Courtesy of the Niagara Gazette
By Doug Smith
NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. — With a break in the Power schedule, Base Paths wandered into Coca-Cola Field for a Bison game last Tuesday. He’d been so long away that he felt he oughta’ wear a name tag. Duties with and about the Power have him all but keeping a cot in the pressbox at Sal Maglie Stadium.
Well the Herd and the Toledo Mud Hens certainly made him feel at home.
Toledo was starting Ramon Garcia, just up Class AA, and the poor lad must have left his Garmin behind. He couldn’t locate the plate with a bloodhound, issuing six walks to the first 15 batters. Even with the support of a double play he left behind 4-0 with the bases loaded, all three later scoring.
As the inning wore on, the Herd’s Josh Rodriguez lofted the inning’s second sacrifice fly, to right, and as Matt den Dekker strolled home from third, Fred Lewis unexplicably wandered off first, deader than Bin Laden, except that the first baseman threw the ball into left field and more runs scored.
All it needed was circus music.
The first three innings took an hour and 20 minutes. Of those 80 minutes, Toledo was at bat for only nine of them. When Bison Jeremy Hefner wasn’t throwing strikes or base hits, he was delivering doubleplay balls, three of them in the first four innings.
Then, ahead 9-1 in the seventh inning, Buffalo put a man on third and Toledo BROUGHT THE INFIELD IN. Base Paths had to check to see whether the International League had instituted a 10-run mercy rule. But it got weirder.
Down 10-1, Toledo brought in an infielder to pitch, Bryan Pounds. Pinch-hitting, Oswaldo Navarro, with less pop in his bat than an old Rice Krispie, hit one over the left field fence. Adam Loewen hit one over the right field fence. Valentino Pascucci hit one that bounced off the very top of the fence and back into play. Den Dekker drove one out to center. For fans who had missed the home run derby, the Herd had restarted it, nine pitches, three home runs and another that shoulda’ been. Finally, the Hens mercifully pulled Pounds who, had he retired only one batter, would have an ERA of 162.0.
Matt Young trotted over from third with a no-seam fastball that wouldn’t get a ticket in a school zone, holding the Bisons to just one home run and it ended 17-1. With all the deductions for sacrifice flies and double plays, the Bisons wound up hitting .500 for the night, 18 of 36, and 28 total bases, a slugging average of .889.
Position players pitching, rookies to whom the strike zone might as well be on another planet, foolish base-running forgiven by wild throws – actually, only once or twice in 40 games have the just-shaved lads of the Power looked this ludicrous.
It was one for the books, Herd. The comic books, that it. See ya’ in the funny papers.
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