"If a tie is like kissing your sister, then losing is like kissing your grandmother with her teeth out." - George Brett
The season is over............Crap. The end came at the hands of Ezequiel Astacio, a Round Rock pitcher who throws nothing straight and looks like a Chia Pet on steroids. In the first inning of Game Five of the American Conference Championship Series, Astacio threw a pitch that resembled a wiffle ball more than a hard ball that Chris Barnwell missed by a good two feet. It was not a sign of good things to come.
I could sit here and go over the list of things the Sounds could have done differently, but that would be Monday morning quarterbacking and short of convincing Doug Melvin to option Prince Fielder and Francisco Cordero and somehow trade for A-Rod and send him to Nashville. It's pretty much a moot point.
The Sounds played hard. Every day. Every game. And in the end that is the most you can ask of them. Life is not always fair, the line drives get caught, the bleeders get through and despite my best efforts, the DH still exists. The team accomplished a lot using the best defense in the PCL along with the best pitching staff, but a decidedly average offensive game. Yes, there were great players that came through Nashville, and the roster spot occupied at different points by Nelson Cruz, Laynce Nix and Drew Anderson hit a combined .328 with 28 homers and 93 RBI. Tony Gwynn and Chris Barnwell each hit .300 and Graham Koonce may have only hit .256, but he drove in 56 runs and belted 19 homers in a little more than half a season. But usually the offensive threats were in Nashville at different times during the season. We never had a middle of the order of Cruz, Nix and Koonce. Add in Rottino in the second half and Gwynn and Barnwell we might have actually won a few games by forfeit, the other team refusing to take the field.
There were many notable accomplishments and memories. Brent Abernathy and Jermaine Clark each reached the 1,000 hit milestone, Abernathy on a single to right versus Round Rock and Clark on a laugher check swing that rolled to a stop on the third base line.
We saw two players come out of nowhere to reach the big leagues. Chris Barnwell, who led all AAA shortstops with a .300 average, had his contract purchased in the first half. Rottino, the Pride of Racine, WI, changed his approach at the plate at the All-Star break and hit .312 before his call-up. Not bad for a young man who was on the verge of attending UW LaCrosse Pharmacy school before being signed out of an open try-out camp near Milwaukee.
We witnessed the close of a career cut short by injuries but a career that ended with a courageous complete game performance. A pitcher who decided to leave it all out on the mound one last time like a real-life version of "For Love of the Game". Justin Thompson knew it was going to be the last game of his career and he went out on his own terms.
We got to see journeyman Jared Fernandez reach 100 wins and 1,000 strikeouts in the same game. A knuckleballer who is viewed with the same suspicion as a beggar on the street by major league clubs, but only because we fear that which we do not know and nobody really knows were that knuckleball is going. Except, apparently, Fernandez.
We had the privelege of seeing the 5th no-hitter in Sounds history as Carlos Villanueva, Mike Meyers and Alec Zumwalt combined to no-hit the Memphis Redbirds on July 15th, 2006, the first combined no-hitter in Sounds history.
And of course Sounds fans got to see a team that stayed atop the division almost wire-to-wire. A team that commited a league low 100 errors, sported a league best 3.62 ERA and led the league by a wide margin with 196 stolen bases.
Many of the players Sounds fans got to see this year will not be back in the red and black of the Sounds uniform. Instead, they will be seen on a game televised across the country wearing the blue and gold of the Milwaukee Brewers. We have seen the last of players such as Cory Hart and Nelson Cruz. They have used Nashville to make the final step to every ballplayers dream, the Major Leagues, and now travel in the rarefied air of big league baseball.
Long may they run.
