The Healdsburg Prune Packers once again ended the 2023 season in first place in the California Collegiate League’s northern division, but they had to rely on another wine country team to get them there.
As the season’s final home game played out at Rec Park on a toasty Sunday afternoon against the San Francisco Seals, the team’s fate was being decided across Sonoma County at Arnold Field, where the Sonoma Stompers were playing the Walnut Creek Crawdads. The Crawdads were only half a game behind the Packers in league standings, and had swept the Healdsburg team in the crucial July 25-27 series.
That series followed a July 22 game between the Packers and the Solano Mudcats, which saw the Packers triumph 30-2. That’s the kind of score that raises eyebrows, and the question: Did the Healdsburg team violate one of the key unwritten rules of baseball by running up the score?
“Everyone’s cognizant when the games get out of hand, you know?” said Coach Joey Gomes when asked about the lopsided score before Sunday’s season finale. “But you’re watching how it’s playing out, and you can’t ask your individual guy to get himself out. But then, you can’t help the other team if they can’t catch the out.”
Gomes is the team’s general manager as well as coach, and was a professional player himself for 10 years. He is well aware of the power and pitfalls of the game’s unwritten rules.
“I checked in periodically in the game with the other coach, and he was like, ‘You are not doing anything outside of playing the game of baseball,’” he said. “In fact, it would’ve been weird and maybe insulting to the other collegiate team that plays on this level, if we would’ve done some gross thing to stop.”
So maybe it was karma that the Packers lost their next four games (one of them to the same Mudcats team the next day, who hammered out a 6-5 win in Solano). It’s also possible the Prune Packers eased up on the gas at exactly the wrong time of year.
When they returned to Healdsburg on July 28, after the disastrous four-game losing streak, Gomes had a chat with the team before that night’s game.
“I felt like the team needed some positive reinforcement instead of an aggressive approach to coaching,” Gomes said. “So I got the guys together, and I reminded them that they’re the best team west of Texas. I reminded them that they have the best record on all the West Coast. I reminded them that we had the most draft picks. I just basically wanted to remind these guys that they still got it.
“And sometimes it’s not so much what we’re doing. That’s how baseball works. And that’s why the ones that know it love it so much; you can’t master it. You never know how that ball’s gonna bounce, man.”
Packers vs. Seals
On Sunday, the ball bounced Healdsburg’s way again, and often. Though they didn’t run up a 20-point lead, the 13-4 final score over the San Francisco Seals made for a satisfying end to the regular season. It was nearly a sold-out house at Art McCaffrey Field (or would have been, except tickets were free).
Two four-run innings, home runs by Ivan Brethowr and Black McDonald, and four stolen bases gave the crowd something to cheer about all day long.
To be fair, the Seals were competing without several of their roster regulars as the season nears an end and some players need to return to college. It showed: They gave up four runs in the third inning on only one hit, with six walks keeping the baserunners moving across the plate.
Meanwhile, the Walnut Creek Crawdads put their season on the line against the Sonoma Stompers. They were only half a game behind the Prune Packers when the day began, and had a chance to end the day the No. 1 seed.
But the Sonoma team dug deep and defeated the Crawdads 8-5 before a satisfied Arnold Field crowd. The Stompers have had a rough season, finishing fourth in the league with a 16-19 record, but the way they ended the summer gives them reason to hope for a better year in 2024.
The Playoffs
The Crawdads’ loss meant the Packers finished the season as league leaders and the No. 1 seed in the Northern Division, so they could skip the first playoff game that pitted the Crawdads against the third-place Lincoln Potters. That game resulted in a 7-1 victory for Walnut Creek.
As we go to press, on Aug. 2, the Packers are playing the Crawdads at Rec Park to settle whe winner of the CCL Northern Division. It will be the last game of the season at Rec Park, the last chance to see this year’s team.
If the Prune Packers will, they will head play a three-game championship tournament against the Southern Division winner, on Aug. 4-6.
The chance of a three-peat remains alive.
