Fish bait fans, let opponents off hook

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/09/2009 (5905 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One hundred-and-one times this summer, the Winnipeg Goldeyes took to a grass field to play a baseball game.

They did many, many good things during those 101 games. They set a new franchise mark for home runs in a season, an individual mark for RBIs in a season and three of their four starting pitchers were in the top 10 of the Northern League during the regular season (and the fourth one would have been had he joined the team earlier in the season).

They overcame the loss of arguably the best player in the Northern League, Wes Long, lost to the club for the season on June 30 when he went down with a broken ankle.

They persevered through some brutal bus trips, awful weather and some umpiring that should have the league taking a long hard look at the end of this season at some of the small, bitter men they pass off as professional arbiters.

But in the end, what the Goldeyes couldn’t overcome was the one out they didn’t get — the final out they couldn’t record in the 10th inning in Fargo Thursday night, the overthrow to first base that cost them Game 2 and, ultimately, their series with the Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks.

Because while history will record that it was an 8-3 drumming at the hands of the RedHawks in Game 5 Sunday night at Canwest Park that formally eliminated the Fish from the Northern League playoffs, make no mistake: This series was lost three nights earlier when Fish closer Chris Homer, attemping to make a game-ending put-out at first base, instead threw the ball into right field and committed the most cardinal of errors in the Northern League — he gave a Doug Simunic ball club a second life.

And with that, 101 ball games turned on one out, an entire season on the one that got away, a potential championship on the simplest of brain cramps — a momentary lapse, as Homer would later explain it, in remembering that admonishment he’d heard since Little League, ‘Get down on the ball.’

Fish manager Rick Forney said as much Sunday night as he watched the unwatchable — Simunic and his men dousing each other with champagne on the Goldeyes infield.

"I hate to say it," said Forney, "but not being able to record that out in Game 2… It’s just unfortunate. That was a series we should have won in three and wound up losing in five."

That is not to say, however, that Homer wears this loss by himself. It was his teammates, not Homer, who could not get a timely hit in Game 4 when even one big hit likely would have won the game and the series.

And it was his skipper, not Homer, who once again got himself out-managed by Simunic when the games counted most.

It is a cold hard fact this morning that for all his abilities in procuring quality independent ballplayers, Rick Forney has still yet to win a single playoff series in four years of managing in this town.

Yes, he’s got a wonderful talent for acquiring quality independent ballplayers. Yes, this season’s club was probably the best we’ve seen in this town in quite a few years, a seemingly perfect marriage of reliable starting pitching, a quality infield and the ability to go deep that at one point early this season had the Fish leading all of independent baseball in winning percentage.

But that’s not worth anything tonight when the RedHawks and Gary SouthShore Railcats take to the field in Fargo for Game 1 of the Northern League Championship Series.

Forney said Sunday night that he’d like to be back next year and given the loyalty Goldeyes owner Sam Katz has shown to his managers over the years, Forney will almost certainly be invited back.

But you’ve got to wonder at what point Katz — and the fans that have made him a wealthy man — are going to tire of being teased all summer, only to have their hearts broken come Labour Day.

And that goes for the Goldeyes team generally, not just Forney. Consider this stat: The Winnipeg Goldeyes have qualified for the Northern League playoffs in 13 of the last 15 years and failed to win a championship all 13 of those times.

That, folks, is starting to get a little stale. And what’s also getting old is the fact that a once boiling rivalry between the Goldeyes and RedHawks is beginning to get a little one-sided. The Fish and Redhawks have met in the playoffs nine times over the years — and Fargo has now won six of those nine meetings, including the last three.

Goldeyes right-hander Ace Walker watched the Fargo celebration Sunday night with disbelief. "We all worked too hard for it to end this way," said Walker, motioning to the Fargo celebration in front of him. "It’s not fair, really."

And it’s not fair, of course. It’s not fair that an entire season’s effort — 101 games, thousands of hours, hundreds of thousands of dollars — would be lost for lack of a simple 30-foot toss from the side of the mound to first base.

No, that’s not fair. But given the track record of this ballclub for a very long time now, it’s also not unexpected.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca