Petty Takes Aim At The Pacific

SAN DIEGO—Kyle Petty took one look at the horizon and smiled.

The Mariners first baseman at high Class A Bakersfield saw the San Diego sunset over the Pacific Ocean, and knew exactly what he wanted.

With music thumping, alcohol flowing and the scantily-clad Tilted Kilt hostesses prancing about, Petty dialed in and delivered towering fly after towering fly off the bow of the USS Midway in a spectacle to be remembered, claiming the inaugural Midway Classic Home Run Hitting Contest championship on Monday evening.

MIDWAY CLASSIC

FIRST ROUND (Top four advance) Kyle Petty, Bakersfield (Mariners) 6 Bobby Bradley, Lynchburg (Indians) 6 Aderlin Rodriguez, Frederick (Orioles) 5 Dawel Lugo, Visalia (Diamondbacks) 5 (2 in tiebreaker vs. Demeritte to advance) Travis Demeritte, High Desert (Rangers) 5 (1 in tiebreaker vs. Lugo to be eliminated) Drew Ward, Potomac (Nationals) 3 Yu-Cheng Chang, Lynchburg (Indians) 3 Chris Shaw, San Jose (Giants) 2 SEMIFINALS (Top two advance) Kyle Petty, Bakersfield 6 (2 in tiebreaker vs. Lugo to advance) Aderlin Rodriguez, Frederick 6 Dawel Lugo, Visalia 6 (1 in tiebreaker vs. Petty to be eliminated) Bobby Bradley, Lynchburg 5 FINALS Kyle Petty, Bakersfield 8 Aderlin Rodriguez, Frederick 4

Petty, 25, hit 22 home runs over three rounds for the title, beating Orioles third baseman Aderlin Rodriguez 8-4 in the championship round.

“This was probably the coolest and one of the more fun things I’ve ever gotten to do,” Petty said, beaming with his championship trophy in hand.

The contest, which served as the home run derby for the Carolina-California League all-star game, brought hundreds of revelers onto the deck of the USS Midway, a Naval aircraft carrier commissioned at the end of World War II that is now a museum anchored in San Diego’s harbor.

Home plate and a batting cage were placed 243 feet from the bow of the ship, with a chain-link fence surrounding the immediate area to prevent fans from being struck by errant line drives.

Among all eight competitors—four each from the California and Carolina League—Petty most consistently elevated balls above and beyond the immediate chain-link fence and deep into the Pacific Ocean, where bright pink buoys marked the home run “fence.”

“It was just an awesome setting,” Petty said. “Not many chances you really get to hit a baseball and it disappears into an ocean. You just want to embrace it and take it all in.”

A man stationed at the back edge of the ship raised a red flag if the ball went far enough and crossed the buoys, the only way the players actually knew if they had hit it far enough into the Pacific for a home run.

“It was weird because the sun was setting so you couldn’t really pick up the ball when it left the bat,” said Giants first baseman Chris Shaw, who was eliminated after hitting two homers in the first round. “A lot of times you kind of just waited for the guy to tell you if it was a home run or not, but it was definitely really cool seeing it go off the deck of the boat and into the ocean.”

With each blast, the Tilted Kilt hostesses raised a placard over their head—a la ring girls at a boxing match—signifying how many home runs the player had that round.

“It was a circus for sure,” Shaw said. “It was like a frat party meets baseball. It was definitely a lot of fun.”

Petty, a native of Flemington, N.J., won every round of the contest. He belted six homers in the first round and eight in the second, including a tiebreaker, before ultimately dispatching Rodriguez in the finals.

Even after he had hit his fifth home run of the final round to clinch the title, Petty implored the pitcher—local high school baseball coach Monte Jones of Murrieta Valley High—to keep throwing, not wanting the experience to end.

As AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” blasted in the background, Petty kept pummeling baseballs into the Pacific.

“It was an absolute blast,” Petty said. “You don’t want to cut it short.”

Rodriguez, a late addition to the home run derby roster after hitting 10 homers for high Class A Frederick, held his own, outhomering touted Indians power prospect Bobby Bradley in the semifinals.

While Petty visibly had the longest blasts, Rodriguez wasn’t far behind.

“It was a fun experience, the first time I’ve ever done a home run derby,” Rodriguez, 24, said. “For me to do it in front of these guys, with the weather and this place as my first time, it was even more cool.”