When you have the type of season Arizona baseball enjoyed in 2016, it’s almost impossible to pin down one exceptional moment.
You could pick the 13-inning marathon win at Cal. The nail-biter over Oregon in the Pac-12 finale. The magical Monday in the Lafayette Regional. Or Bobby Dalbec shutting down Mississippi State in the Super Regional.
But the one moment that stands above the rest happened on a hazy Saturday afternoon in late March at Hi Corbett Field.
Arizona trailed UCLA — the best team in the conference for most of this decade — 5-1 entering the bottom of the ninth inning.
Then the Wildcats staged a rally for the ages.
Two hit batsmen. A single. A double. Another single. By the time Dalbec came to the plate with two outs, the game was tied.
The junior third baseman, who would be selected in the fourth round of the MLB draft in June, fell behind 0-2. After working the count back to even, Dalbec ripped a double into the left-field corner. Alfonso Rivas III barely beat the throw at the plate.
The Wildcats had a 6-5 walk-off victory. They mobbed Dalbec near second base.
“It’s a great steppingstone,” pitcher Cameron Ming said of the comeback win. “The motto going into the ninth inning was make something weird happen. Some weird things happened. Fortunately, it went our way.”
Beyond the rally itself, the Wildcats had extra inspiration that day. They had dedicated the game to Josh Weaver, a local teenager they had befriended who suffered from a rare form of brain cancer.
Josh died the previous month. A video tribute ran on the scoreboard before the game, and the players wore yellow tape on their wrists to raise cancer awareness. About 100 of Josh’s friends and family members, including his father, watched the game from the first-base stands.
The Wildcats had Josh’s battle in the back of their minds all day.
“It allowed us to persevere,” Ming said. “We didn’t give up.”
