By Doug Smith
Courtesy of the Niagara Gazette
NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. — A game with more full counts than a Transylvanian all-you-can-eat buffet kept Power boosters up long past their bedtimes Friday night.
But more than 330 Bolt Nuts probably enjoyed sweet dreams after an 8-2 thrashing of the Wellsville Nitros. The Power (10-7) entered Saturday’s Gazette Night game vs. league-leading Hornell – completed too late for publication here – with a week’s win streak of four, in which they outscored the opposition 37-8.
Steve “The Bender” Beckham served up six innings of two-hit ball, striking out 10, two in a Houdini-ish escape from a bases-loaded, no-out situation with the game still up for grabs. Three relief pitchers tacked on six more K’s for a total of 16, believed to be the highest in the team’s six-year history.
Wellsville, down 1-4, loaded the bases with no out and the 2-3-4 hitters coming up. Beckham struck out one batter, leaped high to haul down a hopper for a force at the plate and then, coming back from a 3-and-oh count, caught cleanup hitter Chris May looking at three pitches to end the threat.
About the same task faced submarine-ball reliever David Kaplan in the seventh. He struck out two Nitros with the bases loaded, one out, after walking in an inherited runner.
With the scoreboard seemingly frozen on three-and-two, Wellsville had needed nearly 50 pitches to produce the one run. In the home seventh, Neil DiCook needed just one, driven 380 feet over the right-center field fence, to get it back. Two more runs subsequently scored to ease much of the suspense, but you couldn’t tell that to young Bolt Nuts, who went into a frenzy, rising and stomping, as closer Brandon Mumaw whiffed the last Nitro.
“It’s the kind of support and atmosphere that puts a team over the top,” manager Garrett Shively told broadcaster Jason Patterson later.
“Frankly Frank” Polino got the Power on top with a whistling, two-strike, two-RBI single in the second and Chane Lynch lashed a two-out homer in the third. Two-homer games are as rare as swearing in Power games. Tyler Schweigert went 4-4 and every Bolt but Alex Lagos – who had a key, precision sacrifice in the go-ahead second – hit safely at least once.
POWER POINTS: With Kaplan’s pitch-short-first double play in the eighth and Beckham’s big force in the second, Power pitchers were responsible for 19 of the 27 Nitro outs… Schweigert made a spectacular nose-dive to corral an inning-ending short pop at third in the third, did a theatrical tuck & roll, then spiked the ball backhand. Fans didn’t know whether to laugh or cheer so did both… Weirdness ruled the division Thursday night as Geneva, scoreless in 17 innings including an 0-11 whitewash here, scored 12 in the fifth at Hornell – then lost, 14-13, when the Dodgers put up six in the eighth and ninth… Credit Sherri Kern and telecaster Patterson with pre-game assists in returning a lost lad to his dad. Next up at home: Military Night July 3, 7 p.m.
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