfielder Tre Dennis. Score: <\/span>Dirtbags 5, Washington State 4<\/span><\/b><\/span>. The Dirtbags then intentionally walked John Desmarais to load the bases, looking to get a force out at home or a double play.<\/span> <\/span><\/span>Instead Ruiz got Ryan Peterson to strikeout for the first out of the inning. Then: the bizarre. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The Cougars would tie the game on a passed ball by Dirtbags catcher John Hill with Patrick Claussen at bat. Claussen ended up striking out, swinging at a ball in the dirt but got on base when Hill didn’t throw to first to complete the out. Keep in mind a batter becomes a runner if the catcher does not catch the ball (including a ball that hits the dirt) and there are two outs or less than two outs with no runner on first. Score: <\/span>Dirtbags 5, Washington State 5<\/span><\/b><\/span>. Ruiz bounced back by striking out Shea Vucinich for the second out in the ninth. Derek Jones’ at-bat fared better for the Cougars only because he reached base on a wild (strike-three) pitch that scored the go-ahead run at the same time. Score: <\/span>Dirtbags 5, Washington State 6<\/span><\/b><\/span>. Greg Lagreid followed up by swinging at the first pitch from Ruiz and singled to score two more Cougars to extend the lead. Score: <\/span>Dirtbags 5, Washington State 8<\/span><\/b><\/span>. Long Beach State pitcher David Borne was brought in and also struck out Alex Burg to finally end the inning.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n To recap, the Dirtbags gave up five runs and officially struck out five batters in the ninth. And after not getting much going in the bottom of the ninth they went down by the <\/span>final score of 8-5<\/span><\/b><\/span>. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Ruiz (1-1) would get the loss giving up three runs (zero earned) on two hits, and despite striking out four straight hitters, a rare feat in baseball. All his strike outs came on his nasty split-finger fastball which today was unhittable and, unfortunately, uncatchable. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n It was a horrendous sequence of events that dropped the Dirtbags’ record to 4-9 and improves Washington State to 5-8 heading into tomorrow’s series finale at 1pm.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Junior Steve Tinoco, sophomore Devin Lohman and freshman Matt Avery all had two hits apiece for the Beach. And sophomore Brandon Young went 1-for-2 for Long Beach State in the DH role but did a little bit of everything: he was hit-by-a-pitch twice, laid down a sacrifice bunt, scored a run and stole a base.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n “I give a lot of guys’ chances (to play) and I haven’t done that with him until today,” head coach Mike Weathers said about Young. “And I’m so proud of him. I thought he did a real good job.”<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Junior Adam Wilk started on the mound for the Dirtbags and was strong giving up three runs on eight hits in seven innings of work.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You may not believe how this game ended, but we promise: we’re not making this up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4421\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4421"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=4421"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}