Friday night at New Scotland the Reds and Silver Marlins played a 9-inning affair that ended in a 1-1 tie. For such a low scoring game there were lots of stories:
First lets look at the pitching. Joe Sarubbi scattered 9 hits, while breaking at least 5 Marlin bats. Joe gave up just one solo home run in the third inning, using an effective mix of fastballs, curves, and change-ups. Phil Gadomski gave up just 5 hits and one unearned run over his 9 innings while breaking 4 or 5 Reds bats himself. These two were phenomenal at getting hitters to hit the ball everywhere on the bat except the barrell. It was an expensive night for the hitters as there will be a need to reload the wood bat arsenals on both sides.
The second story was the great defense at the most urgent times in the game. The Reds had used a mix of walks and an untimely error in the bottom of the seventh to
tie the game at one. They seemed poised to win a big game as they still had the bases loaded with just one out, when "Mash" exploded the bat of Tony Pilatich and got him to bounce the ball directly back to the mound. Mash had to avoid the broken bat and get the ball to catcher Curt Coons. He did so quickly enough for Curt step on home and fire a perfect strike to first to end the inning on a dramatic double play. It looked like the Marlins were then going to seize control in the top of the eighth when Girard and Lochner started the inning with singles. Dave Mitchell then hit a hard grounder in the hole, that looked like it would be an RBI single, but Reds ss Rob Helm dove (full extension) and speared a back-hander in shallow left field and got up quickly enough to nail Girard at third. What a game saver! The next batter drilled a hard bouncer toward the hole, that this time was snared by the Reds third baseman and turned into a 5-4-3 double play to end the threat. Great defense at a critical moment!
The game ended in a 1-1 tie after nine innings were not enough to seperate these two teams. Congratulations to both teams on a well-played/well-pitched ball game.