May 28-31

The Monday holiday consisted of lunch at the mall and little else, we had no games at the rink and both the Barnstormers and the York ballclub were out of town. On Tuesday we were back at the rink for a four-game night, as I turned the corner at Franklin and King I noted the makeshift memorial that had been set up over the weekend (flowers, balloons, candles and the like). The most recent reports indicate the guilty parties are still at large and the injured McCaskey student is still hospitalized. On this night White beat Gold in the Draft Division game, Club winners were the Kings over the Hammerheads, the Misfits over the Riot in OT shootout and the Owls over the Pub Dawgs. On Wednesday we had our usual lunch visit with Jenny, in the evening it was a baseball night on North Prince Street. The Atlantic League began in 1998 with six teams, in 2000 two more were added through expansion. The Somerset Patriots are the lone remaining of the original six, for the record the others were the Bridgeport Bluefish (expired in 2017), Nashua Pride (2005), Atlantic City Surf (2006), Newark Bears (2010) and the Newburgh Black Diamonds (1998 only, the franchise eventually became the league's as-needed travel team). On this night the Barnstormers hosted the Patriots in game #2 of the series looking for a second straight win. Somerset went up 1-0 in the first, in the bottom half Tyler Bortnick singled and scored on a balk, Blake Gailen walked and scored on Joey Terdoslavich's RBI triple to make it 2-1. In the second Anderson De La Rosa and Rico Noel reached on back-to-back singles, De La Rosa scored on an error and Noel came home on Darian Sandford's RBI hit to put the Stormers up by three, The Patriots put a run on the board on the fourth, in their half the Stormers rang up a five-spot. Base hits by newcomer Grant Desme and Vladimir Frias set the table, they both scored on De La Rosa's two-run double to make it 6-2. Noel followed with a base hit and Sandford drew a walk to load the bases. Two consecutive Patriot errors allowed all three runners to score, when the smoke cleared the Barnstormers were up 9-2. Somerset crawled back to within three in the eighth inning, the Stormers added some insurance in their half when De La Rosa and Noel scored on Sandford's two-run triple, Starting pitcher Steve Johnson went six innings for the 11-6 win with John Anderson, ex-Colorado Rockie property Huascar Brazoban and former SF Giant property Stephen Johnson (no relation to STEVE Johnson) working an inning each in relief. On Thursday there were thunderstorms in the forecast which never materialized, we finished the week's business at the rink. Green beat Red in Draft play, in the Club division winners were the Riot over the Hammerheads, the Owls over the Kings and the Misfits over the Pub Dawgs. We got some light rain around 8:30 or so, not enough to stop us but just enough to be a nuisance. The rain picked up after I was home for the night, either we got lucky or we just live right. Take care, thanks for reading.