July 13

Wednesday morning lunch with Jenny, in the evening I was at the ballpark. The Atlantic League began in 1998, it has held an All-Star Game each year of its existence. In 2007 the Barnstormers hosted the event, the York Revolution had the honor in 2011. On this night on North Prince Street it was Lancaster's turn once again, the theme for the evening was Lancaster County's farming/agriculture industry. A good number of companies had display tables on the concourse and several types of livestock were being exhibited on the hill behind left field. It was a well-conceived and well-done motif entirely appropriate for our area (unlike some others I'm familiar with that were completely contrived without public input and have no basis in reality whatsoever). Unfortunately the festivities began under less than ideal conditions, late afternoon thunderstorms forced the 7:00 game time to be pushed back (when I arrived at the ballpark it was pouring so hard I sat in my car for close to twenty minutes before I could get out). The scheduled pregame home run derby was a casualty to the weather but the rain finally moved on, the game itself started shortly before 8:30. The Liberty Division (Somerset, Long Island, Bridgeport and New Britain) played as the visitors, the Freedom Division (Lancaster, York, Southern Maryland and Sugar Land) was the home team. Both of the "local" clubs were well-represented, the Barnstormers by Kevin Ahrens, Josh Bell, Charlie Cutler, Caleb Gindl and Sean Halton plus pitchers Pete Andrelczyk, Cory Burns and Bryan Evans. Joel Guzman, Andres Perez and Travis Witherspoon were on the roster from York along with pitchers Mike DeMark and Ricardo Gomez. The Freedom Division won a low-scoring game with the Stormers and Revs playing key roles in the victory. The Liberty scored in the first to go up 1-0, in the home fourth Gindl went yard to tie the score. In the fifth inning the Freedom put two on the board, Halton singled and scored on an RBI hit by Cutler, Perez singled and scored on a wild pitch to make it 3-1. That would prove to be the final score, Gomez was the winning pitcher (he had worked the top of the fifth) with DeMark finishing it for the save. Every member of both teams got into the game, all position players had at least one at-bat and no pitcher worked more than one inning. The announced attendance of 8466 is the second-largest in stadium history, there were some empty seats thanks to the weather but all the tickets were sold so it counts just the same. Regular season play resumes on Friday the 15th, the Stormers host Southern Mayland over the weekend. Take care, thanks for reading.