The weirdest game I have ever seen

What I just witnessed was the strangest game of baseball I’ve ever seen in this league, and perhaps in any league, including possibly Little League. Before I start pulling apart this can of worms, I’ll give you the important line: by a score of 3-1, the AIA Fire defeated the Mat-Su Miners … maybe.

Now, where the heck do I begin with the detailed explanation?

I am pretty sure that I saw more umpiring and hackey sack tonight (Tuesday) than I did actual baseball. For one thing, because it was a doubleheader, the games were seven innings long. And because I forgot about this, by the time I showed up the first game was complete and they were three innings into the second game. And because the home team won, I was only there through the middle of the seventh, so that was 3.5 innings of baseball.

But that’s not the half of it. Let me tell you about the insanity that unfolded at Hermon Brothers Field tonight. Like I said, this is a can of worms and I’m going to try and untangle it in as concise and unbiased a way as possible, but that is going to be a challenge, so bear with me.

It all started in the sixth inning when, apparently, an umpire had an exchange of words with an AIA Fire player that assistant coach Milt Flow did not take kindly to.

After Flow and the umpire went back and forth for a while, the umpire instructed Flow to “return to [his] box,” which elicited some retort and, anyway, resulted in Flow’s ejection. At that point, AIA head coach Bret Butler came to the field, initially to separate the men before things got ugly, but got drawn into the debate himself, which resulted in his ejection. The two left the field and assistant coach Chris Beck — now managing the game by default — entered to take over, but said something or called time out in a manner that also did not please the umps … so he got ejected.

At this point the umpires appeared unsure of how to proceed, having thrown out the Fire’s entire coaching staff. With no personnel left to take over the skipper job for the team, the umpires retreated to their dressing room to figure out what the heck to do next. The Miners pulled their team from the field in anticipation of a forfeit win, but the umps hadn’t officially called the game, so everyone hung around to see what would happen.

I began to wonder what a visiting coach who was ejected would do while waiting for the end of the game at Hermon Brothers.

Sit on the bus?

Well, an interesting part about this ballpark is its outfield fences. There is actually a gap between the ground and the bottom of the wall, which is made of chain link fence to prevent snowdrifts from building up at the wall base over the winter. There’s some unique only-in-Alaska stuff for you Outsiders. But another neat feature is that it allows ejected coaches to watch the game from beneath the outfield wall.

So, anyway, while we were waiting an impromptu hackey sack game broke out in front of the Miners dugout. I’m not sure who won, or how you even win a hackey sack game, so I cannot give you a scouting report on their hacking abilities. After one complete round of hackin’ it up, the umps returned to deliver their verdict — the game could continue if the Fire appointed player-coaches to replace the ejected staff. The crowd responded positively, although the Miners were behind, they came to see a ball game and wanted their money’s worth.

But the Miners were not satisfied at having an easy win snatched from them. Manager Brian Yocke came out with his rulebook to debate the issue, and guess what happened to him?

If you said “he got ejected, too,” you guess right.

They would go on to lose the game, and were not happy about it. One Miner asked me in an unpleasant tone whether I got any good footage. I responded, “Yeah! Lots of umpiring.”

Yocke and team general manager Pete Christopher were going over the rules after the game. According to them (and I have no rulebook to verify, so I have no official opinion on the strength of their argument) the rules state that a player-coach must be designated 30 minutes prior to the start of the game. The Fire players were, of course, happy with the outcome, but seemed to be just as amused at having to elect a player-coach mid-game after seeing their entire managing crew get thrown out in a single inning.

So there you have it. As it stands, the Fire notched a 3-1 victory tonight, but I have been told that the Miners did contest the game, so whether or not that remains the final score is anyone’s guess.

Only in Alaska.

Jesse Jack is the writer, editor and primary operator of the blog 49thstatehardball.com, a fan-written blog about the Alaska Baseball League. The 49th State Hardball blog can be also found on Facebook.