July 7-11

The new week started slowly outside of an eye appointment on Tuesday for my mother, on Thursday we did our usual lunch visit in Quarryville. In the evening we were back on North Prince Street, the Barnstormers hosted the Long Island Ducks in the opener of a four-game series. The Atlantic League's second-half schedule started on Monday, the Stormers opened with three games in Camden. On this night the Ducks took a 2-0 first-inning lead, the Barnstormers replied with five in the second. Cole Garner's two-run double highlighted the uprising, runs also scored on groundouts by Andrew Clark and Casey Frawley, the fifth run scored on a base-loaded walk to newcomer Brett Carroll (ex-bigleaguer signed from the Toronto Blue Jays system). After the Ducks batted in the third the umpires called for the field to be covered, with dark skies to the west and the wind shifted it was clear that something was headed our way. The delay began at 8:15, by 9:45 it was still raining so I decided to call it a night. Saw on the Internet where the game resumed after 10:30 and didn't end until 12:30am, the Barnstormers won by the final score of 9-5. On Friday the weather was much more conducive to a night at the ballpark, Marty joined me for game #2. On this night the Ducks scored single runs in four of their nine at-bats while the Stormers put together big innings. They put three on the board in the second on a RBI hit from Dayton Buller (a recently returned 2013 Stormer) and a two-run double by Grant Zawadzki (younger brother of Lance and a recent college graduate). Brock Kjeldgaard's solo home run in the fourth extended the lead, in the fifth the club added four more on RBI hits from Cole Garner and Andrew Clark and a Casey Frawley two-run double. An eighth-inning two-run home run by Clark put the exclamation point on a 10-4 win, Chris Schwinden worked six innings for the victory. Take care, thanks for reading.