A whole lot of words about the greatest game and a top-notch Sooner victory, too
Baseball is the greatest game.
Because it was the first sport to own the national imagination, it comes with so many numbers that can be followed, it’s played dang near every day and its history is fascinating and better chronicled than all the others combined, it is the greatest game.
Folks complain it’s slow and it can be but if you have emotional skin in the game, or if you’re a sportswriter by trade, able to watch actively rather than passively, though baseball’s good that way, too, it’s the greatest game.
Also, Oklahoma just played its Big 12 tournament opener Wednesday afternoon at Globe Life Field, where the Texas Rangers play, and never have the Sooners appeared more Omaha-ready than right now.
They’re right back in action at 12:30 p.m. today, taking on Kansas and depending upon the time you’re reading this perhaps that game’s already been played, too.
That’s why, after a quick rundown of Wednesday’s contest and why Sooner fans should be so happy about it, we’ll move on to pieces of that game that may be less about the Sooners and their 4-0 victory over TCU and more about the game that remains so great, no matter how much ESPN and everybody else wants to convince you it’s all about the NFL and NBA.
Come for the Sooners, stay for the baseball.
So, about the game …
Let’s start with Braden Davis, because all OU’s left-handed starting pitcher did was throw a 120-pitch complete game shutout, his penultimate pitch a 93 mile-per-hour fastball and his final pitch an 81 mile-per-hour changeup.
The first inning might have gotten away from him but thanks to an amazing play in the field that we’ll get to later it didn’t and from there the former Sam Houston State closer sailed, walking nobody, striking out nine, allowing four hits
Working with two out in the sixth inning, former Chicago Cub, Philadelphia Phillie and Oklahoma City 89er Keith Moreland, calling the game, commented that Davis had only gone to three balls on two Horned Frog batters.
That stat held because, if you can believe it, Davis only went to two balls once against the last 10 Frogs he faced, which is utterly ridiculous.
The pitcher the Sooners beat was Payton Tolle, who’d just been named Big 12 pitcher of the year, having gone 7-3 with a 2.96 earned run average, striking out 116 in 76 innings and walking only 34 in the regular season.
It took OU more than a trip through the lineup to get a hit off Tolle, but the Sooners made it happen with two runs in both the fourth and sixth innings.
How they scored them, we’ll address later, too.
Entering the tourney, OU had won eight of nine games to close the regular season, scoring at least six runs in all nine of those games and an average 11.3 over the span.
Yet, on the day OU faced the conference’s best pitcher, its pitcher was the better one and the bats found a way to score the runs required.
Good show.
They’re just humming.
Now, let’s talk some baseball.
Have you ever seen …
You know how they say when you watch to a baseball game you’re bound to see something you’ve never seen before?
Well, they do and they’re right, even though more baseball games are played than every other sport at every single level.
Wednesday, the Sooners and Frogs played nine innings and I saw two things I’d never seen before, though I’ve watched, I promise, thousands of games.
Seriously.
One, in the first inning, after striking out Easton Carmichael, after the ball had been fired around the horn in celebration, it was tossed back to Tolle and, for some reason, he missed it.
The ball glanced off his glove into his face just below his right eye, leaving a mark that soon appeared to have a mouse under it. He finished the inning and put ice on it the rest of the game.
I’ve seen a lot on the diamond, but never that.
Later, in the bottom of the seventh, OU’s Jason Walk reached with a single through the left side against right-handed TCU reliever Zachary Cawyer.
Cawyer has a dynamite move to first base and he picked Walk off and not only did he pick him off, he picked him off so well, Walk bolted for second base rather than dive back to first.
Cawyer, though, forgot to cover first base in the ensuing rundown, leaving TCU shortstop Anthony Silva to dive at Walk when he attempted getting back to first.
Silva tagged him, yet on the follow through of his falling-forward swipe, his glove hit the dirt and the ball popped out.
Called safe, the umpires conferred, then went to replay and, despite the commentators believing the call would be reversed, it wasn’t.
Walk stayed at first.
Four pitches and two pick-off attempts later, Cawyer picked him off again.
Walk took off for second base again, then tried coming back to first again and this time Cawyer was where he was supposed to be and tagged him out.
Sooner left fielder Kendal Pettis was in the batter’s box for all of it.
Never in my life had I seen the same guy picked off the same base in the same way twice during the same at bat.
Never.
Baseball, right?
The catch …
Speaking of Pettis, he may have won the game for OU in the first inning and I’m not kidding.
Top of the first, before Tolle took a ball to the face, Davis opened the game striking out Chase Brunson.
Next man up, Sam Meyers, lashed a double down the right field line. Next up after him, Kurtis Byrne pulled what would have been a double toward the left-field corner only for Pettis to give chase and make an all-timer of a play.
“Play of the tournament,” Moreland said.
Pettis was running backward toward the left-field corner on a diagonal.
The ball was literally behind him when, in full flight and dive, he speared it, his glove higher than his head and no inch of his body anchored to earth.
Go find ESPN’s top plays on YouTube today, because it’s got to be on it.
The thing about it winning the game? Had Pettis not made the grab, a run would have scored and Byrne would have been on second base with one out.
Had that happened, Davis is feeling the pressure, the Horned Frogs have an early lead and the notion it’s going to be their day.
Good chance, TCU’s up at least 2-0 (or more) before the Sooners come to the plate.
Instead, Byrne was the first of 16 of 17 batters retired by Davis and the guy he didn’t retire, Logan Maxwell, only reached on Sooner catcher Scott Mudler’s wild throw to first base after Davis struck him out with a ball in the dirt.
Not just back-to-back but …
Were we going chronologically, there’d be another moment here in which Pettis played a role, but we’re not so we’ll go with this, the moment it felt like OU iced the game.
The Sooners had already scored two runs in the fourth inning and here they were in the sixth looking for insurance.
They got it when Anthony Mackenzie ripped his eighth home run of the season, turning an 0-1 pitch from Tolle over the left-center field wall.
Jackson Nicklaus, hitting from the left side, turned on Tolle’s very next offering and pulled it over the right-center field wall.
Back-to-back home runs on back-to-back pitches.
As it happens, I’d seen that before.
Still, wow.
Ah, baseball …
This one might seem boring, but not to me and it came in the fourth inning when OU not only picked up its first hit, but its first three and two runs, too.
And for a baseball aficionado, or just somebody with a brain like mine, it was a fabulous half inning.
Michael Snyder drew a one-out walk, followed by a lined up-the-middle single from Mackenzie.
Let’s talk about McKenzie’s single because it was fielded by Meyers, the Frogs center fielder, who nabbed it on a short hop as he dove directly forward thinking he might have a chance to snare it. He didn’t but he was overwhelmingly fortunate it short-hopped into his glove.
It didn’t have to and had it not, Mackenzie would have finished in the dugout, owner of an inside-the-park dinger.
So there was that.
Next, Nicklaus corked one to center field. It didn’t have the loft angle to get out, but it was a rocket, putting runners at second and third base.
The thing about it?
Nicklaus’ rip scored Snyder, but Mackenzie absolutely should have scored, too; and with any read of the ball in the air at all, he would have. But he didn’t read it even though no Frog outfielder had any chance to grab it.
One run in, should have been two.
Next up, Jaxon Willits hit a hot shot to Frog first baseman Karson Bowen, who immediately fired home trying to get Mackenzie in a non-force out at the plate.
The throw was well on time, but Byrne, TCU’s catcher, caught it in the left-handed batters’ box, leaving him to swipe backward at the oncoming Mackenzie.
Mackenzie was called out even though every single replay made it appear Byrne had swiped air as Mackenzie reached the outside corner of the plate.
The only problem?
Every replay, though it made it appear that was the case, was obscured, and while it did not show a tag taking place, nor could it capture that air.
Still, one run in, should have been two.
Next up, Pettis delivered a two-out single up the middle and finally OU had its second run of the inning when Nicklaus crossed. But it should have been three, because Mackenzie should have already crossed twice.
I love it because baseball, between all the outs at first base, strikeouts and home runs, is a series of plays made and plays not made, of perfect execution and imperfect execution and more moments than you can imagine can go either way.
Myers should not have dove for Mackenzie’s liner but got away with it.
Mackenzie should have read the ball off Nicklaus’ bat and scored, but didn’t.
Willits should have driven Mackenzie home, but replay failed.
Finally, OU nets a second run, but should have netted three.
The margins are so narrow and the possibilities so vast and the whole idea is to be perfect and, at the very least, stay out of your own way.
So don’t get picked off or turn a strikeout into a man on second base following a wild throw down the right-field line
You get the idea.
It takes investment, yes.
But if you can do it …
It’s the greatest game.
Thank you, Clay, for the baseball update. At least a few of us are tired of OU softball.
As for the same runner getting picked off twice, Atlanta Brave's MLB leader in bonehead plays Acuna was picked off twice in same game and then picked off second the next day. He is such a cry baby and his moping in the outfield later turned into him dropping a routine fly ball in the same game. 2023 MVP or not, he couldn't have played for my OK State champs and national runner-up NHS American Legion Ron Lynch team in 1981. I simply would not have tolerated his behavior.
Keep up the great work!