Nuts get to party a bit late

By Brian VanderBeek
bvanderbeek@modbee.com

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It might have gone down as the least spontaneous playoff-clinching celebration in the history of professional baseball.

When Rancho Cucamonga came up with five runs in the bottom of the ninth to defeat Stockton on Friday night, it cemented a California League postseason spot for the Modesto Nuts.

But the Nuts, whose game had ended almost 45 minutes earlier, were nowhere near John Thurman Field. Most didn't find out until Saturday morning they had clinched the playoffs.

It begged the question prior to Saturday's game: how and when to properly celebrate a playoff berth?

The decision was made to mark the accomplishment in the clubhouse after Saturday's game — win or lose — and at press time that had yet to be decided, with the Nuts and Blaze tied 5-5 in the 12th inning.

Even after clinching a playoff spot, winning remains important for Modesto, which entered Saturday with a four-game lead over Bakersfield in the race for the No. 2 seed in the North Division and the first-round homefield advantage that comes with it.

The Nuts, who built a 5-2 lead after three innings, led the Blaze crawl back with a run in the fourth and two unearned runs in the seventh — a rally sparked by two errors and a walk. It was not a pretty performance by either team. Through 11 innings the Blaze had gone three-for-18 with runners in scoring position, Modesto three for 13 in the same situations.

The real cause for celebration was in the stands. Saturday's crowd of 4,386 was the team's 10th sellout of the season and allowed them to set a new record for attendance in a season. Modestohas drawn 164,654 fans this season in 68 home dates, surpassing the 164,306 in 70 dates during the 2008 season.

Today's 6:05 p.m. start is the final Nuts' home game of the regular season. But in the clubhouse, marking an accomplishment nearly 24 hours later was bound to take much of the luster off the party.

"It's the first time I've ever seen a team with a chance to clinch a spot in the playoffs leave the clubhouse," said hitting coach Duane Espy.

But Brian Rike had an answer for that: "I saw some people leave, and I figured it just wasn't going to be the same if everybody wasn't here to celebrate, so we'll do it tonight," Rike said. "I want to do that with the whole team."

Many players gave up on Rancho Cucamonga after they trailed 7-1 heading into the bottom of the eighth. But the Quakes scored twice in the eighth and five more in the ninth to steal the win and guarantee the 2008 league champion Ports will not have a chance to repeat.

"I stopped looking at the score when Stockton was up by six runs," said catcher Lars Davis. "I wrote it off at that point and didn't follow it up, but it was nice to find out about it this morning."

NUTS NOTES — Turlock's Tommy Mendonca had his best game of the series with four hits for the Blaze. His diving stop of a ground ball saved a first-inning run, he doubled in the second, singled-in the game-tying run in the seventh and reached on an infield single in the 10th.

Bee staff writer Brian VanderBeek can be reached at 578-2300 or bvanderbeek@modbee.com.