The Boise Hawks and Eugene Emeralds are fighting for the second-to-last spot in the Northwest League.

And, after four games of their five-game series, I’m fairly certain neither team wants it.

Honestly, I’ve never seen two teams willingly give away games as much as the Hawks and Em’s.

This intrigued me, so I thought I’d talk to someone different after the 6-0 loss for the Hawks that put them at 5-13.

That man stands in the opposing dugout, manager of the Emeralds, Greg Riddoch.

“I really think we’re about equal,” Riddoch said of the two teams. “We both end up having trouble winning. We give the games away. But this is a rookie league, and that happens. Both of us have first year players, and that’s how it’s supposed to be.”

That’s right. Not only did he have a positive attitude for the Hawks, he even tossed out specifics about Hak-Ju Lee and his errors.

“(Lee) will be a big leaguer,” he said. “He’s 18. These guys are mostly 18. That means they’ll make 18-year old mistakes. You have to live with that step. Think about it. They’re playing 23 and 24-year olds. Imagine being in seventh grade and playing the seniors. That’s what it’s like.”

That explains the Junior High-like ballplay at times.

Then Riddoch really brought things full circle. After complimenting Casey Kopitzke, and predicting the Hawks to be a much better team down the road, he began to sound like everyone else at the NWL offices.

The word “development” is repeated more than in 9th-grade health class.

“This league is about development, Our attitude is, if we win the game, ok. But we’re never going to leave a guy in too long to get the win. Our job is to protect these kids.”

Take it from a former Major League manager.

So, in other words, tonight two teams that seem to dislike winning are playing for the series win, with eyes on development and respect and acknowledgment between the teams.

Next time I see Riddoch I’m going to tell him he’s TERRIBLE at giving me bulletin-board material.

And that’s how it’s done.

Or…that’s how it’s SUPPOSED to be done.

So far this season the Hawks have been about as clutch as Armando Benitez.

But, like everything else in baseball, that trend can always be broken. After a 5-4 win over the Eugene Emeralds on Monday, the first step has been taken.

The second step doesn’t get any easier.

“I think (the attitudes have changed),” Manager Casey Kopitzke said. “We were down 4-0 and there was no doubt. They looked like they know they can do it. And they put the ball in play and succeeded.”

I think it may be an understanding of roles that is a big part of the reason of recent success.

The Hawks have a lineup of leadoff hitters, and used Hak-Ju Lee first on Monday, with Logan Watkins batting second, and the fastest on the team, Jose Valdez batting ninth.

Add the speed of Brett Jackson and Jae-Hoon Ha to the middle, and the lineup becames formidable for short bursts.

 “The thing about us is,” Koptizke said, “we’re not going to knock the ball out. We have a lot of speed, and we want to use that to put pressure on them, and make them commit errors.”

That was the strategy from the beginning, but one big thing has changed.

There’s a threat in the three spot named Brett Jackson, and he came through with a triple that won the game on Monday.

Kopitzke’s attitude of looking at the season series by series should work in his favor. To the scorebook, the Hawks have a record of 5-12, and an uphill battle to .500.

But in this series, they’re 2-1, with two games to go.

If they look at overall at-bats, the team may notice the general struggle near the Mendoza line, but concentrating on each game’s set of at-bats shows more success than strict numbers can show.

The Hawks won’t get anywhere by looking at where they are right now, because they do have a large cliff ahead of them.

But, if they use the roles they seem to be settling into, they could find themselves not looking down, but finding themselves scaling the difficult climb anyway.

I’m not sure I’ve ever been at a game with a collective silence before.

Maybe hearing that silence was something the Hawks needed.

Of course, Hak-Ju Lee could understand why the crowd had gone quiet. He laid on the field with his head down after committing his 11th error of the season, extending a game that should have been over.

Don’t get me wrong, the Hawks deserve credit for coming back and winning on Sunday, beating the Eugene Emeralds 9-8.

But I couldn’t help but notice that in the ninth inning of the 10-inning contest, it looked like the Hawks were giving in to themselves. Letting past wrongs ruin what ended up being a big win.

It’s easy to say the win erased the sloppy play. Manager Casey Kopitzke even told me “We needed to win today for morale. You go out there and you bust your butt and it’s hard to watch it all go away and end up on the short end of the stick. This should make it easier.”

I really hope he’s right.

Maybe NOT letting this one slip away was the therapeutic win the Hawks needed.

You can’t deny Lee has talent. He shows flashes of brilliance more often than his errors. His speed makes him attractive to any small-ball club.

Kopitzke said it’s “calming him down” that has become the goal.

All I can say, is there were two visible changes in the Hawks. When they committed an error to lose a 7-2 lead completely, there was a noticeable silence and awe at what had just happened.

But when Matt Williams came around to score the winning run, fittingly on an error, he slammed his helmet on home plate and the team united on the field again.

This time they were loud.

The Hawks are 4-12, and their schedule doesn’t get any easier. And the positive storylines aren’t getting any easier to find.

As a writer, I have to stay as balanced as possible. But as a fan, I have to hope that Williams removal of the helmet was more than a statement of victory.

I’m hoping it was a statement of release.

Maybe it was a metaphor of removing a monkey that takes the shape of a snowball, collecting late-inning losses in its wake.

Kopitzke’s answer is not anything he can do. He can’t throw, or swing for the team. But he did share a friend’s advice on how to start winning and keep footing when the game starts slipping.

“You’ve got to be comfortable being uncomfortable.”

For now, we’ll see if that comfort has come to a restless Hawks team.

Say what you will about the Boise Hawks.

They sure make their opponents look good.

Well, at least their bullpen does.

Jeff Antigua went five innings of one-hit ball and looked completely dominating on the mound, moving his ERA to a solid 1.38. That was before Josh Whitlock came into the game and gave up eight earned runs in 1 1/3 innings.

Seems to be the story of the Hawks season.

They play six solid innings of great baseball, but those other three happen to be pretty catastrophic.

I got the chance to talk to the legendary Brett Jackson on Saturday after the 8-0 loss to Eugene to move the Hawks to 3-12.

It must be odd to walk into a situation where the team wants you to immediately be hitting out of the three spot and making a difference. But he seems confident he’ll help the offensive struggles of the Hawks.

He seems to have the skills to do that. He’s got an obvious ability out in the field, and after watching his speed on the basepaths and patrolling center field, I’m certain he’ll be a positive effect on the struggling Hawks.

Until then, I’m just hoping the fireworks shows are stunning enough to wipe the slate clean after a bad loss.

At the very least, the Hawks’ orange staff shirts are loud enough to drown out my groans.

You may notice Casey Kopitzke isn’t necessarily the quickest to yelling.

His patience is evident in every aspect of the game, from his job as third-base coach and manager, to when he has three annoying sportswriters in his face.

Nothing seems to bother him.

Now, I haven’t had the chance to talk to him after this last road trip, but if he survived through that 35-minute half inning the team endured on Friday, he deserves some sort of award for patience.

Seriously…can someone get the President on the phone?

Koptizke has more than once advocated for “playing it safe” in the way he manages. I hardly think any decision he’s made at third base resulted in a 12-0 loss, or like any other loss they’ve seen since they hit the road.

The Hawks sit at 3-11 on the year, and are seemingly spiraling at times. When they look good, they look great.

But when they look bad, it seems the strike zone disappears.

Part of the reason I was hired for this job is out of a trust that I would call out those responsible for the team doing poorly.

It’s not Kopitzke.

His attitude is exactly what the Cubs look for. He’s interested in the player development. He’s seeing these players grow as part of an unjust and unscientic method. He’s assured me that he sees the team more than me, and with his unique ability to remember the players when they were first playing in Mesa, and compare them to what he sees now, they ARE better.

For now, I’m going to hold back from openly blaming the parent club.

They are the ones that sent the players we see on the field today. And maybe Brett Jackson will affect the lineup, but it will hardly stop a porous bullpen.

But its the Cubs we’re talking about, and for now, they have their own issues to deal with.

And, really, who wants to kick a parent club when its down?

The story lines were as obvious as the base lines for this one.

A manager with his team for the first time after a family tragedy, the likes of which nobody would wish to experience.

A team coming off two games of nonsense pitching, attempting to get its first home win of the season.

A first opportunity to see everything work on the field for the Hawks, and the lights stop working in the outfield.

I’ve decided for this blog to take the time to walk around and talk to the fans and assorted personnel as the games go on. I feel like my lack of a bright orange shirt makes me more approachable than those that were doing the chicken dance at last night’s game.

I sat in every section, once with a couple that has owned season tickets for years, an NBADL head coach supporting a local team, and a couple on the third base line enjoying a casual Sunday.

I’m sure each person I sat with will remember me as the annoying guy with a letter-pad that claimed to work for the Hawks.

Casey Kopitzke told me after the game that the win meant “an awful lot”.

Coming to Boise after losing his daughter couldn’t have been easy, but with the fans I talked to, it explains why he calls the team “a big family”.

Marty and Rosie Martinson sat on the first base line in their usual seats, rooting only slightly harder for the Hawks, than they heckled the visiting Yakima Bears.

Marty said the couple would have to be “sick or dead” to miss a game.

It didn’t matter the team is 2-7, after the 3-2 win on Sunday.

Kopitzke said he’s not thinking about the record either. The big game’s out of the way.

While looking at the future could seem uphill, looking at each series seperately changes his outlook.

While I see a 2-7 team, it seems Kopitzke and the fans have the same fresh outlook.

The team’s 1-0, coming off a game with no earned runs, and playing like a different Hawks team.

I’ll withhold my judgment for a two-game winning streak.

Wow….that was unfortunate.

I mean, really.

What’s the worst possible way to bounce back from your first win?

Lose 11-1 and show every sign of being right back where you were before you got there.

The team’s struggles showed when the Hawks went hitless into the sixth inning. But luckily, Alvaro “Kaiser” Sosa pounded a homer that saved the Hawks from the embarrassment of a no-hitter or a shut-out.

And with a lack of really positive notes to share, I hope this won’t end up jinxing things, but Hak-Ju Lee did continue his hitting streak to seven games.

I try not to talk about hitting streaks, out of respect, but reaching seven to open the year shows a consistency the Hawks definitely need right now.

Robert Hernandez went four innings on the mound, allowing three earned runs, after ONE pitch that ended up going over the wall. Homers definitely hurt a team, but other than that one pitch, Hernandez has been stellar for the Hawks thus far.

Josh Lansford rebounded from his last bullpen performance by going two scoreless innings in relief, followed by Andres Quezada allowing five earned runs, and two more errors not helping the cause.

I don’t want to get too “newspaper-y” on you, so I’ll just share my opinion, as a guy that’s seen the Hawks and the athletes on the team.

It’s easy to see the 1-6 record and get upset about it. It almost takes work to be five games under .500 at this point. But, tonight they go out and have a chance at finishing the road trip 2-3. If they can do that, it shows a rebounding capability and strength that I didn’t see in them at home.

If they lose tonight, then they start another series against Yakima tomorrow.

It’s baseball. It’s all about series. I heard it said once that no matter how good you are, you will lose 30 percent of your games. No matter how bad you are, you’ll win 30 percent. The question is the other third.

Sounds like the Hawks are due a win.

 

This is where I’m supposed to say, “It’s the start of a new season”, right?

I sure hope not.

What it was, however, is the end of a run to start the season that had to be getting to the guys that were hitting the field.

I can create a pretty simple syllogism for you.

Discomfort leads to mistakes. Mistakes lead to opposing runs. Opposing runs lead to losses. Losses lead to more discomfort.

Winning erases that problem.

So, maybe it’s not the beginning of a new season, but it’s the end of a terrible cycle.

The Hawks are now 1-5. They’re the last team in the NWL to get that first win, and tied for last place in overall record.

They’re also one of four teams in the NWL with a winning streak.

They’ve allowed 14, 12, 7, 6, 5 and 4 runs in succession.

At the very least, those are two trends the Hawks can build off of.

And now Brett Jackson and manager Casey Kopitzke are on their way to add their skills to the efforts of winning.

Baseball is a mental game. Superstition and strategy have just as much of an influence as any other element in the game.

You can’t tell me the Hawks aren’t more excited now than they were a day ago. Things are looking up.

It’s the beginning of a new season. Wait…did I just say that?

It’s hard to look at the record of the Boise Hawks and be positive.

I mean, at face value, after the Hawks lost 5-3 at Salem-Keizer on Wednesday, they’re sitting at an 0-5 record and still searching for their first win of the 2009 season.

And if you’ve read my blogs, I definitely pointed out the weak points in the early games.

However, I really think you must watch the progress of a team to truly see where they are.

Their pitching has allowed, in succession, 14, 12, 7, 6 and 5 runs.

The bullpen is still an obvious weakness, as Dionis Nunez allowed two runs in his 3 2/3 innings pitched, hardly something to make the guy out to be the antagonist of this story.

The best news was having draft pick Robert Whitenack come into the game and walk away without giving up a run, followed by Yohan Gonzalez pitching an inning of no-run baseball. You may remember his last time on the mound hardly left a positive taste in the mouth of those watching. He allowed four runs against Tri-City in just 1 1/3 innings.

As you see the losses start piling up, it’s important not to immediately count the Hawks out. It wasn’t too many years ago they started the season 0-9 and made a run at the end of the season, finishing a game out of the championship series.

If there’s one thing the Hawks of years past have proven, it’s a resilience and an ability to bounce back.

Different players, different year.

Same organization.

If nothing I said settles in as positive for you, I’ll give you something else. Cubs first-round pick Brett Jackson has signed with the organization, and is expected to be sent to Boise. The downside?

Outfielders rarely help the bullpen.