Spirit keep rolling

West Haven, CT- The Spirit were (finally) tested tonight, as the New Haven County Cutters tied the game at 1 in the bottom of the 8th inning. But in typical Spirit fashion, the boys responded by jumping all over New Haven's Andy Weimer in the 9th inning, scoring 4 runs to pick up the 5-1 victory. Dennis Robinson picked up the win by getting through the 8th, then shutting the Cutters down 1-2-3 in the 9th capping it off with a strikeout of Sandy "how many outs?" DeLeon.

Much of the game played out exactly as it did yesterday. The Spirit picked up their lone early run in the 2nd inning, as a Jon de Vries sac fly scored Andrew Wishy, who singled to start his 4-for-4 day. North Shore's offense was stymied from there on, as Rolando Valles and his fellow soft-tossing lefty Corey Willey held the Spirit to just four hits through eight innings. It was the same story as last night when another lefty shut down North Shore.

The story of the game was Spirit pitching escaping major jams. Jared Trout started and had a Jon Lester-like effort, giving up three hits, walking three and beaning one in just five innings of work; additionally, two more Cutters batters reached on errors. But Trout kept escaping and did not cede a run. In the 2nd inning, Chas Terni and Sandy DeLeon reached on consecutive infield errors, but Trout induced a 5-3 double play off the bat of Chris Gaskin to end the inning. It was the same story in the third, as Derrick Gibson hit into the 6-4-3 with 2 on and 1 out. As if it couldn't get any better, it happened yet again in the fourth inning. Horace Lawrence and Jeremy Terni reached on consecutive singles to open the inning, but good ol' Chas Terni hit into another double play to record two outs. DeLeon grounded back to Trout to end the inning.

Trout's best Houdini-work came in the 5th, however. The first batter, Gaskin, reached on a beanball. The next man, Doug Vroman, reached on a eleven-pitch walk after a great battle with Trout. With runners on first and second and nobody out, Trout whiffed the top 3 in the order- Marcus Nettles, Jose Delgado, and Derrick Gibson- all swinging to end the inning and his outing. Tim Dugan came on with solid relief, going 2 1/3 and giving up just 1 hit while striking out 4 New Haven batters.

In the 8th inning, though, the Cutters were able to add some drama to the game. Dugan was lifted after striking out Nettles to start the inning. Jose Delgado singled with one out off new Spirit pitcher Dennis Robinson. During the next at bat, Delgado stole second base. Then, Derrick Gibson came through with an RBI single on a very wacky play. Luis Sabino fielded the ball in left and uncorked a wild, late throw home that went well over catcher Alex Trezza's head and sailed to the backstop, allowing Gibson to chug toward second base. Trezza picked up the ball and spun to fire down to 2nd, but his throw went awry, allowing Gibson to scamper to 3rd and put the go-ahead run on 3rd base with 1 out. But Derrick Gibson had the Boston Celtic moment of the night as he was picked off of third base for the 2nd out. Horace Lawrence "The Third" grounded out to short to end the inning.

The Spirit bats finally woke up in the 9th- perhaps excited to finally see a right-handed pitcher. Andrew Wishy picked up his fourth hit of the night with 1 out, bringing up Dennis Robinson (DH Jon de Vries was ejected from the game- more on this later). Robinson executed a perfect sac bunt to put the go ahead run in scoring position for Ryan Bethel, who delivered with a single to put runners on the corners. Morgan Brown hit a hard ground ball to shortstop Chas Terni, but he ran hard down the line and was able to reach after Terni booted the ball, allowing Wishy to score to put North Shore back on top. Luis Sabino and Rob Fischer chipped in with ribbie singles to extend the lead to 5-1 before Vic Davilla grounded out to end the inning. The bottom of the ninth was a mow-down job by Robinson, culminating in the backwards-K of Sandy and putting the win in the books.

Offensively, Andrew Wishy starred for the Spirit, going 4-for-4 with 2 runs scored. Ryan Bethel, Rob Fischer and Luis Sabino (2 hits) picked up the remainder of the Spirit's eight hits. But the player of the game was a joint-effort by Jared Trout and Tim Dugan, who dominated the Cutters through the first seven- particularly Trout, for his heroics in getting out of jams.

Fireworks marred the middle portion of the game, as New Haven's Jeff Vroman and North Shore's Jon de Vries, Tom Donahue and Jeff Brooks were all tossed for various incidents of arguing with the umps over balls and strikes. De Vries's ejection posed a major problem for the Spirit, as they lost their DH spot. With Brooks already tossed, Rowan needed to come in to play SS while Morgan Brown filled the hole at 3B with Davilla sliding in at 1st. As a result, the Spirit lost the DH and Dennis Robinson had to bat for himself. Luckily, that worked out just fine.

With the win, the Spirit are now 3.5 games ahead of New Haven for first overall in the CanAm league and win their first series @ Yale Field since the 2nd half of the 2004 season. The Spirit go for their first ever sweep at New Haven tomorrow night at 7:05 PM.