The 55 Twins and Dodgers descended on pristine Watervliet High School Field for their second of three regular season games last night . Both teams were short handed as the Dodgers had just 9 players including the excellent borrowed catcher Tim Burns and the Twins 10 including borrowed Pete Zamory. The two starters, Koutsakis for the Twins and Tesereiro for the Dodgers held their opponents scoreless through 3. Mark Trinchillo opened the 4th getting on via an infield error by the Twins . Dennis Lane followed with a single. Pat Alston grounded out 4-3 moving the runners into scoring position. Jimmy Tesereiro flies out to straight away center sacrificing Trinchillo home with the first run of the game. Steve Jiampeti comes through with a clutch 2 out single plating Lane. John Weber grounds out 6-3 to end the inning. 2-0 Dodgers.
Tesereiro holds the Twins down in the bottom of the 4th notching 3 strikeouts between a single and a walk. Still 2-0 as the Twins enter the bottom of the fifth. Edelman leads off and reaches first on a tough grounder to third. Greg Briscoe follows with a single and the lead off hitter Charlie Freer lays down a perfect bunt single to load the bases. Jeff Whitehead comes to the plate and proceeds to launch a triple to the right field fence scoring all three runners.Ricky Seidenberg delivers a vicious line drive towards Pat Alston at first that Alston could not hold onto but did knock it down and got to the bag to record the first out. Whitehead scores. Terry McCarthy and Wayne Nicholson ground out. Inning over. Twins up 4-2.
Oh my, here come the Dodgers in the top of the sixth. Lane flies out to center, Alston walks, Jimmy Tesereiro is called out looking. 2 outs. Twins are almost out of it. Oops ! Steve Jiampeti reaches on another infield error by the Twins. John Weber and Joe Kosek each hit singles , each knocking in a run. Tie ballgame 4-4. Tim Burns grounds 4-6, Dodgers out. Bottom of the inning the Twins get two hits but cant push anything across and are stymied ending the inning with a tie. Good morning.
Harry Staulters Leads off the seventh for the Dodgers with a clean single on the first pitch. Line drive to left. Harry steals second. Mark Trinchillo walks. Storm clouds forming over the Twins. Lane grounds out moving the runners into scoring position. Alston gets one up in the air to the outfield and Staulters scores on the sac fly. Dodgers regain the lead 5-4. Koutsakis strikes out Tesereiro again, this time swinging to end the inning.
Charlie Freer opens the bottom of the seventh for the Twins with a clean single and is moved to scoring position as Jeff Whitehead lays down a sac bunt. Rick Seidenberg comes up flies out to right field two outs. Terry McCarthy walks while Freer moves up on a wild pitch.Wayne Nicholson hits a clean single driving Freer home game tied 5-5 . Stefan Koutsakis follows with a single to load the bases with two outs. Tension building. One more run and game over. Pete Zamory grounds out on a nice play by the Dodgers SS. Inning done.
We go to the eighth inning. Extras. Koutsakus retires the Dodgers in order. Everything to the infield ground. One more try for the Twins. John Weber pitching now in relief retires the first two Twins. Greg Briscoe, starting his first game of the season as he recovers from shoulder surgery, reaches first on a hard-hit ball to the shortstop that could not be handled cleanly. Briscoe steals second base. For a big man hes very fast. Up comes Charlie Freer who works a one ball two strike count. Charlie pulls the next pitch right down the left-field line, and it was hooking slightly, was very very very close when it came down. Mixed opinions on whether it hit the line or not. The umpire called it a foul . So, thats what it was. Would have easily scored Briscoe though. Shoulda, woulda, coulda, didnt. Next pitch Charlie goes after a tough outside curve, misses it for the strike out. Game ends 5 to 5. Hmmm. A tie. No win. No loss. Just a quiet blank.
Koutsakis is shining brighter on the mound with every game. Tesereiro was tough early but the Twins finally figured him out in the 5th. The man throws hard and is wild high occasionally but so are many pitchers. Just stand in there . Koutsakis, Zamory, and Archidiacono each had 2 hits to go with the Jeff Whitehead triple. 11 hits total for the Twins. Dodgers finished with 9 hits, 3 for Staulters and 2 each for Kosek and Weber.
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