‘Tired’ Aztecs Roll Over BYU in Baseball

San Diego State took an 11-7 victory over BYU, which has played 30 consecutive games on the road, in the opener of a double header at Smith Field Saturday night. So guess which coach was excusing his team for being tired afterward?

San Diego State’s Jim Dietz.

“We were tired, you could really tell the way they were playing out there,” Dietz said. “I just hope we can sustain in the second game.”

BYU led the second game and fourth of the series, 2-1, after three innings.

For his part, BYU Coach Gary Pullins did mention his team’s lengthy road trip, but not as an excuse for losing two of the first three to the Aztecs.

“We’re a better ballclub than what we’ve been showing lately,” he said. “This was our 29th game and they’ve all been on the road, but that’s not why we’ve been down of late. Frankly, our veteran players haven’t played up to what I know they can or what they will.”

If the Aztecs were tired, it was because they wore themselves down in the first inning of the first game.

SDSU had five batters huff and puff their way around the bases to give the Aztecs a 5-1 lead.

Brian Grebeck, in fact, circled the bases without resting. He hit a bases-loaded double to left center, went to third when the throw to the plate skipped behind catcher Blaine Milne, then came home when Milne tried nailing him at third, but instead threw the ball into left field.

The four-run lead Grebeck delivered appeared to be a decent pillow on which to rest over the final six innings.

Only it didn’t work out that way. BYU came through with three runs in the second, cutting the margin to 5-4.

“Thank God we scored five in the first inning,” Dietz said.

Both starters had little on their pitches, and thus had little time on the mound. BYU starter David Mauss was lifted in the third. He had given up six runs by that time and would be charged with two more.

SDSU starter Brian Holliday was relieved a bit sooner. He came out in the second after allowing four runs.

Andy Petersen replaced Holliday and, in Dietz’s words, “keyed” the victory.

From the second to the sixth, Petersen allowed only one hit and one run. But in the seventh, the Cougars got to him for two runs and three hits to marr what otherwise was a strong performance.

In fact, it was Petersen’s longest stint of the year.

“It felt good getting my arm in gear,” Petersen said.

Petersen said he didn’t tire in the seventh, as the hits and runs might attest.

“I actually felt better in the seventh than I did in the sixth,” he said.

Petersen allowed a run in the sixth, though he did not give up a hit.

Meantime, while Petersen was easing through the BYU order, the Aztecs were busy scoring runs. After their five-run first, they picked up one in the second, two in the third and three in the fourth.

The run in the second and the first in the third came on balk calls.

BYU’s Pullins had no argument with the first balk.

“Well, doggone it, our starter, David Mauss, pitches from a set all the time and he just moves his hand a little bit,” he said. “So technically, it is a balk, and it’s our fault. We should have taught him better.”

But there was some controversy to the second call, on reliever Travis Dowdell.

“Now John (Crouch, home plate umpire) has called a lot of our games here,” Pullins began to explain. “And he’s done a good job. I think he saw Travis step off the rubber with his left foot. I saw him step off with his right (rear) foot, and that’s not a balk.”

Besides that balk call in the second, the Aztecs scored one other run when Scott Dennison came through with his second double of the game, driving in Jeff Barry from third.

In the third inning, Barry got two RBIs with a single to center and Mike MacKinnon got the other with a ground ball single to second.