Saturday began on a rather somber note, in the morning Don and several others were at Reservoir Park for a work party. The object was to remove and salvage the dek surface and whatever else with the rink's eminent demolition on the horizon. I was there for about two hours myself helping out with whatever a man my age can do, about half of the surface was removed and loaded into a truck. One of Don's sons has room on his property to store it while we await whatever the league's future may hold. From there I was with Jenny and Helen for lunch, with rain in the forecast they elected not to come into town for the ballgame. There had been some light precipitation while we were at the rink, between that and the cloud cover it was much more tolerable than it could have been otherwise. At the ballpark in the evening the rain stayed away (at least during the game itself), the Barnstormers reached double-digits for a second straight night with a 12-2 win over Lexington. In the third Shawon Dunston singled and scored on Kelly Dugan's sac fly, Trace Loehr's two-run homer in the fourth gave the Stormers a 3-0 lead. LeDarious Clark's solo shot in the sixth made it 4-0, in the seventh the club broke it open with four more. Jake Hoover started it with a triple and Dunston walked, they both rode home on Melvin Mercedes' two-run double. Dugan walked and Andretty Cordero singled to score Mercedes, an RBI double by Colton Shaver plated Dugan to make it 8-0. In the eighth the hits just kept on coming, singles by Hoover and Mercedes put runners on the corners with one out. Hoover scored on a fielders-choice groundout by Dugan, after Cordero singled he and Dugan were chased home on Clark's two-run double. Shaver batted next and put the punctuation on the inning with another RBI double scoring Clark to put the Stormers up 12-0. The visitors broke the shutout in the ninth with a pair of runs but it mattered little, the final was 12-2. Bret Clarke won it in relief of starter Brooks Hall (a 2018 Stormer recently returned), newcomer Cole Aker worked an inning as did West Tunnell and Erik Cha. The rain finally arrived and moved through overnight, on Sunday morning we had the brooms and blowers out at Lions Park in Rothsville. The games started about ten minutes late but they were played as scheduled, Ephrata won over Warwick and Township beat Hillside. Take care, thanks for reading.
