Not even Salt Lake's most accomplished Baptist could save the Buzz from the purgatory they've been mired in the past few weeks.
Fortunately, the rest of the Buzz congregation was able to pick things up and prevent them from falling below .500 with an 8-7 comeback win over Omaha Saturday night.After going 0-4 at the plate until the final inning, Marc Lewis hit a two-out, bases-loaded single in the ninth, scoring the game-tying and winning runs.
"That was a game," said Buzz manager Phil Roof. "I don't think any of the fans (all 10,766 of them) left."
Intense is one way to describe the action, but uncanny would be the more accurate adjective.
Salt Lake pitcher Travis Baptist came into Saturday's game with a PCL leading 1.55 ERA and hadn't given up a run in his last 26 innings on the hill. The Buzz, who had lost eight of their previous nine games, couldn't have asked for a better man to get them out of what Roof called "some sort of strange funk."
That's what they thought, anyway.
Baptist turned in one of his ugliest performances of the season. Normally when the Buzz score eight runs with Baptist working, the game is a yawner. Once Baptist grabs a lead, he holds on tighter than a bear trap.
"Travis wasn't on his normal game," said Roof. "I think the guys wanted to salvage something for him, but we had a lot of ground to make up."
Baptist began the game on the mound, but should have really been taking shelter in a bunker because he eventually got shelled.
The Royals' Steve Sisco began the scoring with a two-run home run in the first, haulting Baptist's scoreless inning streak at 26.
Brian Buchanan and Jayhawk Owens both sent solo shots into the huddled mass of fans behind the left field fence in the second, tying the game at 2-all and giving Baptist new life at the same time.
He quickly, however, died again in the third.
The Royals scored four in the inning behind Joe Vitiello's solo home run, which the rest of Omaha's line-up followed with four straight singles. After the damage was all done, Salt Lake found itself down 6-2.
Baptist lasted through the sixth without any more trouble, but he left a fair sized obstacle for the Buzz to overcome.
They did, mostly off the strenght of Chad Rupp and Corey Koskie, who both belted long home runs in an effort to chip away Omaha's lead. Rupp also scored the game-winning run on Lewis' single.
"It's about time we did something like that," said Roof, whose team is now 33-32. "Sometimes you have to create your own breaks."