Notebook

By Brooks Hatch
Gazette-Times reporter

The official attendance for Oregon State’s classic 1-0 victory over Michigan in the opening game of the Corvallis Super Regional was a record 3,284.

However, many more looked on from jerry-rigged scaffolds erected on either side of the scoreboard, from the Dixon Recreation Center running track, from the small hill in the right-field corner and from the upper levels of the parking garage.

The Hendrickson family of Albany had a prime spot in the left-center power alley, just to the right of ESPN’s center-field camera. They built their perch on Thursday morning and were comfortably stationed in one of about a dozen makeshift luxury boxes looming over the outfield fence.

“We got sick of sitting on each other’s laps” in the temporary third-base bleachers in previous games, Luke Hendrickson said. “This is the first year we’ve done this.

Hendrickson said OSU officials said they didn’t have any problem with it, as long as they didn’t cause any problems.

“We rented the scaffolding for $50 and put this thing up on Thursday morning,” he said. “We were the second group of people here.”

Hendrickson played on the Mid-Valley Rockets American Legion baseball team with OSU third baseman Drew George. He was joined on Sunday by his father, Kirk, his brother, Josh, and several other friends.

“I think it’s going to be sweet,” Luke said. “We’ve got Mike Parker on the radio” to keep them informed of strikes, balls, outs and who is at-bat, because the scoreboard was hard to read from their vantage point.

They were also in prime position to heckle Michigan center fielder Eric Rose.

“We’ll get after him, I think, but we’ll keep it classy,” Hendrickson said.

The old attendance record was 3,194 in the June 11, 2006, Super Regional championship game.

JoPa stays effective

OSU lefty Joe Paterson, the MVP of the Charlottesville Regional, went a scoreless 11/3 innings in relief and earned his third postseason victory. He has allowed one run in 14 innings in the tournament, and also has a save.

Freshman righty Jorge Reyes started and went seven inings. He threw 62 strikes and only 19 balls, didn’t walk anyone and threw 20 first-pitch strikes in 25 batters.

“He was sneaky to the plate,” said Michigan pitcher Zach Putnam, a .341 hitter who was 0-for-4. “He was throwing hard, in the 90s, but when you’re not seeing the ball all the way through it looks more like 98.”

Powerful pitching

The shutout was OSU’s fourth in its last 15 NCAA postseason games. The Beavers blanked Stanford 15-0 in the 2006 Super Regional championship, and shut out Rice 5-0 and 2-0 in pool play at the College World Series.

It also extended OSU’s tournament streak of scoreless innings to 16. Virginia scored all of its runs in a 7-3 loss to OSU in the June 5 regional championship game in the second inning.

OSU also allowed the Cavaliers to score in just one inning in a 5-3 regional win on June 4, and shut out Rutgers over the final three innings of a 5-2 victory earlier that day. So, OSU has held it opponent scoreless in 28 of its last 30 innings.

Busy at first

First baseman Nate Recknagel of Michigan and Jordan Lennerton of OSU had busy afternoons, as each had 16 putouts. OSU shortstop Darwin Barney had nine assists; second basemen Kevin Cislo and shortstop Jason Christian of Michigan and Joey Wong of the Beavers had five assists apiece as both teams were pounding the ball into the FieldTurf infield.