Loose Play Sinks Ponies

That is Barbara, our lovely experienced cheerleader, selling 50/50 tickets in between cheerleading gigs.

It seems that the Mustangs and the Voyagers are taking turns showing up to play. Opening night saw the hitters from Great Falls dominate and then last night Voyager pitchers couldn't buy an out and our Mustang hitters looked fairly good.

Tonight our hitters went AWOL until the 8th and 9th inning, our infield play was crappy, especially around 2nd base, giving away a fair number of unearned runs, and the Mustang pitchers were fairly decent. Behind 7-1 going into the 8th inning our boys gallantly chipped away with two runs, cut short by a running error by a guy—I forgot his name, sorry—who had just driven in the two with a double to the left field corner. Mark Haddow was the hero in left field for the Voyagers as he got the ball back to the infield to cut down the guy trying to go from 2nd to 3rd.

He was an even bigger hero in the 9th inning, as the Mustangs persisted punching away, scoring two runs, to make it 7-5 with 2 runners on and the powerful Robert Maddox up to bat. He is the big first baseman trying to figure out where the plate is and how to play first base at the same time. He hit a nasty sinking, fading line drive into the left field corner and Haddow made a desperate leap into the wall and came up, miraculously, with the ball in his glove. He looked stunned lying on the ground as the runners kept running, easily tying the game and possibly winning it if he hadn't caught the ball. After a few seconds and shakes of his head he gets up and casually tosses the ball from his glove to one of his teammates. The umpire agrees that he caught it. A very exciting ending indeed.

Here are the heroes of the Lead-Off Grill, making 'Stang Burgers and Sheboygan brats by the hundreds, heck by the ten thousand at season end, and probably for minimum wage too. Be sure to tip them.

A high draft pick, Kyle McMyne from Villanova, is on the mound for the Mustangs tomorrow. Probably worth seeing. They had some new guys in tonight: Nick O'Shea caught, Sean Buckley played third base, and Sammy Diaz played 2nd from the fourth inning on. They looked fairly decent. I expect we will see some more of them. Not surprisingly, the first couple of batters in the 4th hit some routine balls to 2nd and Diaz played them well and got a nice round of applause for his efforts. Baseball can be a cruel game.