KANNAPOLIS — Long on effort, but short on bodies, the Piedmont Boll Weevils
couldn’t make good on their last-gasp run at the South Atlantic League playoffs.The depleted Weevils split a doubleheader
with Greensboro at Fieldcrest Cannon Stadium on Monday, winning the opener 7-2, but
dropping the nightcap 2-1.
That split wasn’t good enough
to get the Weevils off the banana peel. Neither was winning five of their last six games.
Nor was taking three of four from the Central Division second-half champion Bats to put a
late shine on an often dull 69-71 season.
The Weevils needed a sweep Monday
to have a chance to tie Hickory and force a play-in game for the SAL’s final
wild-card playoff spot. The Weevils also needed Hickory to lose its game at Asheville.
As it turned out, Hickory lost to
the Tourists 10-5, making the loss even more painful for the Boll Weevils.
Still, the story of this
year’s Weevils was not the futile final day. Instead it was how this team somehow
managed to stay in the hunt down to the season’s wee hours.
The Weevils looked doornail-dead
after losing to Hickory last Wednesday. But they beat the Crawdads Thursday and Friday,
then swept a doubleheader from the Bats on Saturday. Fieldcrest was menaced by Tropical
Storm Dennis on Sunday, setting up Monday’s double dip of disappointment.
“The guys battled their tails
off all the way, they’ve got nothing to be ashamed of,” said Piedmont manager
Ken Oberkfell.
The Weevils kept battling all week
even after their horses moved up to the greener pastures of Clearwater, just when they
needed them most.
Slugging catcher Jeremy Salazar
flew away, followed by key reliever Jeremy Wedel. No-hit twirler Brad Baisley was shut
down. Closer Cary Hiles was hurting. Center fielder Jason Johnson was listed among the
walking wounded. Another half-dozen Weevils decorated the disabled list.
Still, the Weevils, bandaged and
bloody, trudged grimly toward the finish line, marching behind Oberkfell like the weary
Colonials followed George Washington at Valley Forge.
Their task was simple. Every night
they had to win to stay alive. And so, somehow, they did.
“One must-win after
another,” said Oberkfell. “I was proud of ‘em. The kids we had left stepped
up and brought us right down to the end.”
With plenty of pressure on them in
the first game Monday, the Weevils played exceptional baseball.
Alex Fajardo, the struggling
second baseman, shifted to right field and delivered big hits and bigger catches. Eric
Schreimann supplied punch with a booming, three-run homer that gave the Weevils a 7-0
bulge after only two innings.
Derrick Turnbow, who had started
on Wednesday, grabbed the ball again and smoked a masterful three-hitter with his
teammates’ season riding on his strong right arm.
“I haven’t pitched in a
pressure game like that since high school,” Turnbow said. “It was fun. After we
got the lead I just threw it over instead of fooling around.”
Between games of the doubleheader,
word arrived that Turnbow, too, would be on a flight to Clearwater come Tuesday morning.
It seemed like a cruel joke. But
there was no punch line.
“If we do make the playoffs,
who will we have left?” moaned one dismayed Weevil fan.
That question — mercifully
—needed no reply after the Weevils succumbed in Game 2.
They had their chances in that
one, Oberkfell would say later. But in reality his hands were tied.
“I didn’t have any extra
people. There was no one left in the dugout,” he admitted.
Meanwhile, Greensboro’s Stan
Hough, blessed with an overflowing roster, was able to manage that nightcap as if it was
the last baseball game that would take place on this planet. He had the luxury of using
three pitchers to quell a Weevil rally in the fifth.
Still, Hiles — sore shoulder
and all — kept the Weevils close, stranding five Bats in the sixth and seventh
innings.
But the Weevils failed to get the
big hit. They went down 1-2-3 in their last turn, then limped from the field, heads down,
oblivious to the fireworks show that replaced them as entertainment moments after
Alejandro Giron’s grounder to third brought down the curtain on the Weevils’
strange fifth season in Kannapolis.
n
NOTES : This season marked just
the second time the Weevils have failed to make the playoffs. ... Oberkfell seems certain
to move up to a higher managerial post in the Phillies’ organization before next
season. ... Schreimann’s blast in the first game crowned him team homer king with 12.
n Weevils may have been
shorthanded in playoffs
If the Weevils had made the SAL
playoffs, it might have been rough for the Boll Weevils.
Reliever Jeremy Wedel and catcher
Jeremy Salazar had already been called up to Clearwater while Turnbow left this morning
for Florida.
They wouldn’t have had Brad
Baisley either. The 19-year-old has been shelved with a sore shoulder. |
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