AZUSA, Calif. – Full hearts break harder. Justly, what was pumped into the hearts of the players and coaches on the 2017 Chico State baseball team has already begun to outstrip what cracked them. A season that deserves to be remembered with fondness ended in frustration Friday as the Wildcats were eliminated from the NCAA Championship Tournament West Regional with a 14-2 loss to California Baptist at the Cougar Baseball Complex on the campus of Azusa Pacific.
The Wildcats set a new California Collegiate Athletic Association standard for winning percentage this season while claiming the conference's regular-season and tournament titles for the first time since 2000. They set new program records for fielding percentage (.983), stolen bases (111) and sacrifice hits (82) in finishing 45-11. Their .804 winning percentage is fourth best in the program's history, and their 45 wins is tied for the 6
th most in program history.
The players and coaches that made up the 2017 team will remember the disappointment of this weekend. There's no getting around it. But smiles will outshine the sadness for them as time ticks on.
"For the last go-around it was a heck of a ride," senior Josh Falco said. "I think we all learned a lot of life lessons. Coach T said it best after the game: 'This is a game. It's a kids' game'. Not everybody gets to play forever. I was told in high school everybody has an expiration date. Today was ours as a team. I'm going to miss the heck out of these guys but I know I've got brothers for life. I have nothing but love for this team. We gave it everything we had. I can safely say that. The cards didn't fall our way. We had a heck of a ride and a heck of a team. I'm forever grateful for it."
Jimbo Pernetti's two-run homer gave the Wildcats their only runs.
A. Bartlett Giamatti's "Green Fields of the Mind" is a wonderful essay on baseball that begins like this: "It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart."
If the Wildcats did not understand the essay that hangs in the pressbox at Nettleton Stadium before, they understand it now.
"It breaks my heart because it was meant to," Giamatti writes later on, "because it was meant to foster in me again the illusion that there was something abiding, some pattern and some impulse that could come together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion; and because, after it had fostered again that most hungered-for illusion, the game was meant to stop, and betray precisely what it promised."
That unfulfilled promise takes place every spring on college campuses all over the nation. Only one team walks away with a national title. Undoubtedly, regional and national titles are valuable. But even they are not the most important thing a team can walk off the field with for the very last time.
"I've been doing this for 25 years and I haven't had a group that really cared for each other as much. That part's special. It doesn't come around every year," Head Coach Dave Taylor said. "Like I told them after the game: what you did with each other on and off the field, the achievements on the field, and the people you've become based on competing every day will take you to that next step in life as parents and husbands and citizens. They've learned a lot. They are going to get a lot out of that down the road. Right now it hurts. But I think we've got guys that will go out and make an impact in the communities that they live in and I'm proud of that."
The Wildcats faced bigger challenges off the field then they ever did on it this season. Cameron Santos was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in the fall. Andru Cardenas was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré Syndrome (a rare disorder in which the body's immune system attacks its nerves) midway through the season. And Head Coach Dave Taylor and pitcher Hunter Haworth had their own health scares.
"These guys are always there to pick each other up," Taylor said. "I've been doing this for 25 years and I haven't had a group that really cared for each other as much. That part's special. It doesn't come around every year."
"I hate to be cliché but it's a family," Jimbo Pernetti said. "I care for all these guys. To have the season we've had is a blessing, it really is. Its disappointing that it ends this way but the memories I've made I'll keep that for the rest of my life."
"We had some fallen brothers throughout the year," Falco said. "We really just embraced each other and picked each other up and fought through a lot. I've never been closer with a group of guys. I'll never forget these guys."
An uncharacteristic inning began an unceremonious ending for the Wildcats. The nation's top fielding team, Chico State committed two errors to seed a five-run second. It was just the second time this season that the Wildcats made two defensive miscues in an inning and marked just the eighth time they had committed at least two errors in the same game.
California Baptist (35-17) made them pay. Brian Ruhm's grand slam was the biggest moment in a five-run inning that ended starting pitcher Steven Baker's day early.
Grant Larson came on in relief and got the Wildcats out of the inning and through a scoreless third. But the Lancers, who also eliminated Chico State from last season's NCAA Tournament, put some serious distance on the Wildcats with a four-run fourth. Larson allowed a home run on a 1-2 pitch and a two-run single on an 0-2 count in the inning.
Relievers Cam Greenough and Dan Beavers also had up-and-down afternoons before senior Stuart Bradley came on to get the final out.
"Pitching-wise we just did not get it done like we did all year," Taylor said. "We had a lot of trouble putting guys away. With two strikes those numbers were not very good. We were fortunate to be in the game yesterday because our offense picked us up. But we got too far behind today for anybody to help us with that."
Pernetti's two-run homer in the seventh got the Wildcats on the scoreboard, but double plays stalled three promising rallies and Chico State never got untracked.
The Wildcats' offense looked good early. They hit four balls to the 12-foot wall surrounding the ballpark, but three were caught and one ricocheted right back to the fielder, holding Andrew Carrillo to a single. Carrillo was promptly doubled off first when Sonny Cortez crushed a liner right to the shortstop. Cortez's game-opening at-bat portended things to come. He smashed a grounder up the middle that shortstop Nick Playa played beautifully and threw him out by a step.
"It's tough as the number one seed to lose two and go home," Taylor said. "It's tough for them right now and it will be tough for a couple days, but they will be able to come back and enjoy a lot of great memories from what we did in the conference and conference tournament. I feel bad for them, especially the way it ended.
"But this is a great group of guys on and off the field. Just good boys that I'll miss and I wish it could have ended better for them."
The Wildcats had their hearts broken. It stinks. But they know how to deal with it and they'll be okay. They've learned the secret this season. Baseball is a kids' game, as Taylor told them, and they were never going to be able to have it forever. But they have something even better than the heartbreaking and beautiful game of baseball: each other.
The 2017 Chico State baseball senior class.
