It took five-and-a-half hours, 15 innings and a combined 15 pitchers, but the baseball game between Wayland Baptist and Eastern New Mexico finally ended Tuesday night when WBU's Pedro Gomez hit a line drive to left to give the Pioneers the 16-15 victory.
Wayland came back from a seven run deficit twice in the contest. Falling behind 7-0 after 1-1/2 innings of play, the Pioneers scored six in the second and one in the third to tie it. After a scoreless fourth and fifth, ENMU busted out for seven runs in the top of the sixth, highlighted by Richard Urban's three-run homer.
The Pioneers opened the seventh with three straight hits, and then Brett Cook hit a three-run dinger of his own to make it 14-11. It was the second homer of the game for Cook, who ended the night with a game-high five RBI.
Todd Jeffress' 16th home run of the season made it a two-run game after eight. Keith Martin closed it to one with an opposite field blast with one out in the ninth. Franky Busani reached and advanced to second on an error, and Jeffress tied it up once again with a single through the right side of the infield that drove in pinch runner Calvin Bass.
Pioneer relief pitcher Marcus Limon, the NAIA's strikeout leader who retired the side in order in the top of the ninth, came back out to work the tenth, but WBU Coach Brad Bass, trying to rest up the remainder of his pitching staff following last weekend's three-game conference series at Rogers State, which ended on Sunday, and in preparation for this weekend's three-game SAC series at home, was forced to get creative after that.
Starting third baseman Michael Prell got the nod first. The junior came in for the 11th, faced four batters, walked one and struck out two.
Next up was Bobby Curtis, perhaps the busiest Pioneer of the evening. Curtis initially came into the game to take over at first base during the sixth inning. He went to third in the ninth, pitched a scoreless 12th, moved to first in the 13th, and caught the 15th.
Busani, the starter in right who also played a little first in the game, was next up for WBU. The senior gave up a hit and an unearned run, but was the most efficient of the non-pitchers, throwing just 17 pitches in his inning of work.
After Cook tied the game back up in the 13th on Keith Martin's RBI single to center, Martin moved to the mound. The senior designated hitter, who also got some playing time in right field for the first time at Wayland, walked three, but got out of the bases loaded jam.
Starting catcher Javier Garcia, a senior, was relieved from his catching duties in the eighth, but reentered in the 15th on the other side of the battery. He hit two batters in the inning, and intentionally walked one, but with the bases loaded, got catcher Ryan Pruitt to strikeout to end the inning.
Garcia picked up his first win in his first career appearance on the mound when the Pioneers opened the bottom of the inning with one out hits by Martin and Busani. Another out later, Gomez , who had a solo home run in the third, became a hero to dozens of weary spectators with his sharply hit ball to deep left field that just glanced off leftfielder Clayton Young's glove.
The 15-inning game falls short of the WBU record, which is 18 innings played on April 22, 2000 against Southern Nazarene University.
The 24th-ranked Pioneers are now 36-11 on the season.
