North Bay A's History
YES, SOME CURSES CAN be broken. I was beginning to think my sporting life was forever cursed. Like the Red Sox, Bills or Vikings, my teams would make the playoffs where they would fall in heartbreaking fashion time and time again.
The curse started in Little League. I was the starting pitcher in the championship game, I left with the lead after four innings and we lost in extra innings on a botched double play grounder.
The cruse continued in high school at Branson. One year we lost when the game-winning run scored from second base on a two-out infield single. The second time, my senior year, I was left in on-deck circle as the potential winning run in the playoffs. I won't forget the team made 10 errors, one at every position (I'm sure the DH would have if he could have).
The curse took a different turn in college when the JV program at St. Mary's was dropped the first day of tryouts. Any visions I had after selecting the school based on its JV program were dashed. The only record I established there was getting cut four years in a row.
The cruse even infiltrated college intramurals and fantasy league teams. Always there was a good run and always a crushing defeat.
After college, the time for playing seemed over and I turned to coaching. The teams I coached followed a similar pattern, often over-achieving to make a good run in the playoffs before losing another Pepto-Bismol classic. The most recent came in a Little League game with Michael Small pitching his heart out for nine innings before Morgan Livermore drilled the final out to third base with the tying and winning runs in scoring position.
A little burned out after roughly 10 straight summers of coaching, I was looking for a break, but I couldn't stay away from baseball. Former Santa Rosa Press Democrat sports editor and IJ emergency staffer Rick Vacek told me about the men's senior baseball league he played in based out of Santa Rosa, the Redwood Empire Baseball League.
A little rusty from competitive baseball, but fresher than some from the time spent coaching, I went to a tryout a few months ago where roughly 50 men 28 years or older where hoping to land a spot to play. I was drafted late in the first and only round of the draft and because of the strong turnout two expansion teams were added. I didn't tell anyone about my curse before or after the draft or I may have never been selected or dropped. Who would want the albatross?
I was a little worried about my coach/owner Eric Brown at first. Along with the league fees, we were the only team with home and away uniforms and its own batsmith under commission. He wanted me to buy my own maple wood like Barry Bonds swings even though metal bats are permitted. Eric also came with his own autographed model bats and shoes with his name and uniform number on them. At the first practice game he lent me an actual Oakland A's spring training jersey, which were now the Solano A's team practice jerseys.
It was so overwhelming that my friend Roland Belcher had me fooled on the phone for a good five minutes, convincing me that he was the team batsmith calling to take my order. As Roland pointed out so apropos, I had finally found out what it was like to play for me. After all, I was the one who once brought a scorebook and kept stats for intramural softball.
Brown started the A's four years ago and the team won just two games. Last year the team made the playoffs, but was eliminated in the first round.
I had to think the team was cursed when the players started falling with more than usual assortment of injuries. One player left to help fight the war on Iraq. Another had a fatal home fire. The worse on-field injury came when our second baseman was hit so hard with a thrown ball that he was taken to the hospital and needed a metal plate put in his head. Believe it or not, Pete Lopez made it back in time for the playoffs. The only good thing to come out of the losses was being able to add my college buddy Brodie Nissen to the roster midseason.
I wasn't immune either, breaking my nose on a thrown ball as well. Don't ever try to play a doubleheader on three hours sleep. But once the team started winning it didn't stop. Still, we entered the playoffs as the No. 3 seed and the curse crept into my head when I was stung by a bee the day before the playoffs began and my hand swelled up so much I could join the circus.
Thanks to help from Dr. Pyke, I was able to control the swelling enough to play and we beat the Classics in the first round, which was no small feat considering they had made the finals the last four years.
This time the dramatic victory was on my side. We trailed the Classics 12-5 in the eighth, but we rallied. I picked up the win in relief and after leading off the bottom of the ninth with a double and scoring the tying run on Rick Tweet's two-out, two-run game-winning single.
In the finals we would face Vacek's team, the Silver Sox, who had played the Classics in the finals each of the last four years. We won the first game of the three-game series 14-5 and lost the second 18-5 with both games relatively close until the victor piled on some late runs. I had to be worried with tide turning and the curse continuing, but we managed to pull out the championship game 26-5. We actually trailed 3-2 after the first inning, but the Silver Sox soon ran out of fresh arms, and our ace, Brown, was fresh enough to pick up his third postseason win.
Winning this time was a relief. Would I trade this victory to win at Branson my senior year? In a minute, but I will always savor my first meaningful championship (sorry IJ softball teammates, but slow-pitch softball counts about as much as tiddlywinks in my mind).
To my readers still in high school my advice is to never take your playing days for granted because the end is closer than you think and there is plenty of time for other, less athletic, extra-curricular activities after high school.
To those former athletes whose high school years have passed, I say there are second chances and even third, fourth and 14th chances. Join a league like the REBL or coach some kids even if you donšt have children in the league. There is too much good about sports to leave them behind and there is always a championship to chase.
Contact Ryan Metcalfe via e-mail at [email protected]
Mop-up duty turned into a critical outing for Ryan Metcalfe during the 13-12 victory in the A's championship run in the semifinals against the Crushers when the A's scored eight runs in the final two innings.
Brodie Nissen (left) was a key addition to the A's in the Championship, joining former St. Mary's College roommate Ryan Metcalfe on the team midseason. Ray Trujillo (right) caught fire late in the season and picked up several key hits in the playoffs.
Eric Brown was named league and playoff MVP after pitching the A's to three wins in two weekends and being a top run producer at the plate.
Rick Tweet had the biggest hit of the post-season, a two-out, two-run single to send the A's past the Classics in the ninth and put in the the finals
Ryan Metcalfe hit a leadoff double and scored he game-tying run on Tweet's two-out game-winning hit in the bottom of the ninth.
