August 17-19

Friday night on North Prince Street, the Barnstormers' homestand continued with a visit from the Sugar Land Skeeters. The Atlantic League schedule can be a strange animal at times, this was the Skeeters' second time in town in the last two weeks. In the opener on Friday Sugar Land went up 1-0 in the third, that lead held up until Trayvon Robinson's solo home run in the seventh pulled the Stormers even. In the home eighth Josh Bell and Blake Gailen drew back-to-back walks, a base hit by Jimmy Paredes loaded the bases with nobody out. Ryan Casteel worked a walk to force home the go-ahead run, Gailen scored from third on a ground-ball double play to put the Stormers up by two. Robinson batted next and drew the fourth walk of the inning, Vladimir Frias followed with an RBI single plating Casteel to make it 4-1. That was the final as Kevin Munson picked up the W in relief of Jonathan Albaladejo, Matt Reynolds worked the ninth inning for the save. On Saturday Jenny and her mother were along for game #2, the Stormers broke on top early in the first on Darian Sandford's walk and Gailen's RBI hit. In the third Bell walked and rode home on Paredes' two-run home run to put the home team up by three, in the fourth Anderson De La Rosa was hit by the pitch and scored on a sac fly by Bell to make it 4-0. From there the Skeeters launched a comeback with a run in the fifth, two in the seventh and a single in the eighth to tie the game. The matter was resolved in the tenth when Sugar Land pushed the game-winning run home, Huascar Brozoban suffered the 5-4 loss in relief. The series was scheduled to end with a rare 5:00 game on Sunday but Mother Nature had other ideas. Rain moved into the area overnight and continued well into the afternoon, I went over to the ballpark around 4:30 on the assumption that the start would be delayed. The game was set to start at 5:30 but the field was in poor shape, as soon as the umpires came out for the pregame meeting at home plate there were discussions taking place. The Barnstormers took the field and as soon as the anthem was over the umpires called for the grounds crew to continue work on the infield dirt. At 7:45 there was a very animated on-field talk involving the umpires, the respective managers and Barnstormers management, it ended with the Skeeters manager waving his team out of the dugout and into the clubhouse. At this point it was still raining and everyone assumed the game had been called, most of the fans (me included) headed for the exits. Later in the evening I was online and saw that they were actually going to try to play, the start time was posted for 9:45. As they say at the end of Part One: stay tuned. Take care, thanks for reading.