Daily Archives: June 25, 2008

Watch 10 p.m. SportsCenter tonight

June 25, 20089:28 p.m.

There was a crazy play in the bottom half of the first inning tonight in the Wingnuts’ game against Shreveport. Let me run it down for you.

Bases loaded, one out, Michael Thompson at the plate for Wichita. He hits a high fly ball on the infield, a foul ball that drifted back into fair territory. Should have been the infield fly, right? Well, the umpires failed to call it, the ball dropped and the first baseman for Shreveport threw home to force out Brenan Herrera.

The umpires conferred after the play and called the infield fly, sending the runners back to the base and calling Thompson out. Wingnuts manager Kash Beauchamp argued that if it was an infield fly, the runners are allowed to advance at their own risk. Since Thompson is automatically out on an infield fly, the out at home isn’t a force and technically Herrera had scored.

That’s what the umpires eventually ruled, and the other two runners on base also were allowed to advance. When the umps went to tell Shreveport manager Terry Bevington about the ruling he predictably flipped. He was right, though. The umpires screwed up the call and in their attempt to right the play, they cost the Sports an out and a run.

Bevington was ejected fairly early in his argument. But the former White Sox manager wouldn’t leave the field. He argued for about 15 minutes before finally exiting to the clubhouse. It was pretty entertaining. But I’ll say this for Bevington — as ridiculous as his argument seemed, he didn’t do anything stupid like throw anything or cover the plate with dirt or use the resin bag as a grenade — remember that?

Funny story about that guy who used the resin bag as a grenade. I was supposed to interview him the next day for a story I was doing about one of his players, a Double-A guy in the Atlanta Braves organization. Needless to say … yeah, I never heard from him

But anyway, Joel T. Lomurno made a call to ESPN and had KAKE 10 send over some footage of the whole spectacle and there’s a chance it will be included in the 10 p.m. SportsCenter tonight on ESPN. So check for that. Just one more item I can add to the list of things I’ve never seen happen on a baseball field.

By Jeff Lutz | Filed under Uncategorized | Comments Off

Beauchamp’s ‘tude

June 25, 20085:20 p.m.

When you read the quotes Beauchamp gave after last night’s game, a 4-2 loss to Shreveport, what do you think? Is it — This guy is nuts and he needs to take a step back and calm down. Or do you say — I love his honesty and why should the guy hold back if that’s what he really thinks. If you didn’t see Beauchamp’s comments, here they are:

That’s this team in a nutshell right there. This team, they don’t know if they want to win or if they want to be losers. They have no idea what they want to do. You score 16 runs off their No. 1 starter, then let a guy with a 7-something ERA come in and shut you down. That’s lack of mental focus.”

“This team’s got to figure out what it wants to be. If they don’t want to win a championship, I’ll currycomb the countryside for guys that can get up to play every day. I’m getting sick of looking at it. I told them not even to come to the stadium until 5 o’clock (today). I don’t even want to see them.

I took out the many F-bombs Kash dropped during the interview.

I don’t think Kash is just shooting from the hip. I think he’s smarter than that. I waited 10 minutes before going to the clubhouse and interviewed two players before I went back to his office. So he had plenty of time to think about what he wanted to say, and I think his comments were calculated.

So then the only question remains, is calling out your team like that effective? Only he knows that, I guess. On one level, he definitely wants to motivate these guys so they’ll play better and be able to stay on the team. On another, he’s putting them on notice that pretty much no roster spot is safe. We’ll see if it works.

By Jeff Lutz | Filed under Uncategorized | Comments Off