April 19-23

Wednesday morning lunch with Jenny in Quarryville, in the afternoon I was at McCaskey as Quarryville's high school baseball team (better known as Solanco) visited for a division crossover game. In years past I worked an occasional ballgame here and there as needed, this is my second season doing the PA on a regular basis. In 2016 I was able to do nine of the eleven scheduled home games and the club lost them all, thus far in '17 the boys were 0-3 with me on the mic at home. On this day Lucky Thirteen was the charm for me personally, JPM won 6-3 but it wasn't easy. It was chilly and windy at 4:15 game time with a sharp wind from the west, I had the booth windows positioned just enough to keep it away from me as best I could. The Red Tornado scored in the second inning, Cristian Viera singled and came home on Caleb McFarland's RBI hit. In the third inning Mason Lee was hit by the pitch and scored on Alex Dominguez's RBI single, Alex came home on a wild pitch to make it 3-0. Viera walked and Jonathan Metzler struck out but reached first on a passed ball, Micheal Abrew followed with an RBI double to score Viera. Metzler would score on another wild pitch to make it 5-0. The sixth run came across in the sixth inning, Lee walked and scored on Luis Civico's RBI single. Abrew got the start on the mound and pitched six shutout innings, in the seventh Solanco scored three runs and had the bases loaded with one out. Head coach Tyler Horst called on Dominguez in relief, he responded by inducing a groundball double play to end the ballgame. It is the ballclub's fourth win and their second at home but I was absent from the other so I was beginning to think I was a jinx, at least we got rid of that. On Thursday we played night #2 of the spring dek hockey league, winners on this night included the Steamers over the Pub Dawgs, the Misfits over the Hammerheads, the Riot over the Owls and the UniLords over the Kings. The rest of the weekend was uneventful, the Atlantic League started its season but both the Barnstormers and the York ballclub were on the road. The Royals continued their playoff series with three games in Brampton, they went there even at 1-1 and come home down 3-2. They lost game #3 2-1, won the fourth game 3-2 and dropped the fifth 2-1 in double overtime. Game #6 is at the Arena on Monday the 24th, a potential seventh game would be on the 25th. For the Royals the mission is clear: win them both or it's over. We will see what we will see. Take care, thanks for reading.