Last night's TimberRattlers game featured a tribute to Appleton baseball icon Brock Calmes, Carlos Gomez's first rehab start after injuring his hamstring, two TimberRattlers home runs, a call up for the night's starting pitcher, a spectacular diving grab by Max Walla and a walk-off single by Nick Ramirez.. Relive it all with the below album, or you can directly access the slideshow by clicking here.
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| Timber Rattlers 5, Burlington Bees 4 10 innings May 16, 2012 |
Carlos Gomez went 0-for-3 with a run scored. I thought he looked rather tentative - he was slow on the bases and didn't really make an effort to get to a ball that fell in shallow center.
Manager Matt Erickson confirmed that:
"To be very honest, I thought he was a little bit timid at first, when he got on the bases going first to third. I asked him how he felt and he said he felt good and I asked him if there was any pain – because if there’s any pain we’d probably get him out of there right away and he said no, no pain, he just hasn’t played in awhile and he wanted to test it out, get a feel for it. But overall at the end he said he got into it a little more as the game went on and he felt pretty good, so we’ll see what tomorrow brings for him."
He also had good things to say about Gomez's influence on the rest of the team:
"Yeah, he’s a great guy. I didn’t know much about him until last year when he came here, we had an extended time with him last year – about what’s planned for his stint here this year. 5 innings, 7 innings, 9 innings. But last year he was great. He comes down on the field and does everything like you’d expect a professional to prepare and it’s good for our young players to see guys like him, who’ve been in the big leagues no for a few years to come down here and continue to get his work in. So yeah, it’s a good influence and he’s a good influence."
And lastly, Erickson's thoughts on the somewhat wild win last night:
"You gotta love those. They like to be dramatic apparently here at home. I thought we had really good control of that game for seven innings and then we lost the strike zone a little bit there in the eighth inning and any time you give up free bases you know it comes back to haunt you. We did a nice job of limiting them, I suppose. You had the bases loaded, no outs and we kept it to three runs and the game tied and they gave us a shot to win late.
Their right fielder made a heck of a catch in right center field and then you know we’re kind of hanging our heads and trying to pump us back up and then Walla goes out there and makes an unbelievable catch in right center. You know both of those balls or if either one of those balls gets down, the game probably ends right there. But two great catches.
There were some nice plays. You know we walked the bases loaded and Tommy Toledo got the guy to hit into a double play. You know you try to set them up in those situations, but it doesn’t always get executed. He made the right pitch and Hopkins and Rivera made a nice turn to get us out of that jam and then we got the hit from Walla and the big hit from Ramirez. A lot of things happening in that ballgame. It was a good baseball game."