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Thursday, May 24, 2007

Spirit Squash Pride in a Grand Opening

NOTE : The previous post on the blog was this site's 500th post! Hooray!

The Skinny:

Spirit win 6-2 on Opening Night in Nashua; Morse gets the win and Perez is HR shy of the cycle

Game Story:

North Shore played a perfect ballgame tonight on Opening Day at Holman Stadium in Nashua, NH, defeating the Nashua Pride 6-2 in front of about 200 people. Bryan Morse pitched 5 solid innings to get his first victory of the season, yielding one run on four hits.

From there, Shawn McNamara, Dennis Robinson and Kevin Fitzgerald carried the Spirit to the victory, with Robinson giving up the only other run. Mike Torres had a dream debut, going 3-4 with a stolen base and a hustling infield hit. Jerson Perez also had a smashing opener, picking up a triple, an RBI single, an RBI double, and two runs scored.

North Shore led the whole way, starting with 2 runs in the 4th off of Nashua starter and losing pitcher Tim Bausher. Torres began the inning by legging out a chopper to 3rd base. Jerson Perez followed with an RBI double to open the scoring. With Perez at 3rd base, Ricardo Cordova grounded out to 2nd to drive in the 2nd run.

Nashua narrowed the gap to 2-1 in the 5th inning on Andy Dillard’s solo homer off of Morse. Morse struck out Ramistella to end the inning and his outing, in which he had to deal with a delay in the 4th inning when Jake the Diamond Dog decided to relieve himself on the first base side (I for one thought it was a set-up, there is no way such a well trained dog does that without being set up to do so, and I think that it’s pretty lame and unprofessional for that to happen), eliciting the biggest cheer of the day from the Nashua Faithful.

The Pride threatened to equalize off McNamara in the 6th inning. Omar Rosario led off the inning with a single and stole 2nd and 3rd base off of Spirit catcher JC Gutierrez. With 1 out, McNamara got Ryan Duplissie to line out to Perez at short, then ended the inning by getting Mottram to ground out 6-3. The Spirit then scored their third run in the 7th when BJ Weed picked up an RBI sac fly to center to score Jerson Perez, who led off the inning with a triple.

McNamara got one more out in the bottom of the 7th before being taken out in favor of Dennis Robinson after yielding a walk to Tim Creighton. (Here I thought Davilla made a good proactive decision, unlike a certain other manager who would have waited until the game was tied.) Robinson bridged the gap to the 9th for North Shore.

The good guys put the game away in the 8th inning with a 3 run explosion. Jason Kasow walked Carlos Rodriguez and gave up a single to Rob Fischer. Then, after a wild pitch moved the runners into scoring position, Brad Rea plated them with a 2 RBI single laced into right centerfield. That ended Kasow’s Warpinskiesque day. Lance stevens came in, but could not put out the fire as Jerson Perez added an RBI single to plate the 6th Spirit run.

Robinson yielded another run in the 8th but Fitzgerald did not let the Pride get any sniff of a comeback in the 9th, getting them to go down in order to end the game and give the Spirit the win.


Line Score

NSS 0 0 0 – 2 0 0 – 1 3 0 --- 6

NAS 0 0 0 – 0 1 0 – 0 1 0 --- 2

Win: Morse (1-0)
Loss: Bausher (0-1)
Save: None
HRs: Andy Dillard, NAS (1)

Spirit Pitchers:
Morse: 5 IP 1 ER
McNamara: 1.1 IP 0 ER
Robinson: 1.2 IP 1 ER
Fitzgerald: 1 IP 0 ER

Spirit RBI:
Rea, 2 (2)
Perez, 2 (2)
Cordova (1)
Weed (1)

Spiritfans.Blogspot.Com Player of the Game: Jerson Perez (1)

Post Game Notes:
-Shawn McNamara coming out of the bullpen seems to me to be a sign that Bicondoa really is coming back , as Mac was supposed to be in the rotation
-The Spirit traded OF Chad Gabriel to the Grays before the game for future considerations (which will probably be Chad Gabriel, eventually). They also officially added INF Gary Roche.

Burning Questions

1 Were you also impressed by Vic’s proactivity in bringing in Robinson when he did?

2 What were your impressions of Morse’s first outing?

3 Do you think that the Jake the Diamond Dog thing was set up?

4 Admit it, you laughed when you found out that thin gentleman was Joe ‘Slim Slow No More’ Pescucci. But wasn’t it weird that his trademark eeeeeeeAGGHHHH call is also gone along with his ginormous biff?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

1. Liked seeing Vic going out when something could been brewing and stopped it by bring in Mac and that worked, for tonight he made all the right moves.

2. Morse was pretty good for a first start, it will take a couple starts for him to get into a groove but did the job.

3. I think it might been some of both an act, but went longer than expected.

4. I want to post it on the blog that I called the surprise of Joe being a lot slimmer, just seemed to recognize his look, and sure enough it was him, but ya was nice to see him behind the plate, but ya he wasnt the same.

One thing that Joe didnt touch upon was the long delay that lead to the opportunity to see Joe Pascucci at home plate, in the 6th Inning the original home ump either got hit by something, or got dehydrated either way he was getting attention focusing on his head and he had to leave the game. Hope he is well tonight.

Tonight was a lot of fun and was really nice to see a good bunch of the Spirit Crew there tonight. See you all there next Wed for the home opener.

Joe Grav said...

I editorialized more than usual in the gamepost, but oh well here goes

1. Obviously
2. He did well; Dillard's HR was smoked and IMO was just a piece of good hitting. He had solid control (I don't think he even walked a single batter). Good effort
3. Absolutely, and it was totally bush league... of course it happened while our guy was pitching. F!$!@# that. And then McNamara had to overcome the umpire changing delay (not anyone's fault, but still it's bad that two of our pitches faced long delays, one for a dog taking a piss)
4. OK one word about slimslow-no-more: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA He got a character reduction surgery

Joe Grav said...

yeah Jack did call that it was Pescucci, I laughed at him thinking there was no way it was him...

..pics are coming tomorrow, my camera is dead tonight and I have no new batteries... but trust me it's pretty hilarious

Best wishes to the home plate ump - if anyone goes tomorrow and can get an update on his condition let me know.

Anonymous said...

Ump got hit in the back of the neck by a foul; how you get it in the BACK of the neck is anyones's guess. He'll be fine.

Grant Salzano said...

1) Vic sure seems solid to me

2) a more-than-solid outing. couldnt ask for anything more on opening day. His ERA is under 2.00

3) contrary to what joe says, i do not agree. i dont think it was set up. it's a dog, not a child. if a dog's got to take a piss and there is a vast expanse of grass for him to do it, he's going to. im pretty sure dont-take-a-piss-on-grass is not in his training

4) i think i saw slim-slow ONCE last year, and based on what everyone has said, it's a massive transformation. lol.

and thanks, anonymous. it was kind of scary for a while, because it looked almost like he was having trouble standing for a while...