Pirates want no more kisses

By Brian Bailey
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East Carolina had plenty of chances to take the deciding game in its American Athletic Conference series with first-place Cincinnati last weekend.

When you mix in Sunday's noon start with a 94-minute rain delay, and add in a 4 p.m. travel curfew and you end up with a 3-3 tie, it leaves you thinking about the what ifs.

Baseball doesn’t have a clock. That’s the beauty of the sport. Nine innings can literally last for hours. It isn’t over until that third out in the 9th inning is in the books — unless conference travel is involved.

Both teams knew going into Sunday’s game that they would have four hours to complete the game. That seemed plenty, until the rains came.

For a while it looked like there wouldn’t be any more baseball. The skies cleared and there was almost enough time to finish.

Almost.

Charlie Yorgen looked to be the hero when his base hit in the 7th inning gave his team the lead. Cincinnati rallied with a pair of runs in the eighth to get the tie and the series split.

"To get a lead and then blow it, it hurts,” said Yorgen after the tie game. “They are a good team. Credit to them for fighting but we should have won that game. I think we played well enough to win that game. I thought we played well enough all weekend and that one definitely hurts.”

With three AAC series to play there is now a definitive upper half and lower half to the standings. Cincinnati, Tulane, Connecticut and East Carolina are now separated by a single game.

Still, Cliff Godwin and company can only think about what might have been. Godwin said the tie certainly felt more like a loss.

"It does,” Godwin said just after that travel curfew ended Sunday’s game. “We take the lead and we knew it was going to be the last inning we were going to play. Going in when we brought in Joe (Ingle) our plan was to get three innings out of him. We figured with the time curfew that three innings would probably get us to the end of the game. I ran him back out for the fourth. That's on me. That was my decision to run him back out there. The kid had given us everything that he had. Sam (Lanier) came in and did a great job. We make a play there and we win the game.”

There is still plenty of baseball to be played for East Carolina. The regular season championship is still very much in sight for this Pirate baseball team.

Next up is UConn on the road and we all saw firsthand just how good the Huskies are when they visited Greenville. The teams will clash on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. This will be another series that will have a regional-type feel. The Pirates should be accustomed to hard-fought, close games when the NCAA tournament rolls around. That’s been life in the American for the entire season.

“Our guys fought hard,” concluded Godwin after his club recorded one win, one loss and one tie in the series with the Bearcats.

“They played hard," he said. "It's a game of inches and sometimes it's very unforgiving."

The saying goes that a tie is like kissing your sister. It sounds like something the late Yogi Berra would say. Actually, Navy football coach Eddie Erdelatz is credited with the quote, after a scoreless tie against Duke in 1953.

Another story gives the quote to another Navy coach. Tom Hamilton reportedly said it after a tie against Army.

Perhaps George Brett said it best.

“If a tie is like kissing your sister," observed Brett, "a loss is like kissing your grandmother with her teeth out.”

Either way last weekend was a weekend that won’t sit well with the Pirates.

After wrapping up exams this week it will be all baseball for the Godwin & Company.

Hopefully, we’ve seen the last of the kissings — sisters, grandmothers and otherwise.

BB

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