July 1

Headed south on Sunday morning and had lunch with Jenny and her mother. In the afternoon it was on to Baseballtown for game #2 with New Hampshire. This was our first Sunday night date at home, we got started at 6:35. In celebration of Canada Day (a nod to our neighbors to the north) we announced the game time temperature in Celsius, it was 33 degrees (that's 92 Fahrenheit). It was Mascot Mania night, in addition to the Phillie Phanatic (the evening's main attraction) Royals mascot Slapshot was among the many cavorting around in the pregame. This was a whirlwind day for the R-Phils roster as three pitchers (Jordan Whatcott, Ryan Duke and Frank Gailey) were promoted to AAA Lehigh Valley, LV had a day-night doubleheader scheduled and they needed the extra arms. In conjunction with those moves the Phillies organization assigned pitcher Kyle Simon to Reading. Simon had only joined the organization on Saturday via trade, he was ticketed for FSL Clearwater but on this night he was in uniform for the R-Phils. Such is life in the wonderful world of minor league sports. The ballclub fell behind early and lost 7-5 as Leandro Castro and Cesar Hernandez had RBI doubles, Brandon Tripp and Darin Ruf picked up ribbies on sac flys and Cody Asche had an RBI groudout. Mario Hollands pitched six innings and took the loss, Kyle Simon worked the final three in relief. There was no fireworks show after the game on this night but more pyrotechnics are scheduled for Monday and Tuesday. Take care, thanks for reading.