Thanks to my wonderful employer, RCU, I was given some great seats for the EC Express home opener on Saturday night. Not that there are a whole lot of bad seats in Carson Park (except for the "Fan Deck", which seems like a complete waste if you are truly in to baseball as you will spend half the game staring at the sun and the other half trying to get the sun spots out of your eyes). These were in the third row, just to the third base side of home plate. My season tickets are GA, and I usually sit on the first base side of the grandstand, maybe the equivalent of 15 "rows" back. Although I was disappointed in the wait staff (we were never approached to order anything--last year when I was given seats by the President/CEO of RCU the wait staff was there every other inning it seemed. Granted, more people for opening night, but still--not once??), the treat was the game itself. Jon Bjelland was lights out, with 14 punchouts in eight innings. The eighth was a little dicey, as a clearly spent Bjelland walked the bases loaded. According to the paper, he yelled something at the dugout to the effect that he wanted to stay in, and Coach Varsho obliged. The hitter smashed a grounder to third that Hollick handled cleanly to preserve the lead. It seems to me that Varsho has an extremely long leash with his starters. I don't think I would have let Bjelland more than two base runners in the eight. The strategy backfired the night before as Wausau tacked on four or five runs to take a late lead. It almost seems like the starter might be set up to fail a bit (pitch until you are completely out of gas), but Varsho knows his players and I guess as long as the players buy in to the philosophy then it's okay.
I didn't go to Sunday's game and am skipping tonight as well. Hope to be back in the park for the second game against Madison on Tuesday night.
