Bear trio named all-stars

Arbelo, Walters, De La Rosa honored||

YAKIMA — Yazy Arbelo, Zach Walters and Eury De La Rosa have made the Northwest League all-star team, league officials announced Tuesday.

“Really?” Arbelo said while enjoying a pregame meal. “I did? Awesome.”

“Wow,” said Walters. “That’s neat.”

Said De La Rosa, through interpreter Raywilly Gomez, “Thank you.”

Arbelo, Yakima’s first baseman, began play Tuesday ranking second in the league in home runs (14), while leading in runs batted in (53) and was fourth in slugging percentage (.544) while batting .294.

Short-stop Walters was sev-enth in batting average (.315), tied for second in doubles (18) and had 38 RBI and 12 stolen bases.

De La Rosa, a left-handed reliever, has been one of several Bears bullpen standouts with a 1-1 record, a 1.07 earned run average and a team-high 51 strikeouts in 42 innings.

Conspicuously absent was right-hander Jake Hale, who in 35 1/3 relief innings this season has allowed only one earned run (0.25) while striking out 40 and walking only seven.

Three all stars were the most a Yakima team has had since 2003, when infielders Conor Jackson and Jamie D’Antona, closer Dustin Glant and pitcher Clint Goocher made the squad.

Spokane’s Jared Hoying, who’s among the league leaders in batting, homers, RBI and stolen bases, was named most valuable player while the Indians’ Tim Hulett was tabbed manager of the year.

Rounding out the squad were: 2B Pierre LaPage (Boise), 3B Kevin Mailloux (Everett), DH A.J. Kirby-Jones (Vancouver), C Steven Baron (Everett)/C Emmanuel Quiles (Eugene), OF Hoying, OF Alvaro Ramirez (Boise), OF Ryan Scoma (Salem-Keizer), LHP Anthony Fernandez (Everett), RHP Chad Bettis (Tri-City), RH Reliever A.J. Griffin (Vancouver).
The team was selected by the league’s managers.

Bears dump Dust Devils

YAKIMA — On the frequent occasions in which baseball is referred to as a game of inches, the reference has often been made in rueful tones.

You know — a would-be hit was foul by only a couple of inches or a fielder’s dive came up an inch or two short of a key catch.

It happened that way for Mike Freeman on successive drives in successive innings Tuesday night to the deepest part of Yakima County Stadium. But as has been the case for the Bears’ stellar second baseman this season, and the team collectively, one of them fell for a two-run double that keyed Yakima’s 4-2 defeat of Tri-City before an announced crowd of 1,327.

Asked which ball was hit harder on the cool, damp evening, Freeman said, “The one that went for a double. They didn’t catch that one.”

As a result, first-half East Division champion Spokane will have a tougher time catching the Bears in the second-half race. Yakima (22-11 second half, 40-31 overall) maintained its three-game cushion over the Indians with only five to play, thus reducing its magic number for winning the title to three.

Already the Bears’ overall record had secured a Northwest League playoff berth, the franchise’s first since 2000, and Yakima will open a best-of-three series with the Indians here Monday night.

“We did a lot of good things again,” Bears manager Bob Didier said. “Berger (starting pitcher Andrew) gave us five good innings, Reagan (Miles) got some outs for us and Cantwell (Keith) did a great job of stranding a runner at third in the eighth.

“But Freeman’s hit was the back-breaker, or the game-breaker.”

His two-out, two-run, sixth-inning double barely eluded Jeremiah Sammy an inning after the Dust Devils center fielder had made a back-to-the plate grab of a Freeman drive on the warning track in front of the 406-foot sign.

It also scored the game’s final runs as Yakima won its fourth straight, all against the Dust Devils (11-22, 28-43).

Reagan allowed an unearned run in the sixth, after which Cantwell worked two scoreless innings and freshly-minted all-star De La Rosa pitched a 1-2-3, two-strikeout ninth for his eighth save.

In four games against Tri-City, Bears relievers have allowed no earned runs over 17 innings.

Kawika Emsley-Pai and Henry Zabala had two hits apiece for Yakima while Freeman, who recently accumulated enough at bats to rank among the league batting leaders, extended his hitting streak to 12 games.

The 11th-round draftee from Clemson is batting .343.

“Any time you can extend your season and play for a championship, it’s exciting,” said Freeman, who earlier this year helped the Tigers reach the College World Series. “It really doesn’t matter what level you’re playing at. We’ve accomplished one goal, but we have others to take care of while we’re here.”

Down 1-0 in the bottom of the fifth, the Bears tied it on Roberto Ortiz’s single that scored Tom Belza, who had walked, taken second on a wild pitch and moved to third on Freeman’s first long drive.

Zabala led off the Yakima sixth with a double, held while Raoul Torrez reached on an error and took third on Kawika Emsley-Pai’s single that loaded the bases.

Belza’s sacrifice fly scored Zabala, and Freeman’s blast off the boards in center plated Torrez and Emsley-Pai.

“We’ve talked about it a lot, but our bullpen’s just been outstanding,” Didier said. “One of the keys was the way Cantwell pitched in the eighth (two strikeouts and a groundout after the leadoff hitter singled and advanced on a wild pitch and stolen base). He did that right through the heart of their batting order.

“And our little left-hander (De La Rosa) just seems to get two strikeouts every inning he pitches.”

9/1/10 Yakima Bears update

Next game

Opponent: Tri-City Dust Devils.

When, where: 7:05 p.m. today, Yakima County Stadium.

Radio: KUTI (1460).

Website: www.yakimabears.com

Probable pitchers: Yakima RHP Miguel Pena (4-5, 3.44) vs. Tri-City RHP Erik Stavert (2-4, 3.02).

Notes

A NOD TO TODD: Longtime Bears public address announcer Todd Lyons was honored Tuesday night with a surprise bobblehead likeness.

Lyons autographed bobbleheads before the game, threw out the first pitch and then enjoyed a rare opportunity to take in the game as a fan along with his family.

ROSTER TWEAKING: The Bears will soon send pitchers Casey Upperman and Rashad Tucker to Missoula in exchange for pitchers Kevin Eichhorn and Justin Albert, Yakima manager Bob Didier said Tuesday.

Right-hander Eichhorn, 5-5 with a 4.94 earned run average, will be installed in the Bears’ starting rotation, Didier said. Albert, a lefty, is 2-1 with a 3.31 ERA.

Didier also said a rotation for the upcoming best-of-three East Division playoff series against Spokane would likely be set today.

Football section coming Thursday

Just two days away now from our annual preseason football section, which will be included in Thursday’s edition. After we take a deep breath, we’ll tackle other fall previews for cross country (Sept. 9), volleyball (Sept. 10), girls swimming (Sept. 11) and girls soccer (Sept. 12).
Pouring over the 48 pages that will comprise our football section, there are three things that are especially compelling to me. In no particular order, here they are:

1) How quickly can Eisenhower rebuild with so much lost to graduation, and how well will Davis carry forward last year’s momentum with so much back.
The Cadets graduated 15 players with all-conference honors from their 11-1 team, and originally looked to have just three offensive starters back and four on defense. But Ike got a big boost this week when RB-LB Issac Sarate and OL-DL Bruce Smith were granted additional eligibility.
The Pirates have tons back, although ‘09 standouts C.J. McCray and Jackson Marquis, at this point, are not turning out. Davis still has eight returning offensive starters, seven on defense and a home game Friday against Eastmont to kick off the season.

2) How jumbled will the hierarchy in the CWAC be compared to last year? Or will the order be the same — Ellensburg, Othello, Selah and Prosser?
The program that appears most likely to rise is Prosser. Last year over the final three games, then-sophomore RB Isaac Anderson was unstoppable and amazingly durable with 96 carries and 564 yards.
All four have highly interesting — and tough — openers on Friday — Archbishop Murphy at Ellensburg, Selah at West Valley, Prosser at Kamiakin and Connell at Othello.

3) How well will La Salle transition into the SCAC West? All the coaches we’ve talked to expect the Lightning to contend immediately given its track record of dominance in the B-11 ranks. Two notes about SCAC West RBs: Zillah’s Chris Castillo has opted to not turn out this fall, and Highland’s Forrest Kopta is appealing at the state level an eligibility issue that has been denied locally.

We’ll begin to get some answers to these questions on Friday when the roller-coaster rumbles out of the gate. Enjoy the ride!

Chinook Pass bridge is … gone

YAKIMA, Wash. — If you drove over Chinook Pass on State Route 410 last weekend, you probably had one of those little out-of-body moments where you feel like you’ve drifted into some kind of alternate universe. Wait a second … isn’t there supposed to be a bridge over the road right here … ?

Well, yes, there is, and right now there … isn’t.

Last week, maintenance crews at Mount Rainier National Park removed the cedar-log crossing — leaving the stone-construction base in place on each side — in order to replace it. The bridge, over which hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail have crossed 410 for decades, is expected to be back in place with new cedar logs sometime next summer.

“It wasn’t unsafe, but it is aging, so the wood is beginning to rot,” explained park trails-crew member Julie Okita.

The bridge span itself was made entirely of three-foot-diameter cedar logs, including the handrails made from split cedar logs. Park crews are trying to obtain and prepare replacement logs “from within the park as much as we can,” Okita said, and then will be trucked to Chinook Pass for bridge assembly next summer.

Until then, hikers parked in the long-term parking lot on the north and west side of Chinook Pass can cross 410 by way of a newly painted crosswalk near the bridge location. Additional signage has been posted to alert motorists to the pedestrian crossing.

The missing bridge has already become a topic of discussion on the Northwest Hikers site, with a photograph of the missing and some imaginative visions of the replacement bridge to come. Check it out.

– Scott Sandsberry

Wild pitches help Bears win despite one hit

PASCO — The Yakima Bears kept their late-season momentum going Monday, defeating the Tri-City Dust Devils 2-0 despite recording only one  base hit.

One night after clinching a playoff berth, the Bears rode strong pitching performances by starter Teo Gutierrez and three relievers to handcuff the Tri-City bats and improve to 39-31 this season and clinch their first winning season since 2003.

Yakima scored both of its runs on wild pitches in the sixth inning.

Westley Moss led off and reached base on a throwing error, advancing to third on the Bears’ lone hit of the game, a single by Michael Freeman. Freeman stole second and advanced to third on pitcher Edwar Cabrera’s wild pitch, which allowed Moss to score.

Two outs later, with Yazy Arbelo at the plate, another pitch got away from Cabrera, bringing Freeman home.

Gutierrez earned his first pitching win for the Bears, while Kable Hogben picked up his 10th save.

The Bears have a three-game lead on Spokane with six games left in the second half of the Eastern Division season. Yakima hopes to wrap up the second-half title this week before facing Spokane next Monday at Yakima County Stadium in the opener of a three-game playoff series.

The Bears play Tri-City at 7:05 tonight at Yakima County Stadium.

Rafting outfits going with the flow

You’d think an extra week of raftable September flows on the Tieton River — which figures to be the case this year — might be just the thing to lift the spirits of commercial outfitters vexed by this economic downturn.

Except that they don’t seem to be vexed.

“This is one of the most successful seasons we’ve ever had,” said Don Martin, who runs River Recreation, based in Bothell.

The state’s largest rafting outfitter, Blue Sky Outfitters in Peshastin, can even top that.

“We’ve actually had a record-breaking year,” said Terri Sarver, who oversees Blue Sky’s operations with her husband, Brad. In the struggling economy, she added,

“Instead of going on a three-day rafting trip on the Colorado (River) or the Salmon over in Idaho, people still want to go out and do something. And since we offer one-day trips, people can still get out and go play for the day.”

Blue Sky is coming off the most productive August the company has ever had, and the Tieton season may just produce some September magic. This year’s Bureau of Reclamation decision to begin the Tieton “flip-flop” a week earlier than usual means the river — usually not at thrill-inducing whitewater levels until a week into September — is already there.

Flows are already running at close to 1,200 cubic feet per second, probably double the typical levels at the beginning of September — and that meant a bustling opening weekend of rafting before August even ended. The flows are projected to ramp up slowly to a peak in the 2,000-to-2,400 cfs range in mid-month before beginning to come back down. That means there should be as many as four productive whitewater weekends — perhaps even five.

“It’s definitely a positive thing for the rafting community,” Martin said.

“Our Saturdays are expected to definitely sell out,” Sarver said. “We’ll probably raft 200 people every Saturday. Sundays, we’ll probably be at about 100, and weekdays are kind of hit-and-miss.”

Last year’s Tieton rafting season was spotty, primarily because of rafters’ concerns over congestion around the two bridges west of the Windy Point campground. Last year the

Department of Transportation was in the middle of a construction project replacing the two bridges, meaning two rafting take-out areas were inaccesslble.

That project is now almost complete, with traffic using the bridges and only some finishing touches and cleanup remaining. The take-out area Martin’s crews typically used beside the westernmost bridge will remain inaccessible, while the one nearest the east bridge — routinely used as a take-out by the majority noncommercial rafters — is nearly ready.

“The takeout just below the (easternmost) bridge is not quite finished,”

Transportation Department spokesman Mike Westbay said last week. “The contractors are guaranteeing we’ll have that open by the 4th. We’re pushing them to have it open sooner — Sept. 1 is what we’re hoping for.”

Until then, rafters have been leaving the river at the Windy Point campground.

“I think the biggest improvement should be a slightly safer situation on the road,” said Jerry Michalec, proprietor of North Cascades River Expeditions in Arlington, one of the oldest rafting companies in the Northwest.

“It’s always been a fairly dangerous highway to begin with, and then to have a situation like that, where you have people coming off the river, carrying boats across the road, and trying to park and then pulling out with trailers. I’m hopeful the situation should be improved.”

Most commercial rafting companies that run the Tieton offer a 14- to 16-mile trip lasting roughly 21?2 hours, with prices typically running $65 to $80 per person. The price includes wetsuits (and, in some cases, the wetsuit “booties”), safety/training instructions and usually a pre-run or mid-run snack/lunch.

At the upper end of the scale is Blue Sky — “the Cadillac,” according to another outfitter — at $92 per person. Blue Sky’s trip is longer than most, at 21 miles and four hours, and customers also finish their rafting experience with a steak barbecue dinner (or veggie option).

Bruntjen forced to drop out of Tour Divide

Last summer, when he completed the rugged Tour Divide mountain bike race in honor of a Selah veteran injured in Iraq, Eric Bruntjen’s heart was clearly in the right place.

This summer, though, his knee wasn’t.

Nearly halfway through the 2010 Tour Divide, Bruntjen was on pace to improve dramatically on his 2009 performance over the 2,780-mile course along the Continental Divide between Banff, Canada, and the New Mexico-Mexico border.

“I was really racing well,” said Bruntjen, a 39-year-old information-technology specialist and Yakima resident. “My head was in it, and my heart was in it.

“But I just really overdid it.”

Bruntjen had ridden the 2009 race to raise enough money to buy a specialized all-terrain wheelchair for injured Army veteran Evan Mettie of Selah. His goal that year was to go the full distance, because the pledges he had collected were based on how many miles he rode.

This summer, Bruntjen was in the race strictly to compete, and he was churning out 150-mile days and running nearly 31 hours ahead of his 21 1/2-day 2009 pace by the time he reached the Teton Range in Wyoming. But he was paying a steep price. The harder he pushed himself, the more the muscles, ligaments and tendons securing his patella — his kneecap — tended to pull it out of place.

The issue, called patella tracking disorder, is often hereditary and related to the knee structure itself. It can sometimes be caused by failing to stretch properly prior to exertion.

Bruntjen knows he wasn’t stretching properly. He was in a hurry. Every day.

“I’ve had it in training before and I’ve always been able to stretch my way out of it. This time it didn’t stretch off,” Bruntjen said. “The crazy thing is I had no pain walking — I could walk just fine. I’d get off my bike and walk for a while and I’d think, ‘OK, I’m cured, I’m fine,’ and I’d get back on my bike and start again and my knees would be in agony right away.”

Bruntjen pulled out of the race on the eighth day near Jackson, Wyo., and although he regrets not being able to complete the race — and, of course, improve on the time from his 2009 Tour Divide debut — he doesn’t have any second thoughts about his decision.

“It was super frustrating for me, but it was actually clear-cut. I didn’t waffle about it,” he said. “I was just mechanically unable to go any further.”

Another Tour Divide racer, a 37-year-old Vermont resident named Dave

Blumenthal, died after he was struck by a pickup truck near Steamboat Springs, Colo. Bruntjen had gotten to know Blumenthal earlier in the race, when the two were both camping at Wise River, Mont.

“He was this 6-foot-7, just towering guy — a nice guy,” said Bruntjen, who had already left the race and returned home when he heard about Blumenthal’s accident.

Despite the rough going in the 2010 race, Bruntjen said his Tour Divide days may not be over.

“If I have enough time to train — and to stretch,” he added, laughing, “I might do it again. There’s nothing like it. You feel like you’re a superhero out there, like a cowboy out in the wild west. It’s so remote out there. No one can help you, no one can save you, and you’re trying to go as fast as you can.

“I’ve never found a sport like it, or like the feeling you get in that race.”

Hunting doves requires a ton of shells, patience

YAKIMA, Wash. — Here are a few figures and a smattering of unconfirmed “facts” about the dove hunting season opening Wednesday morning at daylight. Think of it as dove hunting by the numbers.

It has been approximately 335 days since the end of dove season last year. That is 8,040 hours since we were able to be in the field cursing the little birds that are so much fun to shoot at, yet so impossibly difficult to hit. Dove hunting addicts have been counting the minutes —  which, by the way, was 482,400.

No official studies have been conducted, but it is estimated that the average dove hunter will shoot 10 times to bag one dove. With the daily limit of doves being 10, that means a hunter will shoot around 100 times a day to bag his limit of the darting, diving missiles with wings. That is on the average. Some hunters shoot way more times than that.

The shotgun shell manufacturers just love  dove hunting season. While a pheasant hunter might buy a box or two of shells the whole season, and a duck hunter might purchase a half dozen boxes to supply him for the long waterfowl season, a dove hunter planning to spend any time in the field will purchase a case of shells.

Figure that just in the Yakima Valley, there are conservatively 500 dove hunters, and each buys a 10-box case of No. 8 shot shotgun shells, and there are 25 shells in a box. That comes up to — just a minute, I need a calculator — 125,000 shotgun shells purchased to burn on trying to hit the little gray birds that fly like their tails are on fire.

Shotgun shells intended for the use of dove hunters are the least expensive shells a hunter can buy, but figuring a box of No. 8s costs $5, each shell costs 20 cents. Multiplied by 125,000, dove hunters just in our little Valley are spending $25,000 on dove hunting ammunition alone!

People who don’t hunt doves may be overly concerned that hunters purchasing all of these shells just for shooting doves might be having some effect on the population. If this is the case, I refer you back up to paragraph three: The majority of dove hunters are shooting the thousands of shells they are purchasing into the wide blue yonder. The doves are quite safe. In fact, over the past several years, surveys done by biologists of the Yakama Nation show dove numbers at or near all-time highs.

This year’s surveys by tribal biologists show the dove numbers in the area at their fourth highest in the past 17 years, at three doves for every mile. The all-time best numbers came just last year: five doves every mile.

Habitat and weather have much more of an effect on dove populations than hunting ever will.

A few other numbers to consider on this eve of the 2010 dove hunting season:

• Roughly 82.4 percent of all dove hunters will hunt just one day during the dove season. Why? Nobody knows for sure, but it’s likely related to the fact the little speed demons are so difficult to hit. The average hunter simply can’t take more than one day of that kind of humiliation.

• Approximately 30 percent of all dove hunters will bring their hunting dogs along on the first hunt of the year, only to have the poor animals sit quivering at the side of their master, waiting for the call to retrieve, only to find out they may never hear that call. Seasoned retrievers will immediately find a comfortable spot to lay down and take a lengthy nap.

• At some point during the first day of dove hunting, approximately seven hunters will throw their expensive shotguns down in the dirt in disgust because of the anger and embarrassment caused by missing dove after dove after dove.

• At least one dove hunter per season will actually give up hunting altogether because of the disgrace and shame over his poor shooting — not to mention the ridicule and mockery heaped upon him by his dove hunting partners.

• And one hunter, possibly the one who just swore off hunting forever, will claim he actually heard doves sitting in a nearby tree snickering at the hunters who were blasting and swearing and reloading and blasting.

The year’s first bird hunting season is upon us, so go forth and have fun.

Just don’t expect much success.
• Rob Phillips is a freelance outdoor writer and partner in the advertising firm of Smith, Phillips & DiPietro. He can be reached at rwphillips@spdadvertising.com.

Note about Hot Shots results

Monday Hot Shots results incorrect

Incorrect or incomplete results for some divisions in Sunday’s Hot Shots 3-on-3 basketball tournament were submitted to the Herald-Republic and were published in Monday’s edition.

The corrected results for the 2010 Hot Shots competition will be published in Valley Sports Weekly in Thursday’s edition.

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