Nuts win on Storm wild pitch

Injuries at the catching position have required the presence of Jose Gonzalez behind the plate for the last six Modesto Nuts games.

And while he's the first to admit his legs are a little bit tired, they were more than fast enough Tuesday night to carry the Nuts to an improbable victory over Lake Elsinore.

The 24-year-old Venezuelan, who had been catching twice a week as a backup this season, scored all the way from first base on a ninth-inning double error. With Modesto pitchers Alan DeRatt and Leuris Gomez limiting the Storm to two hits, the Nuts were able to escape with a 2-1 victory at John Thurman Field.

The Nuts maintained their 1½-game lead over San Jose in the California League's second-half North Division race, while Stockton slid to 3½ games back. Modesto also is 5½ games ahead of Bakersfield in the wild card race with 12 games to play.

Gonzalez led off the ninth with a walk against Storm reliever Jeremy McBryde (2-4) and David Christensen came on to pinch-hit.

"If we needed a hit, David was the guy," said Nuts' manager Jerry Weinstein. "If we needed a bunt put down, David was the guy. We have confidence in his ability to get the job done right there."

Christensen placed a bunt toward first base, where Nate Freiman picked it up. The first baseman glanced toward second base, but the ball squirted out of his hand. McBryde picked up the ball and attempted a back-handed flip toward first base, where second baseman Jonathan Galvez was covering.

With Christensen already having passed the base, that throw was wild. And with no one backing up the play, the ball followed the dirt on the warning track all the way to the Nuts' bullpen, allowing Gonzalez to score without a throw.

"I was thinking I was just getting to second, but when I went into the slide I looked back for the ball and I saw it was a bad throw," Gonzalez said. "I ran to third and Jerry was yelling 'keep going, keep going!' and I was tired but I kept going."

DeRatt and Lake Elsinore's Nick Schmidt combined for one of the better six-inning pitching duels this season at Thurman Field.

DeRatt allowed only one hit — a clean single to center by Raymond Fuentes to lead off the fifth — and should have escaped with a clean slate.

But in the third, former Stanford star Wande Olabisi reached when his ground ball to shortstop was thrown away by Josh Rutledge, and Olabisi eventually scored on a sacrifice fly by Jeudy Valdez.

Schmidt gave up five hits in his six innings of work, but no Modesto runner reached second base until the sixth. Rutledge lined a one-out single to left-center, stole second and scored when Angelys Nina's ground ball over the mound rolled into center field.

Gomez (5-2) wriggled out of danger in the eighth, when Valdez led off with a triple, but that was the only baserunner he allowed in three strong innings of relief.

There will be no relief for perhaps another week for Gonzalez, who knows he's the everyday catcher right now because of injuries to Beau Seabury and Dallas Tarleton.

On the other hand, he's happy to be playing and contributing.

"I have to keep catching since we don't have any other catchers," Gonzalez said. "I'm here to do my job and that's to do whatever I need to do to help the team win the California League."

• NUTS NOTES: Bill Weiss, the official statistician for the California League from 1948-88 and the unofficial league historian for much longer, died of a heart attack on Aug. 16 at his home in San Mateo. He was 86. It was his job for all those years to collect by mail the official individual game reports from official scorers in as many as eight different professional leagues and compile them into concise weekly and annual statistical reports. Weiss also wrote a lengthy weekly California League notebook for many years that was mailed to every newspaper of size in the state. His professional stat-compiling duties were taken over by Howe SportsData in 1988, and he joined the company as an executive.