Requiem for a Conference: A Look at UCLA's Final Pac-12 Home Game
Saturday's UCLA baseball against Stanford wasn't particularly significant as far as NCAA titles go, but it was UCLA's final Pac-12 home game.
The Pac-12 Conference did not seem to want to go gently into the good night, or more appropriately, the late afternoon sun on Saturday.
When freshman reliever Justin Lee struck out Stanford’s Brady Reynolds on Saturday, it was officially the end of an era. That strikeout ended a game that seemed at times like it never would.
In fact, Saturday’s game between UCLA and Stanford felt more like a Sunday night baseball game between the Yankees and the Red Sox than one between the ninth-place Cardinal and the cellar-dwelling Bruins. Saturday’s game lasted almost four hours, clocking in at three hours and 51 minutes in length despite the fact that the teams only played nine innings.
By the middle of the second, the game already felt like it might be over. Stanford had scored four runs in the first inning and two more in the second.
The Bruins’ 33 losses this season were the most losses UCLA has had under John Savage since the team lost 41 times in his first season in Westwood and the team’s worst finish in the conference standings ever for Savage. It was only his fifth losing season since taking over the team in 2005.
Finishing last in the conference standings can always cause a coach to be concerned about his job security, and it certainly remains possible that UCLA could head into the Big Ten Conference next year with a new man at the helm, but the 2013 College World Series championship, two more CWS appearances and a total of 13 NCAA tournament appearances should have enough goodwill built up that Savage will likely keep his job, especially when one considers the overall state of the Bruin baseball program before Savage’s arrival and the fact that he is one of the only two head coaches UCLA has had over the past 50 years.
UCLA rallied in the bottom of the second to cut the deficit in half. After Stanford added a breadstick in the top of the third, the Bruins bullpen took control for a few innings while UCLA scored five more in the bottom of the fifth to take an 8-7 lead.
There are reasons to think the future might be bright for the Bruins. UCLA’s freshman class was a big one this year. There were 18 freshman on the roster, which is more than the number of juniors, seniors and grad students Savage had on the roster. And, the season-ending sweep of the Cardinal certainly gives Bruin fans reason for hope next season.
Of course, baseball isn’t considered revenue sport by UCLA but Saturday’s game drew a respectable 979 fans which is more than the final home game of 2022, the last time the Bruins made the NCAA tournament.
Stanford scored once in the top of the sixth to tie the game up, 8-8, but the Bruins took the lead for good in the bottom half of the inning by scoring two more runs.
If I had to guess, I’d say that very few fans who were in attendance Saturday were there for the same reason I was.
Back during football season, thanks to a suggestion from fellow season ticket holder Bob Walton, I decided I was going to go to UCLA’s final Pac-12 home game. When Bob and I first talked about the idea, he mentioned that he and some friends were planning on being at the final Pac-12 Bruin game, whatever the sport. I suggested that it would likely be baseball since baseball is the sport whose season typically ends last, and sure enough, it was.
I didn’t have a chance to talk to Bob at all during the game because he and his friends were sitting over in the Dugout Club, but we exchanged waves shortly before the first pitch.
So, I know that Bob and his friends were there for that reason, but the other fans, some of I spoke with, whom I think were parents of UCLA baseball players who were seated around me, only realized this as an afterthought when I told them about the game’s significance. In fact, two other fans I spoke with as I was leaving Jackie Robinson Stadium seemed genuinely surprised that they had just witnessed UCLA’s final Pac-12 game ever before acknowledging that the final school year in the conference had gone by so quickly.
Throughout the course of the day, as I sat there watching these teams go back and forth, I was reminded of the song Moonlight Motel by Bruce Springsteen. It seems like a perfect analogy for UCLA’s now-former conference. The song is about a deserted hotel that whose glory days are clearly in the past. It begins with the lyrics, “There's a place on a blank stretch of road where/Nobody travels and nobody goes….”
Yeah that sounds like the Pac-12 since Larry Scott became the commissioner of the conference.
Scott, the former commissioner of Women’s Tennis Association, came to the conference in 2009 and, soon, negotiated the TV deal which ultimately led to the conference’s breakup. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, find a way to get the Pac-12 Networks onto DirecTV which kept the conference from maximizing its exposure to a national audience. Nobody travels and nobody goes….
The decay of the Moonlight Motel is all around the place.
Now the pool's filled with empty, eight-foot deep
Got dandelions growin' up through the cracks in the concrete
Chain-link fence half-rusted away
Got a sign says "Children be careful how you play"
It feels like the perfect metaphor for what was really going on at the member schools, all while Scott was living large with expensive San Francisco offices, corporate jet and posh Las Vegas suite during the conference basketball tournaments.
The song continues:
Well then it's bills and kids and kids and bills and the ringing of the bell
Across the valley floor through the dusty screen door
Of the Moonlight Motel
Last night I dreamed of you, my lover
And the wind blew through the window and blew off the covers
Of my lonely bed, I woke to something you said
That it's better to have loved, yeah it's better to have loved
As I drove, there was a chill in the breeze
And leaves tumbled from the sky and fell
Onto a road so black as I backtracked
To the Moonlight Motel
So, there I was on Saturday. For one final Pac-12 game.
The song concludes:
She was boarded up and gone like an old summer song
Nothing but an empty shell
I pulled in and stopped into my old spot
I pulled a bottle of Jack out of a paper bag
Poured one for me and one for you as well
Then it was one more shot poured out onto the parking lot
To the Moonlight Motel
Well, I didn’t have a bottle of Jack in a paper bag to pour a shot out for the Pac-12 on Saturday, but as I walked out of Jackie Robinson Stadium, I stopped to take the picture of the centerfield scoreboard which listed all of UCLA’s Pac-8/Pac-10/Pac-12 baseball championships through the years.
Here’s the whole song of Moonlight Motel from YouTube
UCLA’s next exciting home game will be as a member of the Big Ten Conference when one of the soccer teams opens the 2024-2025 school year and the first revenue sport Big Ten game will be on September 14th when the Indiana Hoosiers take on DeShaun Foster’s Bruins at the Rose Bowl.
And hope for UCLA football will spring eternal once again.
May the Pac-12 rest in peace. Long live the Big Ten!
Go Bruins.
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RIP the pac-12 overall. The last game for the conference was this evening - the pac-12 baseball tournament championship.
https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/40220682/arizona-wins-pac-12-baseball-title-conference-final-event
Also good riddance, pac-12 networks is also done
Sadly the end of an era.