{"id":580,"date":"2012-02-24T06:33:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-24T06:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/sports\/baseball-in-the-wild-west-complete-with-cal-boys-indians-and-bears\/"},"modified":"2012-02-24T06:33:00","modified_gmt":"2012-02-24T06:33:00","slug":"baseball-in-the-wild-west-complete-with-cal-boys-indians-and-bears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/baseball-in-the-wild-west-complete-with-cal-boys-indians-and-bears","title":{"rendered":"Baseball in the Wild West: Complete with Cal-Boys, Indians, and Bears"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Dirtbags would love to have some shots of  (Ino) Patron this weekend<\/em><\/span>
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10:15am | <\/strong>When your brand new baseball team sits at 2-2 and has Cinderella Cal coming into town with malice on their mind, well it is enough to make Dirtbag boss Troy Buckley get philosophical. His team has played all their games so far at home but the cooking hasn\u2019t come, LB a mere .248. So what\u2019s up skip?  Those soft bats the NCAA came up with last year? \u201cI don\u2019t think so,\u201d Buckley told the media. \u201cSome times it is the arrows but usually the problem is the Indians.\u201d
 
For you purist we do have a game report on the Tuesday night affair. The hitting hero was Brennan Metzger who had three hits and two stolen bases, but alas the other hitters didn\u2019t fair so well. Metzger has hit safely in the Dirtbags last six games, Alas part two, 49ers (now 2-2) only scratched out two other hits against Trojans who have now started their season at a perfect4-0. Troy got an unearned run in the second inning but Long Beach State answered taking the lead in the bottom of the second inning. With one out, Metzger picked up an infield single, and after a steal and a single by Juan Avila, scored on a balk. Royce Murai then singled to score Avila, giving the Dirtbags a 2-1 lead. End of highlights except for some decent pitching, Nick Sabo got the start and allowed two earned runs in four innings, Edgar Gomez gave up just a single hit in 2.0, Jake Stassi pitched two innings, and Eddie Magallon threw a scoreless ninth with help from a double play.<\/p>\n

Buck\u2019s prize leftover from last season, Brennan Metzger, has been a pleasant surprise, hitting a mean .545, a much better offensive pace than any of his other three previous seasons. The numbers two and three hitters, Juan Avila (.333) and Ino Patron (.313) were expected to contribute but Prigatano (0-12), Duffy (2-14) and McNeil (3-15) are all struggling Indians. Patron is perhaps the most likely power source, a burger above 200 and a lot of punch packed in a squat muscular body.  He is also excitable and a good many of his team mates are much more reserved. So for this weekend\u2019s fight with Cal, well another old coaches saying is that sometimes you eat the Bear and sometimes the Bear eats you. Long Beach State’s rotation for the Cal series is senior right-hander Shawn Stuart (0-0, 1.80 ERA), junior right-hander Matt Anderson (0-0, 3.38 ERA) and sophomore left-hander Ryan Strufing (1-0, 2.70 ERA) on Sunday.  Cal will use LHP Justin Jones, Jr. Friday (1-0, 1.80 ERA) with RHP Matt Flemer, (1-0, 3.38 ERA) Saturday with a TBA for Sunday.
LOOKING BACK DUST
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Tuesday night looked \u201cDirtbag\u201d perfect. There was ragging from the tireless Los Al Little leaguers, \u201cWe want a pitcher not a belly ‘itcher!! \u201c  \u2026the LB women\u2019s basketball team came en masse, the lion of the leftfield loonies, retired bar keep Don Heckman actually sat on the leftfield side, and the 1,464 included lots of SC fans who frankly looked more comfortable for a night game at Blair then one on their own campus\u2026.Senor Patron, who swears he doesn\u2019t drink his namesake, played in 54 games and started 53 as a true freshman, (fourth-most on the team) batting cleanup 20 times, hitting fifth 16 times, and third 10 times … Started 24 games at DH and 23 at first base …the question is can he find some home runs and RBIs… Scored 22 runs, had seven doubles, and was a perfect 4-for-4 in stolen base attempts …Both Ino and Brennan can work the walks and get hit by pitches\u2026at Granada High School Patron hit over .390 all three years, including a .425 batting average as a senior\u2026Born in Fremont, you gotta figure beating Cal would be pleasing\u2026Cal skipper David Esquer, 46, is in his 13th season with a career record of 357-313-2 (.533). After his team was scheduled to be discontinued following the 2011 season, Esquer led the Bears to the program’s first appearance at the College World Series since 1992, and on the eve of Cal’s 7-3 CWS victory over Texas A&M June 21, 2011, was named the National Coach of the Year by the National College Baseball Writers Association\u2026his team is ranked 20th by Collegiate Baseball…Cal has played the Beach tough over the years, (34-27 all-time record vs LBSU including last year’s meeting, 6-1 and a series sweep at Blair in 2009 (11-8, 9-6, 6-3). Like LB, the Berkeley\u2019s have a nice assortment of MLB alums, John Baker<\/a> (Padres), Geoff Blum (Diamondbacks), Brennan Boesch<\/a> (Detroit), Allen Craig<\/a> (St. Louis), Ryan Drese (Baltimore), Conor Jackson<\/a> (Oakland), Brandon Morrow<\/a> (Toronto), Xavier Nady<\/a> (Arizona), Tyson Ross<\/a> (Oakland), and Tyler Walker (Washington)\u2026 Enjoy this relatively unfettered weekend because 49erville gets crazy from here on out\u2026somebody must have swiped the big event calendar because after Saturdays basketball games, (home for the men vs UC Riverside, ladies on the road at UCSB) we got double headers that you don\u2019t like\u2026the ladies volleyball banquet is double booked on March 1st with that make up women\u2019s basketball game vs. Pacific and  March 8th and onward we have this little event called the Big West basketball tournament\u2026oh yeah,  a home baseball series with Arizona State and oh yeah 2, all of this collides with the Beach\u2019s big softball invitational at Mayfair–UCLA, Oregon State, North Carolina, etc, etc. Tylenol please.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When your brand new baseball team sits at 2-2 and has Cinderella Cal coming into town with malice on their mind, well it is enough to make Dirtbag boss Troy Buckley get philosophical.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":16749,"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-580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580","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\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=580"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}