Tuesday night playoff baseball in Lancaster, the Barnstormers hosting the Long Island Ducks in the opening game of the North Division championship series. The league has always used a "halves" format which sometimes penalizes overall performance, 2023 is a good case in point. The South Division championship series features the teams with the top two regular season records, Long Island finished fourth overall at 66-58 and the Stormers were sixth at 62-62 (each team had two games cancelled by weather). Over in York (where I never made it to after June) the Revolution finished third overall at 71-54 but missed the postseason because they finished second in both halves. On this night in game #1 the Stormers struck first on a Yeison Coca solo home run to right in the first inning. The visiting Ducks tied it in the third inning, the Stormers replied in the bottom half when Melvin Mercedes walked and scored on an error. RBI singles by Andretty Cordero and Wilson Garcia gave the Home Team a three-run advantage in the fifth but Long Island showed their mettle with a three-run sixth to knot matters at 4-4. In the bottom of the sixth the Stormers took the lead back for good in one of the stranger ways you may ever see. Ariel Sandoval was batting with one out and the bases loaded, his groundball to the first-baseman was converted into an inning-ending double play. Barnstormer manager Ross Peeples immediately approached the homeplate umpire, after the entire umpiring crew conferred it was determined that the catcher had interfered with Sandoval as he was leaving the batters box. The double play was nullified, Sandoval was awarded first base on the interference and each runner advanced one base forcing home the lead run. Garcia batted next and rifled a double into the alley in right-center clearing the bases and giving the Stormers a sudden and stunning 8-4 lead. An insurance run was added in the seventh on a Cordero sac fly, Long Island scored a two-out run in the ninth but it mattered little as the Stormers took it 9-5. Brent Teller started and worked in to the sixth inning, Garrett Granitz was the winning pitcher with Mike Adams and Ofreidy Gomez splitting the last two innings. The teams reconvene for game #2 at the ballpark on Wednesday night. Take care, thanks for reading.
