2009 MWL Finals Game Three

It's over. It's all over.

The Fort Wayne TinCaps win for the 101st time, grab a three-game sweep of the Burlington Bees, and claim their first Midwest League Championship.

Fort Wayne 4, @Burlington 3

There is a lot from the Fort Wayne-Journal and we'll kick it off with this picture from Stephen Mally

TinCaps are champions

Brad Brach flung his glove high in the air.

The closer raised his arms and then hugged charging catcher Robert Lara.

The scene plays out every year at the end of the baseball season. For the first time, the celebration involved Fort Wayne.

The TinCaps captured the first Midwest League title in franchise history by defeating Burlington 4-3 in the Midwest League Championship Series.

Brach struck out pinch-hitter Hilton Richardson to complete a 3-0 series sweep and set off the celebration in front of 891 fans at Community Field.

“Robert, we’ve been together for two years now. To strike (Richardson) out and see (Lara) coming at me and then everybody else charging the field. That’s something I’ll never forget,” Brach said.

Team gave city reason to cheer

Well, now. The weatherman never predicted this.

Giddy with a chance of champagne? Scattered jumping up and down like children on Christmas morning? Who saw that coming, way back in April?

Who saw any of it coming?

And so they jump up and down, these Fort Wayne TinCaps, and the champagne front comes roaring until it drips off their chins and soaks their shirts and falls like heaven’s rain from the ceiling, and this is how the fairy tale ends. This is the scene behind the final credits of this crazy-mad dream, which began with a nickname and downtown ballpark everyone crabbed about, and ended with a baseball team so skilled and gutsy and calm-in-the-belly, it won over an entire city.

Thursday night, they came here to close it out in a tiny stadium not far from the Mississippi River, and it was the same old familiar script. First the TinCaps scraped together four runs on a sacrifice fly and a fielder’s choice and a leadoff triple and a two-run homer from Jaff Decker, who’d been quiet since getting plunked on the hand Monday night. Then Burlington got three back on a homer and a single and an uncharacteristic fielding error.

One point...

Well, sure. Everyone talks about the value of team at a time like this, how everyone loved each other and played as one unit. But the cliché stands up, this time around.

How else to explain why pitcher Anthony Bass – called up to Lake Elsinore in July – was in the TinCaps’ clubhouse Wednesday night, having come back to cheer on his former teammates? You want to know how often a guy does that in the minors? Would you like to guess “never”?

Unless you happened to read this article in the Grand Rapids Press from last week. Mark Sorenson, other former Whitecaps on hand to cheer West Michigan to victory in Game 2

That picture up top showed TinCaps fans in Burlington. What about those who couldn't make the trip?

Die-hards settle in at Parkview to hear TinCaps win

Even though there was no home game Thursday night, and the TinCaps were in Burlington, Iowa, clinching the Midwest League championship, 54-year-old Doug Martin stood on the main concourse on the first-base side of Parkview Field and looked across the empty greenery.

He, and about 60 or 70 others, had settled into the stadium Thursday just to listen to the radio broadcast of what turned out to be a 4-3 TinCaps victory over Burlington.

Indeed he – they – could have listened to the game in their warmer homes but instead chose to come to the ballpark one final time to bid farewell to a most magical and memorable 2009 season.

“I just wanted to be part of the excitement,” Martin said. “I’ve had a lot of fun times this summer here, and I just wanted to finish the season in good style and be out here with the rest of the die-hard fans.”

Later in the story there is this comment.

“It’s very disappointing that they’re not here, but we just wanted to keep the energy going and come down and cheer them on from afar,” Martin said.

I'm going to pick up on this point in a different post.

From the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel
CHAMPIONS!

It was sweet.

And it was a sweep.

Fort Wayne “capped” its sensational 2009 baseball season Thursday with a 4-3 win over Burlington at Community Field in front of 891 fans to win its first Midwest League Championship in franchise history.

The win was the third of three games, as the TinCaps swept the championship series. With the victory, which was Fort Wayne's 101st of the season, the team tied the 1978 Appleton Foxes for the most victories in league history.

“It was tight; we knew that it would be tight,” TinCaps manager Doug Dascenzo said. “But they came out on top just like they'd been doing all year long.”

From The Hawkeye
Bees buzzed

The Burlington Bees players lined the top of the dugout, watching the Fort Wayne TinCaps pile on top of each other, the traditional way to celebrate a championship.

Last year, that was the Bees, splashing and sliding around on a wet field in South Bend, Ind., Midwest League champions.

This year, it was the Bees who were silently filing into the Community Field clubhouse as Fort Wayne rejoiced in its first league title after taking a 4-3 victory Thursday to complete the three-game series sweep.

"There's a reason they won 101 ball games. They're a good team," said Burlington manager Jim Gabella. "We still played good baseball, competed every pitch, and that's something we've told them all year long. Just go out there, compete every pitch and when you do that usually good things happen.

"We just ran into a pretty good ball club. They beat us."

101 ways to win a championship

One hundred and one wins. Doug Dascenzo was asked to explain what that number meant. The Fort Wayne TinCaps manager thought for a second as the party swirled around him.

"I heard someone say the other day (when asked about) 100 RBIs, that (it meant) they had done their job," Dascenzo said

"So, I guess we did our job."