The Drillers opened up the home half of their season this week playing against the Corpus Christi Hooks. Unfortunately they were swept in the three-game series. Their home opener on Thursday saw the Hooks jump out to a 9–0 lead after six before the Drillers rallied for five runs, but fell short and lost 5–10.
On Friday night the Drillers jumped out to a 3–0 lead early in the game, but the Hooks rallied for nine runs and took game two, 9–4. In the series finale on Saturday, the Driller jumped out to an early lead on a two-run homer by Alex Verdugo. The Hooks tied it at four in the sixth before taking the lead in the top of the seventh with a solo home run.
The Drillers had a chance to take the lead in the eighth, but couldn’t plate any of their runners and lost the game 4–4 to be swept.
However, if you’re like me, you probably already have a loyalty to some team in the MLB, so you might not care a whole lot about a rival team’s minor league team or how they are doing competitively. That’s not the reason I go to the games. I go because I love baseball and watching a game for three hours, eating a hot dog, and — having recently become an adult — drinking a beer are a lot of fun.
If you are in Tulsa for the summer and enjoy sports then I would encourage you to watch some Drillers baseball. It’s not professional, but it fills the need to watch live sports and the games are a lot of fun to go to. Since they are part of the Dodgers organization you can see some of their best players come up through Tulsa before going on to the Majors, just like when Matt Holliday played for the Driller while they were still a Rockies organization, before becoming a multi-All-Star player.
There’s something that’s just not right when you go a summer and don’t watch live baseball. It’s about as American a tradition as apple pie and taxes.
I wrote in our summer issue all the way back in August about what a sports fan can do in Tulsa, and the Drillers and Roughnecks — the USL soccer team with the same ownership as the Drillers — are two of the most exciting teams to watch.
They’re in downtown Tulsa, which is a place I don’t get to explore enough and every time I’ve gone to watch a game, I’ve managed to see a little more of Tulsa. Baseball’s back in Tulsa and I’m excited about it.
