The Atlantic League began its training camps earlier in the week, on Wednesday afternoon I was at the ballpark on North Queen Street for the first exhibition game. The Barnstormers hosted the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs, the game started at 1:00 before a gathering of (I'm guessing) less than one hundred. These games are never heavily advertised but the diehard fans are there no matter what. Ross Peeples is back as Stormers manager, his preseason roster lists sixteen players who have been with the club previously. The ALPB has ten teams in the fold for 2022 with the addition of new franchises in Staten Island, New York and a second team playing in Lexington, Kentucky (which is a story in itself for another time). The Stormers won the game 6-5, the home opener is on Friday the 29th. After supper I was at McCaskey, Ephrata visited for a 7:00 divisional crossover game. Before first pitch we had a small ceremony in honor of the late Chris Adams, a 2009 Ephrata grad who played ball there and later coached at both Ephrata and McCaskey. In the game itself Ephrata took a 1-0 lead in the first, in the bottom half JPM evened it on Alex Ruiz's RBI double scoring Elliott Fluck who had walked to start the inning. From there it was all the visitors, a single run in the fourth followed by a two-run sixth and a seven-run seventh put away an 11-1 decision. Orion Frailey started on the mound and took the loss with Yanmanuel Gutierrez and Elias Morales working in relief. The boys have back-to-back home games on the 18th (regular schedule) and 19th (makeup). Take care, thanks for reading.
