Dispatches from Dehler: The South Invades the North

This is what the scoreboard looked like before the game Wednesday evening between the Billings Mustangs and the Idaho Falls Chukars. By the way, in case you were wondering, a Chukar is a kind of partridge, native to parts of Europe and Asia but now introduced and apparently doing well in the Rocky Mountains and New Zealand and other places too.

The picture is from our friends at Wikipedia. The other hint as to what a Chukar is came from the picture on the scoreboard when they came to bat and also on their caps. There doesn't seem to be any explanation of why a partridge would be the logical nickname of the Kansas City Royals rookie league affiliate in Idaho Falls. Perhaps it was picked by the fans.

The Mustangs took care of the Chukars very handily on Wednesday evening. RHP Clayton Schunick started the game for the Mustangs and apart from a shaky first inning, allowing one run and three hits, looked very sharp indeed. He allowed no hits or walks for the rest of his 6 innings of work and took the win when his teammates hammered out 13 hits leading to 7 runs. No home runs but most of the team seems to be hitting singles and doubles which is good. In addition to the good hitting there was some good play in the infield with Oliver Santos nabbing some sharply struck ground balls as well as gobbling up the little squibbers. He looks like he is a natural 3rd baseman. Both Billy Hamilton at 2nd and Devin Lohman at short look like they know what they are doing in the field with a nifty double play in the 8th started by the razzle-dazzle Hamilton. Not everybody got the memo about going from first to third but they are still running fairly well.

The game finished in about 2 hours, just in time for the fans to make a dash for their cars, taking a fair amount of wind and dirt but avoiding the worst of the drenching rain that mad for difficult vision on the way home. Joe Bloch did his usual excellent summary of the game too.

I forgot to mention in earlier Dispatches from Dehler that they sell bags of little doughnuts which are very tasty. See right. And that they have someone don a horsy outfit as the official mascot with the appropriate name Homer, to assist Barbara in the fans' cheering by spelling out M-U-S-T-A-N-G-S. See below.

Oh Yes, Casper beat Great Falls 8-1 last night, Helena lost to Ogden 7-3, and Orem beat Missoula 2-0. So then the Southern Division, in spite of the long trip north, cleaned up the Northern Division, except for Billings.

Perhaps the long trip north for the Northern Division was just as wearying for the Northerners. In any event, Billings is tied for 2nd place in the Northern Division, 2 games out of first place. About 8 games left in the first half.

A new guy from the Arizona League joined the team: Dominic D'Anna. Been there at 1st base for three games now. By the way, the website for the Mustangs has a lot of useful info on it.