Those who remained of the small crowd at Fraser Field last night at the end of a long and grueling game saw the North Shore Spirit scratch and claw and fight valiantly, nearly pulling a game out of the fire against the Worcester Tornadoes, but in the end a shaky start by Jake Mullis and a 2-run home run by Aces Legend Yohanny Valera in the top of the 10th off of Jarret Sues proved too much to overcome, as the Spirit dropped to 3-5 in the 2nd half with a 6-4 loss to the Worcester Tornadoes, in a game that wound up clocking in at 3 hours, 55 minutes. Still, however, the Spirit played with spunk and heart, and showed signs that with better starting pitching they will win some games.
The Tornadoes hit Mullis hard early, putting up a two spot in each of the first two innings, then chasing Mullis in the 4th with their 9th hit off of him. In the bottom of the first, the Spirit scraped together two runs to tie it but in the 2nd, Worcester's 2 runs put them up 4-2, which is what the score would be for a long time after that. Joey Siak came in and pitched extremely well in relief for the Spirit, pitching the 4th through 8th innings giving up no runs and holding Worcester at bay. The middle portions of this game seemed to drag along in the excruciating heat and silent duldrums of Fraser Field, as the Spirit put a few people on but left them all on base.
In the 8th the Spirit finally woke up themselves and the crowd as Brian Lentz got a leadoff walk and came around to score on a Marcos Agramonte groundout. In the 9th inning the Spirit had the right people coming up to launch a comeback bid and that's exactly what they did. Rob Fischer decked a base hit to lead it off, then Vic Davilla's double found the gap and scored Robby. The Spirit loaded up the bases with 1 out but over-anxious swinging by Storey and Lentz ended the inning.
In the 10th, Valera's 2run blast untied the game, and despite loading the bases again with 1 out, the Spirit couldn't muster up another rally and fell to start the series.
Now I guess we'll have to revise that 7 wins, 7 big crowds prediction to 6 and 6. Gametime tonight is 7:05.
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I'll admit, both teams showed why they are great. The Tornadoes came out on top, and I'm man enough to admit they were better. I saw Rich Gedman before I ;left last night,so I congratulated him on a team well managed. He said thanks, and he said to me "Nice job shwoing why you guys are the #1 fans. Keep it up tomorrow." Let's keep it up, and hope we win tonight.
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