Fortuitous fall

Angel Rosa's reaction was dour when he popped up a 1-2 pitch into shallow center field in the bottom of the 12th Wednesday.

"Crap," Rosa said he thought to himself.

But the shortstop who was added to the Travs roster Tuesday broke for first base anyway, hoping for the best. And when Tulsa right fielder Devan Ahart couldn't make a diving catch, Rosa's first hit as a Traveler this season was a game winner after Cal Towey scored to end a 7-6 victory in 12 innings at Dickey-Stephens Park in North Little Rock.

Rosa's ball was ruled a single -- his first hit in 15 at-bats with the Travs -- after three Drillers couldn't track it in a swirling wind. The wind gave the Drillers trouble on three pop ups in a game that lasted 4 hours, 1 minute.

Rosa's hit was just to the right of second base in shallow center field. Second baseman Brandon Trinkwon went back, while Ahart and center fielder Alex Verdugo came in. Ahart dove, but the ball fell to the grass on the final play of a game in which only a few hundred of the announced crowd of 7,600 saw end.

"Just run out everything; you don't know what can happen," Rosa said. "The baseball gods gave me that hit."

Travs Manager Mark Parent, watching from the third base coach's box, said he wasn't sure whether the ball was caught. He said he never thought about pinch hitting for Rosa, despite his 0-for-5 with four strikeouts for the day and 0-for-14 in six games with the Travs this season.

Rosa needs the at bats, Parent said, plus Bo Way pinch ran for Jabari Henry earlier in the game, leaving just two reserves on the bench.

"You've got to let him work it out," Parent said. "And we didn't have that many options."

It worked when Rosa put a ball in the area of the field where the Drillers had trouble all day. In the ninth, Henry's pop up was lost by Trinkwon and fell in center field for a double. In the 11th, Alex Yarbrough's pop up fell near the foul line in shallow center field.

Those two instances didn't cost the Drillers a run, but they still bothered Manager Ryan Garko, swirling wind or not.

"[The Travs] didn't have any trouble with it," Garko said. "The wind was the same the entire game. You should be able to catch a pop up. That's an out. That ball needs to be caught.

"Anyone of those three guys really wants to go get it, they can catch that ball."

It helped the Travs win their second consecutive game, this one after it trailed 1-0 in the third, 5-1 in the fifth and 6-5 heading into the bottom of the ninth.

Right-handed starter Victor Alcantara held Tulsa to 1 earned run through 4 innings before reliever Alan Busenitz gave up 4 runs, 3 on Willie Calhoun's bases loaded triple, in the fifth. It was Busenitz's earliest entry into a game and his worst outing of the season.

"He knows before the game," Parent said. "He's the first righty coming in. He's fine. He just started to rush through his delivery with a couple of guys."

Towey's two-run home run in the sixth, followed by Andrew Daniel's RBI double and Anthony Bemboom's RBI single in the eighth, tied it at 5-5. Alex Verdugo's RBI single in the ninth gave Tulsa a 6-5 lead before Eric Aguilera's homer to right field in the ninth tied it at 6-6.

"These 11 o'clock games with a quick turnaround are always tough," Aguilera said. "We got down and got good at bats and kept just passing the baton and kept getting hits."

The Travs finished it off with a lucky break.

"This game is crazy," Rosa said. "You have to keep your head up all the time, and just keep trying and trying. Something will go your way sooner or later."

Sports on 05/05/2016