On a great nite for baseball at Swift Road, the Pirates and Arachnids hooked up for their 1st meeting of the season, and the tone of this game was some timely fielding plays and an 8-inning pitchers duel between Stephan Koutsakis for the Arachnids, and Jimmie Dalton, a late spot start for the Pirates. Dalton had taken a complete game loss on Friday, and was back on short rest. Koutsakis, making good use of his Uncle Charlie held the Buccos scoreless through 5-frames, notching 7 of his 8 Ks on the nite, and helping himself with some good glove work of his own, as well as a couple of sparklers by Mike Aiello at short, and steady hands of Don Wixon at second. It looked like the Spiders were poised to break things open early, with runners and 2nd and third with one-out, but Dalton escaped, punching out the 4 and 5 batters to squash the Long-Legs threat. Some gold glove work by LF Ken Shaw helped keep the Arachnids off the board, until the 3rd when Dalton walked his counterpart, Koutsakis, who stole 2nd, advanced on an error and scored on a Jim Wing Sac Fly , to grab a 1-0 lead. The Bucs continued to be stuck in the web of the Spiders Koutsakis, as he struck out the side in the 5th, and 5 Ks in a row from the last of the 4th to 1-out in the 6th. With two outs in the 6th, the Pirates capitalized on a walk, a Paul Peters rbi-single, an error, walk, error walk to plate 3 in the frame, for a 3-1 lead. After settling in, Dalton was keeping the Arachnids off balance, while getting knicked with 2 down in the 5th, the Arachnids scratched out a run on 3 Buccos errors, and a singleton on an Aiello knock, driven in by Wixons 2nd hit of the nite, and closed to 3-2 after 6 innings. Pirates went quietly in the 7th, wasting a Kim Burns single on an inning ending 5-4-3 DP. Nursing a 3-2 lead, Dalton got the first out, but then hurt his own cause unable to cleanly field a bunt, looking like Monty Stratton trying to get off the mound. The miscue hurt as, Dalton then intentionally passed Koutsakis, and Ralph (my favorite HOFer) Caputo delivered a clutch run scoring 2-bagger, and only a great relay from Shaw to Peters to EJ Seney kept the Spiders from walking it off! The Pirates then gave Wing the 4 finger wave to set up a force. Dalton would bear down and get his 4th and final K of the nite. With the top of the order up, Jim Jasiewicz ripped a long double, followed by Peters trading places with his double, driving in the go ahead tally. Peters stole third, and was plated on Jim Denneys hard single to give the Pirates a 2-run margin. It would stay that way as Dalton with a Web-gem by Shaw, again, on great backhanded stab of a sure double or more, off the bat of Mike Rushlander, gave the Bucs a sigh of relief, the lift needed to steady the inning, and Dalton was able to work around a John Reel single and retire the side, and the Pirates held on for the 5-3 Win!
Koutsakis was stellar in defeat scattering 9 hits. allowing 2 earned runs, while Dalton matched him with 1 earned on 5 hits over 8 innings.
R H E Pirates (1-2) 5 9 5 Arachnids (1-1) 3 5 5
IP H R ER BB K Hbp Wp IBB Dalton (1-1) 8 5 3 1 3 4 0 0 2 Koutsakis (0-1) 8 9 5 2 3 8 0 0 0
