Minor League Team Comes Back From 16 Runs Down To Win

That up there just might be the most unlikely box score in baseball history—the Class A Clinton (Iowa) LumberKings overcame a 16-run deficit to beat the Burlington Bees last night.

There's never really a bad time to score 19 unanswered runs. But trailing 17-1 after five innings, the timing of the LumberKings—a Mariners affiliate—couldn't have been much better. Six in the sixth, five each in the eighth and ninth, and three in 12th adds up to a comeback for the ages. And all somehow wrapped up in a tidy three hours and 28 minutes!

The cherry on top of the weirdness sundae came in the 12th. After Justin Seager (brother of Mariners' 3B Kyle) forced in the go-ahead run, second baseman Lonnie Kauppila singled home two more. They would be his own insurance runs. Out of pitchers, the LumberKings sent Kauppila, who had never before pitched professionally, to the mound. He picked up the save with a 1-2-3 inning.

The game was not televised, and the announced attendance was 558 (and that's before one team took a 16-run lead), so not many people can say they saw this comeback. But you can relive a little of it. Here's the radio call of each of the 37 runs scored in the game. I can't endorse listening to the whole thing—that's a lot of runs—but it's worth gradually skipping forward just to hear the inverted bell curve of emotion from the LumberKings broadcaster, as Clinton falls into a hole too deep to dig out of—then digs out of it anyway.

(And be sure not to miss the 9:20 mark, for the call of Marcus Littlewood's ninth-inning grand slam to tie the game.)