Can you have the play of the year in the first game of the baseball season?
I was wrapped up in a blanket on my couch with SEC Network+ streaming on my big, flat screen TV set on Friday afternoon. What I saw at the end of the first game of the season will be hard to beat.
I didn’t make the drive from Norfork on Opening Day because I had promised my bride, Jean Ann, that I’d cook Valentine’s Day dinner. She requested shrimp and grits, but I was going to give her more than that.
I had planned to buy something sweet from Heidi’s Ugly Cake on Friday afternoon, but I waited too long and she had closed her shop in downtown Norfork by the time the first game of the doubleheader had ended around 3:30 p.m.
There was a fall back plan. My mother taught four sons to bake cakes when they were teenagers. I popped into Two Rivers Market and grabbed a lemon supreme cake mix and the appropriate lemon icing.
There was excitement as I headed home, but maybe more for what I saw to end the opening baseball game than the prospects of a lemon supreme cake. Wehiwa Aloy had my adrenalin pumping well ahead of all of that sugar for dessert.
The play Aloy made to finish off Washington State in the top of the 10th inning was just as sweet. The junior shortstop helped the Hogs turn a double play to keep a deficit at 2-1 and set up a 3-2 walk-off victory in the bottom of the frame.
Two errors helped the Cougars score a run to take the lead. They still had a runner at third with 1 out when a fly ball was lifted into shallow left center field. A 25 mph wind blowing in from right field confounded the outfielders sprinting in with Aloy moving toward them with his back to home plate.
The wind was blowing the ball away from the outfielders, blowing it back toward the infielder. At what seemed like the last second, both outfielders slowed and Aloy reached straight toward them to make a basket catch.
At the same time, there was a tag at third base. Aloy turned and wheeled. I’m not sure he even took a good look to really pick up catcher Ryder Helfrick. But the throw was delivered perfectly, two steps up the third base line.
Helfrick swiped the runner as he dove back toward the pitcher’s mound. Helfrick got just a piece of a hip as the runner reached for home plate.
The out call was upheld after a lengthy review, delayed by some technical difficulties in the first base camera well. The reviews I saw on my couch looked convincing. The runner was out.
The Hogs still had to score twice in the bottom of the inning for the victory. Three straight walks, a passed ball and a sacrifice fly did it.
The Hogs trounced the Cougars, 14-2, in Game 2. I was appreciative that it was called because of the run rule on Kuhio Aloy’s 3-run homer and allowed an early start on dinner preparations.
It was a good opening weekend for the Aloy brothers. Wehiwa hit a 2-run homer in the 5-2 victory Saturday.
Home runs are great, but there will be plenty more this season. I doubt there are many plays to equal the double play to end the top of the 10th in the opener.
Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn said as much in his summary of the first two days after the victory Saturday.
“We made the comment in the dugout that you may have seen the play of the year,” Van Horn said Saturday. “[Aloy] didn’t break for it. He thought the outfielders were going to get there, but it blew in maybe 30 yards.
“There was some communication and he made an over-the-shoulder basket catch. He had the instinct that the runner would tag and to spin and throw off one leg. He threw blind almost. He didn’t have a lot on it, but threw really accurately.
“What might be overlooked is that Ryder went out and made the catch with one hand, like a shortstop with a catcher’s mitt.”
Obviously, the play saved one run.
“It’s the difference between being down one or two, or maybe more runs,” Van Horn said. “They would have had only two outs. You never know. They might have driven in more runs. It definitely helped us win that game.”
It was what was talked about Saturday night as I joined family for a rare three-brother Henry dinner in Fayetteville. It was the talk around other tables at the Catfish Hole, too. The three Henry boys were appreciative of the Aloy boys.
My youngest brother Robin drove 30 hours with wife Holly (along with two cats and a dog) towing a camper from Tacoma, Wash., for the weekend series. He was parked a few hundred yards away at the Road Hog RV Park.
Brother Butch and his wife Lynne, both UA grads, made the trip from Kansas City to give us as a triple threat at the Catfish Hole. Here’s a reminder, the top sirloin steak is as good as the catfish filets at the restaurant.
Robin enjoyed the first three games of the baseball season. He and Holly love Section 101 where lots of fun happens. That’s where the Ks are hung on the wall and some of the unique cheers erupt.
Legendary fan Jim Tran, front and center this weekend, coordinates a lot of the happenings in 101. It was there that the bases loaded beer hats originated. Tran and former roommates Heath Schluterman and Kyle Thompson came up with the ideas for the hats.
The beer hats did make a few appearances. They’ve got blow up palm trees in 101 to celebrate the Hawaiian heritage of the Aloy brothers, too.
The brotherly vibes seemed wonderful as we finished dinner at the Catfish Hole.
