June 9-12

Thursday night at Reservoir Park for the start of West Division semifinals. The top four regular-season finishers qualified, in the openers on Thursday the Killbots beat the Riot and the Misfits prevailed in double overtime over H&F Tire Service. Both series are best-of-three, the second games are set for Monday the 13th. On Friday Jenny was in town, we made a convenience-store visit for iced tea during the lunch hour. The rest of the day was quiet largely because of unusual circumstances. The Barnstormers hosted a concert at the ballpark on Wednesday night, with the removal of the stage and field maintenance required the organization elected to delay the start of its weekend home series until Saturday. On Saturday it was HOT, daytime temperatures were in the high 80s. At the ballpark the Stormers hosted Somerset in the series opener, as is usually the case on Saturdays Jenny and her mother were there with me. As a rule I generally find an unoccupied seat in the grandstand but when they are with me we always sit in lawn chairs on the hill in left field. On this night the Barnstormers took a 1-0 lead in the second, Sean Halton doubled and scored on Mike McDade's RBI single. The Patriots tied it in the fourth but a Lance Zawadzki round-tripper in the fifth made it 2-1 for the home team. Somerset scored single runs in the sixth and seventh to go up by one but in the bottom of the inning Zawadzki went yard with a man on to put the Stormers back ahead 4-3. The carousel kept spinning in the eighth as the Pats evened the score once again, in the Stormer eighth McDade's two-run shot onto the picnic deck in right field was the decisive blow in a wild 6-4 victory. New addition Kevin Munson (Arizona Diamondbacks organization) earned the win in relief of starter Austin Bibens-Dirkx, Cory Burns worked a scoreless ninth for the save. Sunday's weather was much like Saturday's, to the surprise of nobody I spent the day indoors in the comfort of air conditioning. Take care, thanks for reading.