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Monday, November 06, 2006

Greatest Games: #98- Riding the Wave

Monday, July 4, 2005

Fraser Field

Quebec 1
Spirit 4

The Spirit dug themselves a huge hole in the race for the first half championship in 2005 and it appeared for a while that they would be a fairly bad team. But suddenly, in late June, they roared to life. A series of rainouts in Quebec set up a 6-game series between the Spirit and the division-leading Capitales, who were up by 6.5 games on the Spirit. North Shore managed to win a few wild games on the weekend and wound up taking 5 out of 6. This game, coming on the Fourth of July, came two days after an amazing rally in game 2 of a doubleheader on Saturday night which you will read about later on in this 'greatest games' countdown. It truly was one of the more amazing weekends in Spirit history.

Here's the game story:

"Spirit starter Ryan Bicondoa allowed just one hit and no earned runs in his league-leading third complete game of the season, propelling the Spirit to a 4-1 victory over Quebec in the final first-half meeting between the two clubs.

With their fifth victory in six games against the Capitales, the Spirit (20-16) moves to within 2.5 games (two in the loss column) of the Division lead.

The Spirit carry a four game winning streak into the series opening doubleheader with the New Jersey Jackals Tuesday night. With 13 games remaining in the first half, the Spirit are now within striking distance of their third straight first-half Championship.

The Spirit cause was aided greatly on Monday by the starting effort from Bicondoa. After laboring early, he settled down and kept the Quebec batters off balance for the rest of the game. He finished with seven strikeouts and three walks to record his third victory of the season. Quebec starter Min Soo Kim suffered the loss, his second of the series.

The Spirit didn’t waste any time jumping all over Kim in the first. With one out, Rob Fischer singled to center and moved to third on a basehit by Vic Davilla. Travis Oglesby followed with a monster shot deep over the fence in left, his team leading 11th long ball of the season. On the very next pitch, catcher Alex Trezza made it back-to-back jacks when he drilled a Kim offering over the wall in left center, giving North Shore the early 4-0 lead.

The Capitales got on the board in the top of the second. Lee Delfino’s sacrifice fly scored Eddie Lantigua, cutting the Spirit’s advantage to 4-1. That, however, was all the scoring that Quebec could manage against Bicondoa."

3 comments:

Wooden U. Lykteneau said...

That game was on a Monday, BTW.

Joe Grav said...

Oops-----will fix

Wooden U. Lykteneau said...

Too bad we can't get the CanAm league site to fix that -- I've sent them at least two e-mails pointing out that Bicondoa has twice thrown a 1-hitter, and I included a link to the league's own boxscore at the time.