Friday start, Saturday finish – Stockton Ports over Modesto Nuts in 17

The winning and losing pitchers, infielders by trade, began the game on the bench. One entered as a pinch hitter, the other as a pinch runner.

Knowing this, everything else falls into place about the Modesto Nuts’ 12-10 loss in 17 innings to the Stockton Ports. For posterity, the final out – John Nogowski’s strikeout of Shane Hoelscher – was recorded at 1:12 a.m. Saturday.

Time of game: 6 hours, 2 minutes.

From an announced crowd of 4,496 at John Thurman Field, fewer than 50 insomniacs remained to witness a practical joke from the baseball gods – the sprinklers gave the infield a surprise dousing before the Nuts’ final at-bat.

And that was a few minutes before the public address announcer confirmed the scheduled postgame fireworks would not be ignited. Besides, why wake up the neighbors?

“Seventeen innings of baseball,” Nuts manager Fred Ocasio mused. “It was a weird night.”

Ocasio and Ports manager Rick Magnante, their bullpens exhausted, eventually dialed 911: Nogowski, a left-hander floating it to the plate as slow as 55 mph; and Modesto’s Luis Jean, who entered as a pinch runner.

Both performed admirably, given the circumstances, and Nogowski became the game’s accidental hero. The Stockton first baseman allowed only two hits in four shutout innings and even picked off Dom Nunez to blunt Modesto’s closing threat.

Jean, throwing a legit low-90s fastball, matched Nogowski for two innings until he plunked Joe Bennie to start the 17th. Bennie broke the 10-10 tie on a wild pitch after Mikey White’s hit-and-run single to right. Seth Brown singled in an insurance run for his fourth RBI.

“You have to give the kid (Jean) some credit. He took the ball out there and gave us three innings,” Ocasio said. “We came out on the wrong side, but that’s fine. It shows the character of the team for how they battled out there.”

The game, long on thrills if short on artistic merit, contained only one constant – Modesto never led. In fact, the Nuts trailed 6-0 and 9-5. The Nuts completed a plucky comeback with four runs in the eighth.

Second baseman Forrest Wall, a 2014 first-round draft pick, picked up his teammates with twotying hits – a two-run triple to center in the eighth and a two-out RBI double to right in the 10th. Wall’s consolation prize was better than most – 5 for 8 with four RBIs.

That said, he barely could peel off his uniform in the clubhouse. Not unlike players from both sides, he was drained.

“We’ll just try to erase this one and show up tomorrow and win tomorrow,” Wall said. “It’s easier said than done. It’s going to be our approach.”

The Nuts, stung by two walk-off losses last week at Bakersfield, nearly handed Stockton the same fate in the ninth. Ports center fielder B.J. Boyd made a sliding catch of Roberto Ramos’ line drive, then easily doubled off Jean at second for a game-saving double play.

The wackiness relegated Jon Gray’s second rehabilitation start to a footnote. Gray, slowed late in spring training by an abdominal strain, should return to the back end of the Colorado Rockies’ rotation after a mostly sharp 77-pitch, four-inning dress rehearsal. Eight strikeouts and plenty of velocity and movement trumped his giving up three unearned runs. But by night’s end, Gray’s outing seemed as if it happened last week.

Appropriately, the game provided one farewell twist: Jean, the improbable losing pitcher, nearly scored the winning run.

As Ocasio said, “It was a crazy night.”

This story was originally published April 16, 2016 at 3:59 AM with the headline "Friday start, Saturday finish – Stockton Ports over Modesto Nuts in 17."