Not Sooner Magic, just who they are
Tennessee's Pickens gave Oklahoma what it need to win: a chance
You have to kill them.
After Thursday, that’s the lesson.
Figuratively, of course.
But you have to kill them.
“If you’re watching us through the season,” coach Patty Gasso said, “we’re never done.”
Maybe that’s why she was smiling, like she knew what was about to happen.
Ailana Agbayani stood on second base, having led off the bottom of the seventh with a four-pitch walk, which was not the way Tennessee fireballer Karlyn Pickens meant to begin the frame.
Her fourth free pass of the contest, the other two had led off the bottoms of the fourth and fifth and Oklahoma had done nothing with them.
But that was the fourth and fifth and this was the seventh and sometimes that makes all the difference in the world.
Two were out because, after walking Agbayani, Pickens struck out Isabela Emerling on three pitches before getting Abigale Dayton to pop out.
Agbayani made it to second because Kasidi Pickering followed Dayton and, game on the line, sent one back up the middle to bring the potential winning run to the plate in the form of Ella Parker because what kind of fun would it have been if she hadn’t.
Parker, who’d been stuck in a batting slump for the ages, going 5 for 42 over a 17-game span from March 2 to April 4, yet who still entered the Women’s College World Series hitting .416.
Parker, who played through a leg injury during her struggles and continues to now, the pain not managed so much as tolerated.
Parker took a strike and that’s when the ESPN camera found Gasso in the third base coach’s box showing her teeth.
Here’s a theory.
Pickering’s single was not so hard hit. Perhaps Volunteer second baseman Ella Dodge could have gotten it? Instead, gravity did not cooperate when she dove to her right, arm and glove still inches above ground as the ball traveled under.
One more pitch?
One more strike?
So Gasso was smiling.
Parker had three to work with, at least, and all she needed was two, crushing Pickens’ next offering on a straight line into the center field bleachers, handing the Sooners their 4-3 victory.
It was Parker’s eighth hit in her last 15 at bats, her fifth, sixth and seventh RBIs over the same span and her fourth home run, too, pushing her season total to 15 and if the Sooners go the distance she’s bound to hit at least three more.
“I wasn’t trying to make any moment too big,” she said. “I thought [of] all the batters before that did a good job staying loose throughout the moment and not letting the moment get too big.”
Calling it Sooner Magic is too easy, so let’s not.
Pickens is a fantastic pitcher, who at one point got 13 of 16 Sooners out without allowing a hit, a span from the second inning into the sixth.
Still, Agbayani was her fourth walk and that’s playing with fire and because she walked Agbayani, barring a double play, Pickering had to come to the plate and, because she did, Parker had a 55.7 percent chance of coming to the plate, too, because .557 was Pickering’s on-base percentage entering the day.
Not Sooner Magic, just four bad pitches from Pickens and a couple Sooners doing what they frequently do.
“We just needed to stay in the game as long as we could and give ourselves a chance,” Gasso said. “Whether it’s in the fifth, the fourth, the seventh or the ninth, as long as we have one swing left, we have life.”
Really, how can it be Sooner Magic when Parker had already taken Pickens deep in the first inning, pulling a 76 mile-per-hour pitch down the right-field line in a blink, her front foot in the box almost frozen to keep up with the hardest thrower in the history of the college game.
The field may have been a better bet than the Sooners upon entry, but how can you pick against them now?
Because they won, they stay out of the loser’s bracket, get today off before coming back Saturday to face Texas, a surprise 3-0 winner over Florida.
Having dispatched Tennessee, which took two of three from them the last weekend of March, the Sooners get to play their Red River rival, who they swept the last weekend of April.
It means Gasso can bring Sam Landry back to the circle rested after she went the distance against the Vols, allowing eights hits, walking four and striking out only two, yet giving up just one earned run, the victim of a passed ball and a rare fielding error in left field from Pickering allowing extra tallies in the first and third innings.
Like, somebody must still beat Texas Tech’s NiJaree Kanady twice to send the Red Raiders home and yet, here we are again, OU in the driver’s seat to be one of two teams standing for next week’s best two-of-three championship series.
The Sooners are not a machine but they’re so damn hard to beat.
You have to kill them.
Again, very good piece. To the point, don’t waste words.