Game two of the NYCBL championship suspended

Courtesy of the Niagara Gazette

By Doug Smith

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. — The Niagara Power may well wind up with half-a-loaf and no fishes in the New York Collegiate Baseball League playoffs.

Consecutive-pitch blasts by wounded warriors Shakeel Newton and Chane Lynch put the Bolts in position to be declared co-champions after torrential rains and lightning suspended Saturday night’s game in Sal Maglie Stadium.

Thanks largely to the sudden thunder in the bats of Newton and Lynch, Niagara led the Syracuse Junior Chiefs 6-2 when glimpses of lightning mandated that play be stopped in the top of the fourth. The deluge arrived about 20 minutes later, sending a near-record bi-partisan crowd of 460 scurrying for their cars, many fearful in the vivid flashes. No fish fell but they coulda’.

League rules specify the season must end Sunday. Maglie looked unplayable. Syracuse’s modest home field has been ruled out. Power President Cal Kern, Junior Chief officials and league officers (by phone) were attempting to arrange a neutral site, perhaps Geneva, to get in as many at 15 innings Sunday, with more bad weather in the forecast.

Although Saturday’s game was not official by any calculation, the feeling of both teams, on most amicable terms, leaned toward a shared championship. It would be the first for each team.

For the second consecutive game, the Power bolted from the gate against a premiere pitcher. Two runs scored on Adam Taylor’s first inning single. After Nick Linne and Jaman Hammel singled in the second, a walk to Ryan Kiesel loaded the bases.

Up stepped DH Newton, his fielding time reduced by a leg strain. He unloaded a healthy blast to the centerfield fence, Linne and Hammel holding up, Kiesel coming like lightning, so that all three scored almost simultaneously in what looked like an Olympic finish. Lynch, hobbled by a twisted knee, drilled the very next pitch just to the right of Newton’s fig for a triple.

Niagara U’s Jordan Schwartz, with five strikeouts, kept the Chiefs at bay but was in a jam, bases loaded, one out, one-and-two count on Alex Sanchez, the league’s leading hitter, already 2-for-2, when the skies flashed the “halt” sign. President Kern urged fans to turn to the team website for updates, but so far as Sal Maglie Stadium is concerned, the “Barber Shop” is closed until further notice.

POWER POINTS: Among the oddities of Friday’s game in the Syracuse inferno is that the two teams hit a combined .559 against the two starters, two of the highest-ranking pitchers in the league, and then an anemic .158 against the relievers… Oft-maligned throughout the season, the umpiring was top-drawer, a team of four consistent and ardently in control of the game… Although Syracuse attendance averages barely two dozen per game, at least 50 were making themselves heard along the first-base line, nothing offensive, just loud, as Bolt Nuts responded in kind, small-town baseball at its best.