Larry Jewell

3, 2, 1. Manager Mike Littlewood. I know you haven't said much to your team about this, but nine wins in a row is the best ever for the Pioneers and matches the third best total ever in the history of the league. Yeah, I'm not going to be the first one to tell them. They probably don't even know they've won nine in a row. And you know, when you're playing so many days in a row and so many games, really all you look at is that you're playing well and that you've won a bunch of games. And record wise, I'm sure nobody knows that. Chris Brionis might know that, but he kind of. And Mike Smith, they seem to look at the stats and stuff like that more than anybody else, but. So those two might know, but I don't think anybody else has a clue. Most of those long winning streaks like that usually involve a significant section of those winning streaks at home. With you, it's only three at home. We're a team, you know, that actually we play a little bit better on the road. It seems like the team's more relaxed. You know, the crowds don't bother these guys. They're veteran guys and, you know, just we're fortunate right now that we've been able to win this many on the road and come back home, play well. You know, finishing with nine games at home after this is going to be nice to finish it out. But again, we just want to keep playing well. We'll take the wins when they come, but if we can just play solid baseball every night, that's all you can ask. Three wins against Sonoma county may have set a standard of how well you do play at home now for those last nine games. Well, we beat a quality team, there's no doubt about it, and we beat them pretty handily. And it's the first time we've really done that, kind of manhandled somebody at home. A real good team. I think the Friday, Saturday, Sunday series at Sonoma is going to be big, bigger for them than us. And we talked about it yesterday exactly how close it is with those remaining three teams. Let's talk a little bit about last night. Yoshimuni Wakita, I know, was right up until the game was about ready to begin. Before you went ahead with Yoshi. Yeah, his knee, you know, early. He looked a little tentative in the first inning. He looked a little tentative and got stronger and stronger as he went on. And I think his knees hurt a lot more than he's letting on or a lot more than anybody knows. Dr. Jezebar did look at it and we know that he's torn his mcl, his meniscus cartilage. And you know, there's nothing that's going to hurt him more by going out and throwing. It's just if he can endure the pain a little bit and he's been able to do that, you know. And again, we talked about if we take Yoshi out, we're going to have to pry the ball out of his hand. He's a competitor and he just wants to go out there. And he's thrown tremendously well for us the last four or five outings. I know he went to 101 pitches and that was it for him. Yeah. And you know, JT needed some work and Mark Pichota needed some work. His neck stiffness is finally going away and he went in and didn't really feel like he had his good slider working. Gets behind 30 and then just throws four fastballs and gets the first guy out, does it the hard way. And then Freddy makes a couple great plays for him to get us out of that ninth inning. It was a great win. After that first batter, it looked like Mark had settled right down into being able to pitch. Yeah. And you know, even the balls he was throwing, they were close. And it was almost nice to be in a ball game. You know, we had a 982 and a 92 and 81 or whatever they were against Sonoma. And then we come in here 16 2. And so it was actually nice to be in a 74 game where you can actually coach a little bit and make some moves and stay awake in the dugout. Let's talk about your ball club here. It didn't hit quite as much as it did the first night, but you still got plenty of hits last night. Well, we had a lot of opportunities to drive more runs in than we did. Robert comes up with a big three run homer and DG hits. Bit a hit the ball well last night. And really with the exception of one pitch that Yoshi makes, you know, it's a five run game still. So, you know, it's just. I really enjoyed last night's game. Just that it was. It seemed like there was a nice pace to it and it was close enough where we had to battle the win. It looked like the momentum was going towards Solano until Chris got that RBI double in the ninth inning. That seemed to reverse the feelings. Well, it did, I think, you know, the two or three pitches before Chris Got that hit. It was a little bit frustrating because I pinch hit Kalin for DG simply to get him on base and to steal second and then maybe move him over. And Chris fouls off the first pitch and fouls off the second pitch. On the second pitch, Calen clearly had the bag stolen. And if you're looking at Kalin leading off and then having like a Joe Trippie or a Brian Greyback hitting some second, they understand. Okay, here's what we need to do. Caitlin's going to need a couple pitches to get the second base. Whether he needs the first pitch or if he needs one pitch to look at his move and then run. But Chris fouls off the first pitch and fouls off the second one and then hits the double to score him, we'll take the run. That's not how we wanted to do that. You know, textbook says with Kalin, you steal second, hit something hard to the right side and get him over to third and then maybe have a guy drive him in. But Chris did a nice job battling. After he did that, we had a little talk after the inning letting him know you're usually an 8 hitter, not a 2 hitter. And he still was an 8 hitter, but it was in that situation where he had to play two hitter. It worked out. Getting the run, but not the way we exactly wanted it. But it's nice to see Chris swinging the bat like he is. It was an interesting matchup last night. You walked a lot of times. You struck out 10 times. You struck out 11 the night before. And that you've been getting on base and getting hits. You look at our guys and the home run numbers we're putting up, the strikeouts are going to come with it. I think we need to cut those down a little bit though, as we move along. The strikeouts would be the one thing that would hurt us. In a playoff situation or in a tight game, you need to put the ball in play. The goal, I think, at the plate is if you're not going to get a hit or get on base, if you're going to make an out, make it a productive out. And the strikeout is the most unproductive thing you can do at the plate. And productive, you know, might mean just hitting a ground ball to second and moving a guy from second to third or a long fly ball or a sacrifice fly. And a strikeout's just not going to get it done for you. Let's talk about the defensive side. Your team still played an excellent defense last night. We did. And, you know, we Talked about Freddy. Freddy made some great plays all night long. Robert Murrell made some great plays, took a bad hop, took it off his, his chest and throws a guy out. Rod McCall makes a great backhand play. You know, we made some nice plays in the outfield. And again it's a, you know, it's a real solid defensive team and that's, I think a key to our 40 something wins is what usually we don't give up too many extra outs per inning. And that's what I think our pitchers can feel more confident. It's kind of a trickle down effect. If your team's making errors behind you as a pitcher, you're going to try a little harder and you're going to try to strike more guys out and that means you're going to try to nitpick around the zone and you're going to end up walking guys. And that puts a defense on, you know, that makes them be flat footed. Where on the other hand, if you're playing great defense, the pitchers just feel confident enough to go right at the guys, let them put it in play and let the defense play behind them. So they both help out each other so much. And believe me, I know the pitchers appreciate that. We'll talk about this upcoming game, this game 33 of the Solano series after this timeout. 3, 2, 1. Manager Mike Littlewood. I know Solano has been frustrated a little bit by losing three of their Australians for the Olympics, but their best Australia stayed behind for them. Yeah, the one that matters the most is still here, I think, and they didn't lose a whole lot with the guys who did leave, but their bodies and I think at this point in time, with bringing Manny Gonzalez back, he got here halfway through the game last night. That's going to help solidify their offense a little bit and defense. We would like to shut down the hitting streak. I think that's one of the goals. And we've won the series. I'm going to give Tim and Tim Belk and Brian Greyback the night off tonight. Tim's played every game since he's been back. He looks a little frustrated at the plate. So we're going to let him take a couple days off and then come back against Sonoma ready to go. I know as I visited with him last night, he says he's looking for a time off and this afternoon he was ready to play again. So it's going to be interesting. Well, you know, and Tim, we were going to actually, when we got the 81 lead in the first inning or so, the first game we were going to, I was going to take him out and let him rest seven innings and he said, well, let me get another at bat, let me try to mix in a hit. And he hits one off the wall and he says, let me go the rest of the game. And so, you know, he's just the kind of guy that he'll want to play when he gets here, but I think the rest will do him well. He had a couple days off coming from Mexico, but those weren't really days off, they were traveling days. So hopefully it will help him out. Let's talk about the matchup of the pitchers tonight. I know Reggie Leslie is back and he's been playing professional baseball in Italy this summer. I don't think he would face the quality hitters in Italy that he faced here. I think in his first outing he gave up five or six runs. He's a good pitcher, there's no doubt about it. And if he's on his game, he's going to be tough to score runs against. I think any right hander in the league though, we can handle with the lineup we've got tonight. We've got five left handers in there and we've got a speedy lineup in there tonight. So we'll put a lot of pressure on the other team and if we can just put the ball in play and like we talked about earlier, cut down the strikeouts a little bit, we'll be fine offensively and we'll just see what he's got. He was a heck of a pitcher last year and see if he's got the second kind of stuff this year. I know visiting with him last year, near the end of last year and he threw a lot of pitches. He had made a major change in his own personal life from being kind of wild and crazy to trying to get his life in order. You know, most of these guys, their lifestyles off the field will vary. You know, a lot of them like to go out at night and wind down and you know, some of them wind up when they get out, when they get off the field, but you know, they're just used to. A lot of these guys are just used to going out and having fun and doing whatever they want to do after games. And he was one of those guys. I know that just from hearing people talk. But none of that really matters to me. And even on our team, I mean, as long as it's different from the college type atmosphere, there's no curfew. If they're ready to play the next day, then they're ready to play. I think that's the approach you have to take. You know, some of these guys can go out and they can be up all night and come in at six, seven in the morning, sleep all day and be ready for the game. If that's the way they do things and they're going to be effective that way, I think you just have to let them do that. Let's talk about your pitcher today. It was scheduled to be a Dixie player. Is he going to be back again? Jeff Garf. Jeff Garf is going to start tonight. Yeah. You know, he's had his full day's rest, and I think he's. He's looked like a totally different pitcher. Not that he was bad before, because he wasn't. He was real good, but I think he was max effort when he was out of the pen. And what I mean by that is every pitch looked like he was just given 120%. Right now, he's just doing it real nice and easy. He's keeping everything down. And I think he feels more comfortable starting than he does out of the pen. But I've said it before, Jeff was one of the. The big reasons that we won that first half because he got us out of a lot of jams. Right now he's doing a great job for us starting and, you know, the way he's been going, I just hope it keeps continues. He's got another two starts after this one to maybe prove something for next year and put up some numbers for next year. He's one of those guys that wants to get back and organize ball and give it a shot. What's going to be the key today? The speed, the defense, the pitcher and the hitting block? Well, I think who knows what Leslie's going to, how he's going to come out. He might come out really effective and maybe not. I think on our side, we need to be aggressive the same way we always are. You'll see a little bit of a different lineup today with Tim being out of the lineup. I'm going to hit Calen first and Kendrick second and Joe third. Joe's been swinging the bat very well and then Robert fourth. And so you look at those first three guys and if they get on base, we're going to run a little bit, I think, tonight. But defensively we're very solid everywhere you look. And Kalin again took about 100 ground balls yesterday, so he should feel more comfortable at second base. So I think, you know, just stay with our game plan and go play nine innings. We've already won the series and see what happens. I've got to ask you, this has nothing to do with the ball games right now, but I know you've been on vacation with me, your family today. You really put it on well with your family. Yeah, yeah, we did. We went over to Six Flags in Vallejo and it was fun. It was a fun time. Saw a couple dolphin shows and sea lion shows, and it was a fun time. It was about 95 degrees out there. This was a little toasty. And I've said before, this was one of the hardest trips I've been on because you almost have to keep them entertained all day and. But I'd much rather do that than be away from them. So it was fun and you're the one that gave us the clue to that. So I appreciate that. It made for a fun day. I'm glad it worked. Those three young men that belong to your team seem to enjoy it. No matter where they are, they enjoy being here at the ball game. Yeah. If there's a baseball field, Tyson, Nathan and Marcus definitely want to be out there playing on it. And, you know, it's fun for me to be able to come out here with them. And, you know, I don't think it's a better atmosphere for. For young guys to be around. The players are good guys. They're going to set good examples, and it's something that these guys can look up to. Some of the guys that use foul language, my kids know that, hey, he swore. And so I have to say he's not a bad person. So they can be around a variety of different people and I guess not be sheltered, what you might say, and kind of make decisions for themselves about different people. So I think it's a great atmosphere for them to be around and fun for them just to get on the baseball field and play around. I know your responsibility with Dixie State College is going to change the way you're going to handle the middle part of this series. Yeah, I've got to go home, actually, tomorrow. I'll be home Friday and Saturday, and we'll meet with our team Saturday morning, and then I'll fly out Sunday morning back to San Francisco to go up to Sonoma. That's just something that we have to do and it's part of the deal. And then head down to Yuma for three days. But the nice thing about it is it's over. The road trips are over after Yuma, except for the playoffs and the Playoffs will be a little bit different but the big long road trips are done and we got through a season and it's been a pretty fun summer. I think with anytime you can win double the games you lose, it's a fun time. Manager Mike Littlewood, congratulations on the victory so far. Good luck tonight and have a good time on your trip back. Thanks Larry. You saw him in the hotel earlier and I didn't and my first sighting of him is going to be when he's in the bullpen throwing his warm up pitches and hopefully he's able to go. I think we're probably going to keep him on a pitch count and keep that knee, you know, kind of solid. But so the pen getting their work done is going to be important too. I know it's still kind of an iffy situation. If by chance he is not acting that well in the bullpen, who would step in as the starter in place of him? We'll go with Jason Chivers and I've already told, I told Jason last night, I said don't throw any side work, don't get any side work tonight or you know, get some light side work because if Yoshi can't go then you're going to start. Jason started, started a lot of games and you know, Jeff Garf was wondering if he should get his side work last night because he might get moved up and I said no, let's just make sure you get your four days rest and actually I think it's five with the day off. I'm not positive but he's going to get plenty of rest and then just go on your normal day. So we'll go with Jason if he's not alright. But you know in Yoshi you're going to have to have a wrench and pry that thing out of his hands. Pry the ball out of his hands before, before he's going to give it up, you know. And that's probably after you fist fight him for the ball. So he wants to pitch and he's a gamer and you just got to go. We'll just go out and let him throw. I ask him how he's alright and he says good tomorrow, good tomorrow. So tomorrow's today and so we'll see how he does. I've got to ask you one final question. You've been here with your family, this has been vacation time plus you had to work at the same time. I see all those kids and I see your wife and they're smiling. They must be enjoying this. Oh, I think they Are. Yeah, it's nice. We were talking about today. It's nice just to be able to go somewhere together. Before last year, you know, we tried to plan a trip with the family every single time out and just, you know, with Little League all Stars and our kids playing baseball just didn't ever work out. And so we're trying to squeeze it in between All Stars and the start of school, which is Monday. And it looks like we finally did that. But we're having a great time. It's just I'm not. I'm almost more tired than I would be normally, but I'm not looking Forward to that 10 hour ride back home and getting on the plane Sunday morning. But, you know, the road trips are almost over. We've got this one and we're basically done except for the playoffs, which playoffs I think will be a different story. So, you know, we're happy to have them here and I think they're happy to be here. Manager Mike Littlewood, congratulations on the victory last night and congratulations on having your family around. Good luck tonight. Thanks, Larry. We'll try to go get one more tonight. May be a factor in that a little bit with no bp, but I think Mike Smith's probably going to be the biggest key in his ability to come in and be effective after that long bus ride and see what he can do that way. Manager Mike Littlewood, thank you for being with us. Welcome to the family to join the road trip. Thanks a lot, Larry. Appreciate it. I know you have him in the lineup. Yeah, Freddie. I saw Freddy when I came in to the stadium tonight and he looks good. Looks like he's kind of rejuvenated and ready to go tonight. So he'll be back in lineup. Manager Mike Littlewood, thank you for being with us. Good luck tonight. Thanks, Larry. That. That's. It. Sa. There. It. 3, 2, 1. We have manager Mike Littlewood with us once again. And I know you lost on Saturday, but before we talk about congratulations on being named the Western Baseball League manager of the year. Congratulations. Thanks. It was, you know, Pat called me today and it was a big surprise to me, really. You just as you go through the 90 game season, you really don't realize, you know what? I guess you don't. That's not a goal that you set as a manager. I think you just set a goal to win games. And you know, this is icing on the cake really for a successful season. And what's real nice about it is you're getting the acceptance and the admiration, you know, your Peers appreciate you, and I think that's the biggest thing. Whenever you're in business or anything you do, when your peers think you're doing a good job, I guess that means more than anybody else. And so in that respect, I'm proud of it. I know Dixie State College, now State College, you're the head coach there, and that's been where the primary part of your life has been. But now, all of a sudden, here you are, your number two job says you're one of the best ever here. Congratulations. Well, thanks a lot. College wise is where my career is at. That's what got me into coaching. Those were my aspirations when I started coaching in high school. Shoot. It's been a long time ago now. Eight years, eight or nine years ago that I started coaching in high school. That's what this is where I want to be. And if more doors open at a major college, then great. If not, then I love it here. I'm able to referee basketball while I'm here, and I love doing that. And so it's a good place to be and we're happy here. I'm glad the Pioneers are here. It's given me a great opportunity and I think it's given the city a great opportunity to have some quality, quality ball players come through. And I'm not sure that the city appreciates it yet or knows how good some of these players are, but, you know, these, some of these guys are the best at what they do. And, you know, they may be on the bottom side of their career or the underside of their career trying to, trying to climb the ladder. We've got all the whole spectrum, but, you know, they need to be appreciated because they're a good bunch of guys. Interesting. Some of these ball players have been in the major, some have had a little longer time in the majors. Virtually every one of them, wherever they were at one time before, if they didn't begin in the Western Baseball League, they had an opportunity as being considered an outstanding prospect on the teams that had them way back when. Yeah, you look at that, I mean, you look at Rod McCall, who was second or third in the international League in home runs a couple years, who had 30 home runs, I believe, in Iowa, and, and, you know, Mark Pichota, Matt Rubel, who've been in the big leagues, and Steve Cook, who was with us, who had spent six and a half years in the big leagues. You know, some of these guys have made hundreds of thousands of dollars, and you see them playing at this level for not hundreds of thousands of dollars. And you really appreciate their love for baseball, that they want to come out and play it every single day because it's a grind. And, you know, when you're not getting the big paychecks, there's got to be some other reason you're playing. And they love baseball just. Just like I do. And so I, you know, I would like to see. I would have liked to have seen the stands a little more full during the year, but, you know, that's just the way it is. Maybe it's going to take St. George a couple years to really appreciate what the Pioneers are doing and the talent that's actually being put out there and the effort that both, you know, Pat Ellser's putting in as president and we're putting in as coaches and the players are putting in as really going out on the field and doing it every single day. It's been a great experience for me this summer. But anytime you win games, it's going to be funner than when you're losing games. And hopefully the Pioneers can progress and year after year, be challenging for this league championship. I know last year when you were an assistant coach to Bruce Hurst, that was your first time back in the majors after you had been a player. What sort of things did you learn last year that helped you this year when you became the manager? You know, I think me, myself, I've been coaching for 12 or 13 years now, and I've got my own set of philosophies and my own way of doing things. And my philosophy is I'm really laid back, but my expectations are very high. And at this level, with the professional level, I think maybe I learned some patience that. That you have to do it over the long haul. And it's the first time I've had a chance to coach. Last year was the first time I had a chance to coach in minor league baseball. And, you know, it's a lot different. It's just when a guy makes an error, you know, you just can't. You can't get on the guy. I mean, you just have to let him keep playing. And you've got guys you're going to put out there every single day. And my philosophy is you've got to let them play, you know, and if they can't do it over time, get another guy in there, but you give them a chance. And I think our team plays relaxed, yet they play aggressive and they want to win. And I think that's the key. I think the whole key is, again, keeping an even Keel not going through the peaks and valleys emotionally, but yet being relaxed. And I think that's the whole key to playing baseball after these two years now at the professional level. I've got to ask you, now you're going to be back. Your next thing after this is to worry about the Dixie State college team. What sort of changes do you make now as the way you coach at Dixie College now that you've had this experience in the pros? I don't think there's going to be any changes in the way I do things with those guys. My mentality and my personality is going to be the same with both teams. You know, the professional guys, the Pioneers, obviously, you know, they're going to get away with things that my college players wouldn't and you know, not bad things, just, you just have to let them go play and be themselves. And when they reach a certain point that you get tired of them, you have to let them know and, you know, over a 90 game season in three and a half months, guys will wear on each other. And that's just part of the deal. But we've had our college guys out here for two weeks now, a week and a half with optional hitting, and we've done that right before. We've gone with the Pioneers and I've probably done more coaching in the last week and a half or, you know, the three or four days that I've been out there with the guys all summer. So it's a different, it's kind of a different animal. You're really trying to, with the college, mold the guys and we've got a lot of new faces and trying to mold them into what you want. There's a lot of ways to play this game and a lot of different philosophies and a lot of coaches use a lot of different philosophies and a lot of successful philosophies. Mine happens to be one. And I think you just have to mold your guys into what you want to do to be successful in your program. So that's where our groundwork is being laid right now with all these guys. And, you know, it seems like a long way off until the next World Series. And that's our goal, is to get there with the college. But it sure seems like it was a short time ago when we left Grand Junction, just a few months ago. So, you know, as long as I don't really even feel like I have a job, you know, I get to go to the ballpark every day and, you know, take some ground balls once in a while and coach these guys. And so I look at it as more of having fun and getting to go to the park every day. I don't know if it's official yet, but I understand from this season you may have one of these players who will be helping you in the college next year. Can we say that? Yeah, DG Nelson is going to help us. He just got his. I think he just graduated from BYU and he's going to get his teaching certificate and so he's got a student teaching left to go. But you know, DG comes from a great coaching background. You know, his dad was a coach at Utah Valley, Baseball coach for many years and I officiated basketball with him. And you know, DG's dad's gone through some tough times. He's had liver transplants. He's actually had two of them. The first one didn't take and now he's battling cancer, going through chemotherapy. Just a strong, strong family. His uncle, Kim Nelson is the coach at Timpanogos and was the coach of American Fork Baseball for a long time. And I've actually officiated basketball with him and he officiates football and his other uncle Clyde coaches at Ricks College basketball. So what a better guy to get in and help you with your programs than the guy who really wants to coach, really wants to put in the time. So we're going to let DG handle the catchers and the outfielders and hopefully give him the experience he needs to either one, get a good high school job that he wants when he gets all done with school or maybe move into the college level somewhere. But you know, we're going to help him and he's going to help us. It's going to be a good, nice two way street. It's interesting mentioning DG now. Now we also mention Mike Smith who is a coacher in the off season. Plus he's been a successful pitcher. Again, that's an interesting thing that happens with some of these guys. Well, a lot of them. You'll find a lot of players want to end up going into coaching. And you know, Mike's a competitor, he wants to. So you can. And I think you're either born a coach or you're not born a coach. We talked about this a while ago. I think some people are born to be firemen and some people are born to be painters or whatever. I've been a painter, but I don't think I was born to be a painter. I think I was born to be a coach. I Just think some people have that mentality that they want to work with kids and the money's not great. And I think you know that going in. And so you really have to love what you do when you go into coaching. And I think Mike does that. Randy Will Said loves what he does coaching wise and getting to work with young people, and obviously DG does Tony Peasley. You look at all these great people, you look at Coach Croshaw over there, who's been doing it for a long, long time, and it's a grind. And to do this over and over, and the people outside who are working in banks and working as accountants are looking at us and thinking, we really don't have a job. But if you do it day in and day out, you know, it's a grind. And so to see someone like Coach Croshaw, who's done that for so many years, you know, you tip your hat to them and think, you know, it's a grind to be that good every single year. And, you know, I guess that's my goal as a coach, is to be. To try to be the best at every level, at whatever level I'm coaching at, is to be the best, put the best product on the field and really battle. I think it's a matter of pride in what you do and, you know, but also loving what you do. We've got to talk about design pioneers, and we'll talk about last time out and this one tonight after this timeout. 3, 2, 1. Mike Littlewood, I know you wanted to pick up a win on Saturday, and that had to have been a very disappointing loss. What was your reaction at the end of that game? I was disappointed for sure. I thought we had a chance to win that game, and as it turns out, we would be. If we won that game, we'd be three. Three games in front of Yuma right now, and we're two games in front of them. And I want to win this second half, and I know everybody in our clubhouse wants to win this second half because you don't play 90 games for nothing. I mean, when you get this close to it and you have it in the grasp of your hands, you want to win it. And so I was a little bit. You know, I think everybody's a little bit disappointed after the game the other night. We had chances to put up some runs. I think both pitchers did a nice job. You know, every pitcher that went in did a nice job. But, yeah, we just. We fell a little short. And I think the reason we were a Little bit disgusted with the loss is we had a chance to win the game and it just didn't turn out for us that night. How much difficulty is there for a family when you're on the ninth game of nine consecutive games? Is that a little bit of a frustration? You know, I really don't think you look at it that way as far as going out and playing. You might during the day before the game, but when the game starts, these guys know what it takes to win ball games. And so when the game starts, you don't really know how many you've played in consecutive days. And I really don't know myself. All I know is we got yesterday off and it was nice to have that day off. But you know, we've got six in a row now and we get a couple days off before we play Yuma again. Back here starting the playoffs next Tuesday. And so I think we're just really gearing up. Finally going to get Brian Greybeck back in the lineup and have him play three or four, maybe five games this week and really start trying to fine tune things this week. Talk about Greyback in a moment, but one thing I've got to ask you about right now is you're beginning the first of six games. As I was watching the team prior, these guys look very intentional and very, very serious about what they were trying to get to happen with this team. His team appears very serious about playing these next six games. Oh yeah, I think so. Nobody in our clubhouses wants to slide into this thing playing terrible. And it showed by. You know, we had BP today and a lot of teams aren't having BP at all this time of year and guys are really trying to work on things. And you know, Mark Pichoda comes up to me and says he's going to work on some things in the bullpen and throw a good long pen. So he may not be available tonight, but I think everybody's trying to use these next six games to try to get ready for the playoffs because again, in the long run, when these guys are 50 years old, these playoffs may not mean a whole lot to them, to be honest with you. But the work we put in for the last three and a half months, we're going to give it our all. Whether it's the first round of the playoffs or the second or wherever it is or the next six games, we're going to try as hard as we can to win these games. I know there was some debate whether you would play Greybeck today or wait until tomorrow. He's listed in that roster on that starting lineup. Why this early? How is he recovering? I think he's ready to go. I talked to him last week, and we had talked about playing Monday, Tuesday, maybe taking Wednesday, Thursday off, playing Friday, Saturday, taking Sunday, Monday off, and then getting ready to go. I think that might be a good pattern for him to play a couple and get a day off. Play a couple. Get. Get a couple days off. He had his MRI and nothing new came out of it. He's got the posterior ligament tear, so he's just going to really have to battle for the next two, three weeks. And I think we really need him in there to be the best we can. We need him at second base. I know the team feels like that, and he's swinging the bat real well in the cages, and so I think a better team having him in there. I know Jeff Garf's going to go today. Let's talk about that start and what's going to be the key to get Yuma today. Well, I think definitely, I believe they're going to start Lions. I'm not sure, but, you know, we've been putting up decent amount of runs until the last few games, and then we put up two and three. And I think to get our running game going a little bit more than we have, play solid defense like we always do. But Jeff needs to. To come out and have a good, solid start, go seven, eight innings. And we're starting to find out who's going to be good for us in the pen and who's not. But what we need to find out here is that we're going to. We know Brian Mazzone's going to start one of the first games, probably the first game of the playoffs. We know Mike Smith's going to start one of the first two, probably the second game of the playoffs. We need our third starter. And I've talked to Jeff a little bit about it, and it's probably going to be out of Jeff Garf and Nate. Yes. Who's who that third starter is. Jeff may feel more comfortable coming out of the pen in that situation. Who knows? But to find out how these guys are going to pitch against Yuma now might determine what we're going to do in the playoffs. And so it's important for those guys to go out there and throw well and, you know, have good outings and kind of see where it falls. I know you were stuck at 21 and there was a debate about Chris Nelson or Marty Jansen. Is that possible? Another pitcher Is one of those going to join you? No, Chris Nelson's out. He's done for the year. And Marty Jansen, we just couldn't come to terms with him. He was working with Pat Elster quite a bit the last four or five days coming from Mexico and just couldn't meet the financial terms, to be honest with you, to get him here. And so we had to just say go somewhere else and good luck to you. And I like our team right now. I mean, I've said all along for the last couple weeks that I think this team can really win it. If we get on a roll a little bit and play like we have been really the last month, I don't think there's anybody that can beat us, including Chico and including Chico at home. Are you going to activate the one guy that may be missing that you still have the space in this lineup for? We're just going to go with what we've got right now. I like it. There's not extra guys on the bench to complain about playing time we've had. And that's one nice thing. A lot of times you get in this situation right now and everybody's asking for days off. And I know Freddy's played a bunch of days in a row and probably needs a break. And maybe Brian will play shortstop one of these games, maybe Thursday or Friday he'll play one of those shortstop to give Freddie a break. But we do have two days off coming up after these six, and I think everybody wants to play more than looking for days off, and that's nice. For me, it's pretty easy. Manager Mike Littlewood, congratulations on your honor once again. Thank you for being with us and good luck today. Thank you, Larry. In the last couple innings, 11 runs in the last couple innings. But again, they played nine innings and that was a big thing. It's interesting when you start adding all of this up. 35 runs between two teams in one game, it's only the third time it's ever happened in the Western Baseball League. But it happened to happen in the first home game last year. It was last year. The game here. I think we were all a little bit nervous because to see the fences were a concern to most people being as short as they are and the ball traveling so well here. And then you have whatever it was, a 1918 ball game or whatever it was with all those home runs, I think everybody's really concerned. But as we've gone around the league, we haven't, I don't think, had that many more high scoring games here than we have anywhere else. You're not going to put up, you know, you go to somewhere like Tri Cities or Scottsdale, you're not going to have a 17 to 16 ball game. That's not going to happen. But any other park, I think you have the ability to put up a lot of runs and sometimes you're just going to hit the ball well. And it's amazing after long road trips like that that that many hits were put up and, and that many runs were put out. But I'm glad we ended up scoring one more run than they did. There's some interesting people in this. John Sokalis, their third baseman, becomes only the third man ever to have six hits in a ball game. Kalen Folds quietly went 5 for 5 last night. That puts him in the record books too. I had to. I was surprised when you told me he was five for five. And you know, as a manager, I really don't look at those type of things. I look at the quality of at bat each guy gives. And a quality at bat always doesn't result, doesn't always result in a base hit. I thought Tim Belk's last at bat was a very quality at bat with a guy on second, no outs, and you could tell he was trying to get him over to third and almost hits the ball out of the park. So, you know, great job, Kalin, and obviously getting five hits, I mean, that was a career for me. So, you know, hopefully we can keep putting them up and put some runs on the board tonight. Again, let's talk about some of the negatives from the two starters. Bobby Cowan had a problem with throwing strikes this time around as he got one of his rare starts. Brian Mazzone, who's been dominating, gives up 14 hits and nine runs. That was unbelievable. Well, Brian just got the ball up in the zone a little bit. Didn't really have a good feel for his off speed stuff. And the confidence in his fastball wasn't there the first three innings. I thought 3, 4, 5. He ended up getting a little bit stronger and pitched like heat more closely to his ability than he did in the first couple innings. But I think a lot of it really has to do with pitchers. I think more than maybe hitters is a lot to do with the ride, the stiffness and maybe mentally not being ready to play. That's an excuse, but I think it might be a valid one in this case. He's not likely to have that sort of start the next time around. He's likely to do better next time. No, I mean, you send Brian out there and nine out of 10 times he's going to give you a quality start. So I would think that his next start he's going to go seven, eight things just like he always does and give us a good quality start. He's not proud of what he did last night, but what I liked out of his start last night was he did get better than he was early. I mean, 3, 4, 5. I think they might have got a couple of. Couple hits here and there. And every ball that they hit seemed to fall in for a base hit, whether it was hit hard or not. And so Brian was a little unlucky there, but yeah, he'll give us a quality start next time out. I'm going to ask you about your first relief pitcher, Jeremy Thomas gives up a home run, then settles right down and pitches well and then he has problems his next inning out. Yeah, Jeremy's just got to get past the. Jeremy's a guy that pitches on confidence as well. As I was talking to Mark Pichote a little bit and last night in a dugout and relief pitchers and he enlightened me a little bit as far as the mentality of a relief pitcher. And they worked so much on confidence. And it might have seemed to the people watching the game, although there weren't too many at that late hour or listening to the game that I left him out there a little long. But I wanted Jeremy to really finish on a positive. Now the game was pretty much out of hand. We were going to lose the game, which we ended up not doing. And so I thought it's probably, probably better to let Jeremy get a couple outs, finish on a high note. It just didn't happen for him and I couldn't let him go out there or let him face another batter and just get banged around. Jeremy could be real solid his next outing. He's going to have to be, to be honest with you, because you look at the playoff situation, we're going to have three starters. We're going to go with a three man rotation. I think right now we know Mike Smith's going to be one of those guys and we know Brian Mazzone is going to be one of those guys. Guys. And the third one's probably up in the air. Everybody else is going to go to the pen and so the guys who are throwing the ball well, you condense our starters into a bullpen and we're going to be pretty tough that way. I think tougher than I've said this before, tougher than most because I think our starting pitching is a lot better and you put those guys in the pen and we're going to have a tremendous pitching step when we go with a three man rotation. So if he's not throwing well, he's not going to get time in the playoffs. That's just me as a manager. I'm not going to put a guy out there if he's not, if I don't know that he's going to throw strikes. Because my biggest fear from a reliever is he's going to go in there and walk the park and he can't defend, so walk. So you got to throw strikes and make him hit it. If everything goes well in the next week and a half sometimes then he may slip right back into that confident situation for you then, well, I'm going to put him back in. He's actually at his, I believe his sister's wedding or a family member's wedding and again, you know, one of those family things that I think is important and DG's going to be gone tomorrow, his brother's going on LDS mission and so he's going to be gone for tomorrow's game. But those things are important. When he gets back, Jeremy's going to be in the game. We're going to get him in just like he always would. It's the nice thing about being in the playoffs already is we can just send him out there and let him try to build some positives as we do go in the playoffs. Because Jeremy's got tremendous stuff. I think last night his fastball had to have been when he really threw it like he wanted to. Had to have been 90, 91, maybe 92. He's got a. Last year his best pitch was his curveball and he's kind of abandoned that this year he's tried to go to a little slider and he's kind of messing around a little bit with some pitches and he's throwing BP fastballs and he's not throwing his change up real well. With the exception of a couple outings. Jeremy needs to get down to where he's throwing fastballs where he wants spotting him throwing a good curveball and a change up now and then just to show. But he's got tremendous stuff. It's just in his head right now. I think. I gotta ask you about your two lefties who finished Cena, Jason Cena and Matt Rubel looked like he was going to have a good one until he put three guys on in that night, didn't he? Yeah. You know, Jason, I'm impressed with Jason. I think he's done a great job for us, and he's one of those guys right now that we wouldn't have a problem, problem sending out there in a tight game. He's proven that he can do that. Yeah, Matt didn't pitch. I don't think, like he really wanted to last night. Matt's probably a little short on his fastball, and I think he knows that coming off the surgery. So he's really got to spot his pitches well. And if he doesn't, if he makes a mistake, you know, they're probably going to make him pay for it. But hopefully the more outings he gets, the sharper he's going to get and the more proficient he's going to get. So the thing with him is he just can't afford to give up a walk and then leave a ball up in the zone because the hitter really doesn't have the fear of that 87 mile an hour fastball. He's really got to spot both of his pitches. But again, he's a veteran and been around and you never worry about putting one of those guys in a game. Going to talk a little more about last night and a lot about what's coming up tonight after this timeout. 3, 2, 1. Manager Mike Littlewood. It was kind of a strange situation that the first run you score was put on base by getting on by the catcher's interference, and the last one to score the winning victory was put on base by the catcher's interference. This is kind of a weird one this time around. It was crazy. And I think Rod McCall has had probably eight or nine catchers interference and not all of them have been called this year. Their catchers looked a little tired last night. They had a lot of pass balls and they had a lot of wild pitches. The last pitch of the game was probably a ball that should have been caught. But you never know guys coming off, how tired they are, how tired their legs are. That was a replacement catcher guy filling in, I believe Booth, to try to give the other guy some rest. And so, you know, if I'm up 11 runs, I'd like to give my catcher some rest, too. I wanted to give Heath some rest last night, and he said he didn't want to come out, which showed me, you know, he's a competitor and wants to play. And, you know, after he won 18, 17, he said, that's why I don't like to come out. So if he knew something that we didn't know. That's great. If he knew we were going to score 16 runs in the last five innings, more power to him. I gotta ask you, when it's after four hours, you get bases loaded, Freddy Diaz at the plate and all of a sudden there's a wild pitch that brings home the winning run. What was your thought immediately after that? Outside of just saying, hey, we won. Wow, I get to go home. You know, we were. What I really like about this team is that there was nobody really that was saying, hey, let's just get this game over with. I mean, everybody that went up the plate really wanted to try to have a good at bat, et cetera. And that's what I like about this team. The chemistry and the makeup of this team is tremendous. And I think that's what you have to have for to have a quality team. And you know, our owner, Dennis Narlinger has given us great support and he's put a lot on the field and done a great job for us and allowed us to go get the players we need. And hey, we're, you know, we're right where we want to be team wise. And, you know, I couldn't ask for more from the guys, just the effort. Let's talk about the matchup tonight. Mike Smith on the mound for the Pioneers and maybe Scott Baker in Tri City. This could be a good matchup. I saw Scott Charton last night. I would think he would probably be the next starter in Salcedo tomorrow night, I believe. I haven't heard what the rotation would be, but we're expecting Baker and not making a whole lot of lineup changes. We're just kind of going, we're keeping Brian out of the lineup tonight. Grabek just really trying to get his knee better. He had an MRI today. We'll find out the results Monday at around noon. That's going to give us a pretty good idea what we need to do going into the playoffs. But, you know, right now we're trying to give him four consecutive days off so we'll have this series plus Sunday. Maybe that's why what he needs, you know, hopefully he's not forced into action and we will give Kendrick a rest with the left hander. It's a pretty good left hander. If we have the ability to get another right hander in there, great. The funny thing is, last time we played at Tri Cities, Baker had more trouble against the left handers than he did the right handers. It seemed like our left handers, Joe Trippy I know got three or four hits off him. Kendrick got a couple hits and I know Rod got a couple hits. Maybe we should get all our left handers in there against him. But I'm just going with the lineup that I think is going to do it tonight and I would have the confidence with Kendrick in there and he may end up going in defensively in late innings too. DG said his leg's fairly good and good enough to run out there. But I would think in the seventh, eighth inning we'd probably sacrifice the bat if we've got the lead especially and get Kendrick back in the outfield to play defense. You were mentioning left handers against Baker and having success. Odd. Looking back last night in the first three innings, most of the hits against Brian Mazzone were by the left handed hitters. That was odd too. Well, and if Brian doesn't have his real good fastball and his curveball's flat, there's really nothing for a left hander to back out of there from. Yeah, and I think their seven or eight hit the gap a couple times off Brian, but Brian's not going to do that a whole lot. He's going to hit his spots better than he did last night and be more effective than he was. So, you know, and we talked about Mike Smith tonight. He's been giving us nothing but quality starts every single time out and you know, why expect less today? So, you know, I think he's really made a run for himself for pitcher of the year. I think, you know, he was definitely more consistent this year than he was last year. He had a great second half last year, but I think he's really making a bid for that. Whether the other coaches think that or not. You know, I believe that. Let's talk a little bit about this particular their ball game. What's going to be the key for the Pioneers to get a win? Well, Baker's a tough pitcher and what we'll notice, what you'll find with Baker if we get a guy on first base, we'll probably try to vary it up steel wise. We can't run in his face because he'll hang. But there's a certain point that we found with our quick guys. There's a certain point that we found when he gets to a certain point in his wind up where he's in his stretch where he's going to go home. And so you might see us deal a little bit late and the umpires are probably going to be pressured a little bit to call a box because when he picks over there at that certain point, you'll find that he steps more towards home than he does towards first, which is a box. So we found that through last game up at Tri Cities. And so you'll see us maybe run a little bit more than we have against Baker, but it's going to be a fine timing thing and maybe a little bit up the umpires because we don't want him to take our running game away. I think it's important for us to be the good left hander right. Right now. Although in the playoffs it doesn't look like we're going to see that real quality left hander from Yuma if that's who we play, and it looks like we will. But I just think the key is to go out and again just play our game the way we do, but not let Baker take away our running game. Mike Smith, what's going to be the key for him today? Well, I think anytime Mike goes out and throws, if he can get that low pitch, the pitch that's right at the knees and he'll hit that consistently. But if the umpire will give him that low pitch pitch, he's dominant. If he makes him bring it up a little bit, then he's going to have his struggles just like any other pitcher would. But you know, control wise, rest. Mike's a guy who goes out every time he wants to throw nine innings, he wants to throw a complete game and he wants to keep his ERA down. That's what he wants to do. And those are great individual goals because if he meets those goals, it's going to help us get a win. And that's great. So. So I would look for Mike to have a great outing tonight. I'd like to ask you one more final question. Here you are the manager. The guys come back from an 11 run deficit and get the win last night. One thing that seems to happen with baseball is you play so many games so close. What's your reaction as a manager knowing that now you have to start all over again? Yeah, well, every night's a new night for sure. We won't put up 18 runs against Baker tonight or 17 runs against Baker or whatever he scored and they're not going to score 17 against Mike Smith. And again, hopefully I don't jinx anybody, but I look for this to be more of an execution type game, more of a prevent them from running game. That's kind of why we have Heath Hayes behind the plate. Lofton can steal a base whenever he wants. So the equalizers that we're trying to do here. Their equalizer, I think, is Baker shutting down a running game. And I think our equalizer is Heath Hazeby behind trying to shut down their running game. I think it's going to be a low scoring, more of a low scoring game and more of a get the job done at the plate, hit and run bunt type game. Manager Mike Littlewood, thank you for being with us. Good luck today. Thank you, Larry. It. Sa.