Friday night at the ballpark on North Prince Street, the Barnstormers (fresh from a three-game series sweep in York) hosted the Staten Island FerryHawks in the opener of a weekend set. On this night the ballpark was the scene of a game that was about as utterly bizarre as anything you might ever see. In the first inning the visiting Hawks scored twice, their effort was aided by two Barnstormer errors and a wild pitch. In the fourth the Stormers loaded the bases on two walks and a hit batsman, Trayvon Robinson's sac fly scored Melvin Mercedes from third making the score 2-1. As the fifth inning started there were dark clouds forming to the southwest and the winds were picking up accordingly, in the bottom of the inning the Barnstormers scored twice to take the lead. Walks to Shawon Dunston and Mercedes put men on first and second with one out, a throwing error allowed Dunston to score and Mercedes to move to third. Robinson struck out but was able to reach on a passed ball, on the throw to first Mercedes scored giving the Stormers a 3-2 lead. It should be noted that to this point the club had scored three runs without benefit of a single base hit through five innings. Just as starting pitcher Erik Manoah was finishing his warmup pitches prior to the sixth inning the umpires called time and had the field covered, it proved to be the right call as the rain arrived no long after. It was not quite the downpour we had seen the previous Thursday but it was enough to delay the game for better than two hours. I hung out until about 9:45 or so and then elected to call it a night. I saw on the internet that the game had resumed around 10:40 and was still going as midnight approached. As the old expression goes: I've Been There, I've Done That. Take care, thanks for reading.
