SEATTLE – The Seattle Mariners’ hearts already had been ripped out twice in the past week when Eddie Guardado couldn’t get through the ninth inning.
Monday, after Guardado again gave up a ninth-inning home run that tied the score, the Mariners picked him – and themselves – up.
Yuniesky Betancourt rolled a single into left field to score Willie Bloomquist from second base with two outs in the 11th inning, giving the Mariners a 4-3 victory over the Chicago White Sox at Safeco Field.
The loss ended a four-game losing streak and, while it’s early in the season, was a big mental boost for a team that had come close but not close enough for nearly a week. Two of the four losses were decided by one run, the others by two runs.
The victory was the Mariners’ first in seven one-run decisions.
“We finally won our first extra-inning game and our first one-run game,” manager Mike Hargrove said. “When these things end, the way they end is usually like pulling teeth.”
Without pain-killers, he might have added.
The Mariners’ struggling offense had fallen into pantomime mode again, with only Jose Lopez’s first-inning home run to speak for an attack that had actually out-hit the White Sox through six innings.
Chicago led 2-1 at that point, however, on Jim Thome’s RBI single in the first inning off Jamie Moyer and a gift run in the second when third baseman Adrian Beltre committed an error, Moyer threw a wild pitch and catcher Rene Rivera committed a passed ball and throwing error all on the same play.
Moyer was pitching his best game of the season – five hits with five strikeouts and a walk over seven innings – and retired 14 of the final 15 batters he faced. Still, the Mariners had barely nicked White Sox starter Jon Garland after Lopez’s first-inning homer, getting three hits over the next five innings.
Just when it looked nothing was going to change for the Mariners, everything changed.
They manufactured a run in the seventh inning off Garland to tie the score, then got a home run from Raul Ibanez in the eighth to take a 3-2 lead.
Hargrove, who emphatically expressed his confidence in Guardado after he’d walked four and lost his previous outing, put the ball in his hand again.
Guardado was a different pitcher this time, pumping strikes and his fist.
Throwing pitches either to the corners of the plate or near them, Guardado got Alex Cintron to ground out and Jermaine Dye to strike out, then threw two strikes to Brian Anderson.
Needing one more good pitch to end a week of deep frustration, Guardado threw a bad one: a fastball that was thigh-high and over the middle of the plate, and Anderson pulled it to left, where it barely cleared the hand-operated scoreboard to tie the score.
“Eddie’s a good pitcher and he came within one pitch of closing those games out,” Hargrove said. “It’ll happen for him. Eddie’s the closer.”
J.J. Putz and Julio Mateo stopped the White Sox in the 10th and 11th innings, and the Mariners started their winning rally mildly in the bottom of the 11th against White Sox right-hander Brandon McCarthy.
Richie Sexson lined out to third base for the first out, but designated hitter Carl Everett grounded a single into right field, just past first baseman Paul Konerko, who was playing near the line to prevent an extra-base hit.
Willie Bloomquist replaced Everett as a pinch runner and used his speed to change the game. He stole second base, giving him 17 straight steals going back to last year.
“We already had an out and that took the sacrifice bunt out of the equation, and I had to get there,” Bloomquist said.
Beltre flied out and the White Sox intentionally walked left-handed hitting Jeremy Reed.
That forced Hargrove to make a key decision: let right-handed Betancourt bat against McCarthy, or use left-handed Roberto Petagine to pinch hit?
Having already lost the DH when Bloomquist replaced Everett, Hargrove acted on the suggestion of bench coach Ron Hassey and let Betancourt bat.
McCarthy got two strikes on Betancourt, who then got just enough of the next pitch and hit a roller into left field between third and shortstop.
Bloomquist slide home well ahead of Scott Podsednik’s throw to the plate.
“I don’t know about getting any monkey off our back; it’s still early,” Hargrove said. “But getting a win against the world champions, it feels good after the losses the last four or five days.”
It’s a stretch to say the Everett Silvertips won this season because of Bob Evans, their amiable and wildly amusing bus driver.
But darned if this white-haired, wise-crackin’, guitar-playin’ fella with the down-home Tennessee twang doesn’t make those long road trips through the Western Hockey League hinterlands just a bit more tolerable.
Everyone, it seems, from Everett head coach Kevin Constantine to the assistant coaches to the team’s traveling staff to all the Silvertips players, has a favorite “Bob” story. Or, in the case of Constantine, a growing log of one-liners called “Bob-isms,” so precious he saves them on his laptop computer.
“Most of them are hilarious,” said Constantine, the often stern-faced coach who enjoys a good yuk off the ice. “Some of them are probably more colorful than you’d ordinarily see in the average family newspaper. But then again, he’s (traveling) with a group of guys. And these things are non-stop.
“The guy just makes me laugh,” Constantine added. “I’ve only written down about a tenth of the little quotes that come out of his mouth and I’m already up to a hundred.”
Evans, you see, produces quips at about the same rate most people exhale. He will happily poke fun at anyone, most often himself. If, for instance, he takes a wrong turn (which seems to happen at least once every road trip), he will remark wryly, “I could get lost in a cul-de-sac.”
Or, when the talk turns to matrimony: “I’ve been married three times and have a couple of broken guitars to prove it.”
Though Evans, who is 64, probably could have made a career in stand-up comedy, his real love is music. A stint in the Navy brought him to the Northwest – he was stationed at the Bremerton Naval Shipyard in the early 1960s – and he stayed on after leaving the service, singing and playing his guitar, mostly in local clubs.
About seven years ago, Evans began driving a bus. Though he still performs from time to time (often showing up to play with musicians he knows at Seattle-area clubs), he now drives charters for performers and other celebrities, politicians, church and civic groups, tours, and school sports teams.
And the Silvertips. He started driving for the team a year ago and has done most of their road trips this season. Evans is old enough to be a grandfather to almost everyone on the bus, but he still relishes the gig.
The players, he said, “are a great bunch of guys. I like ‘em all.”
And they must like him, he figures, given the good-natured gibes that come his way. When the team got stuck behind a poky driver the other day, center Torrie Wheat chided Evans, telling him the bugs were hitting the back of the bus.
All in good fun, said defenseman Shaun Heshka, who calls Evans “a real character. … He likes to joke around and he’ll make you laugh all night. He’s one of a kind, definitely.”
“Before we get going (on a trip),” added defenseman Cody Thoring, “he always comes to the back of the bus and starts telling his stories, telling jokes. All the time, he’s joking around.”
Then there is Constantine, who can fuss and fume at times, particularly when the Silvertips are not playing well. You might think a cranky coach and an offbeat bus driver on an extended road trip would be a combustible pair – oil and water mixed with gasoline, one might say – but somehow the two men not only get along, they are downright chummy.
“(Evans) is actually quite therapeutic,” said James Stucky, the team’s equipment manager. “Kevin can get pretty worked up. Win or lose, he gets pretty animated, so I think it’s good medicine when Bob says, ‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’ or something like that. It just kind of breaks the ice.”
Well, sometimes. Earlier this season, Constantine got on the bus after a bad game in Spokane, looking like he just swallowed a bumblebee. Taking his usual seat, right behind Evans, he gave the driver a glowering, leave-me-alone look.
“And I said, ‘Coach, it was a damn game,’” Evans related with a laugh. “I said, ‘It’s hard to drive the bus 400 miles with somebody that looks like my ex-wife sitting there.’ And he said, ‘This conversation is ending.’ And I said, ‘The hell it is, it’s just beginning.’”
That Evans lived to tell the story says something about the two men and their shared friendship.
“He just makes those long bus rides a heck of a lot shorter,” Constantine said. “He’s not overbearing. He’s not a pain in the butt at all. He just likes to yak when you’re ready for it.
“People think that when the game is over, you want to rehash it. But a lot of times when it’s over, win or lose, you don’t want to talk hockey at all. You want to put it to bed and not think about it again until you have to. So sometimes it’s fun to be around somebody that knows life from a little different angle, and that’s him.”
“Kevin’s a great guy,” Evans said. “We’re good buddies.”
Plenty of people drives buses, of course, but not all are suited for the grueling WHL road trips and the mish-mash of moods that crop up with any team over a long season. “We’ve run a few (drivers) off this year,” Stucky acknowledged.
Evans, though, “brings a side of Kevin out that not many people see,” he said. “And that’s what’s good about Bob. He’s got this ‘I don’t care’ attitude and the guys love him. It’s really a good fit.”
In a rare moment of straight-faced sincerity, Evans agrees.
“I love this team,” he said. “I’ve become friends with each and every one of these of people.
“I just feel like family with them.”
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