Courtesy of The Niagara Gazette
Base Paths vividly remembers the Niagara Power’s first New York State Collegiate League game. He was 200 miles away, busting buttons at a grandson’s high school graduation. He returned to a pressboxful of skeptics who were sizing up the puny attendance and predicting with unanimity that the team would never last.
Last month the graduate collected his Masters in engineering and this week the team enters its seventh year, a local record for longevity. Religion has, sadly, fallen into disfavor among many, but the Power’s survival is a testament to faith.
It’s a toss-up who’s learned more over those years, the kid with the degree or Power President Cal Kern, but every step has been forward. Many of last year’s pitchers return, almost unheard-of in collegiate-league ball. Ticket sales are up. Power games have become events. Next up, Hornell, Friday, 7 p.m. Base Paths checked his calendar. Nope, no graduations.
THE DARK SIDE – The force was not with the bank of bulbs behind third base at Sal Maglie StadiumThursday night, much to the amazement of umpires and Section VI officials at the terrific Lancaster-Clarence game. “You rent a stadium, you figure everything works,” said one administrator, darkly. Reportedly, the repair bill starts at $14,000, and the stadium’s future is uncertain. It didn’t significantly affect play; a first-baseman seemed to lose one pickoff throw but nobody advanced. (An earlier attempt, by daylight, had sailed way wide, leading to an unearned run.)
Tuesday’s Far West Regional at the Barber Shop will begin at 4:30 p.m. We report, you decide.
OUT OF THE SPOTLIGHT – Caitlin Attfield stepped right off a plane from Birmingham and hustled herself (that’s almost redundant) to Clarence to watch her old Niagara-Wheatfield team mates challenge for the Sectional title.
Some were trying to figure a way to disguise her into the game, which Dat Old Debbil Clarence won 9-1.
Three days earlier the super shortstop was one arm-wave away from the national spotlight, waiting on deck with two outs, runners on first and third, her Alabama Birmingham team down one run to second-ranked Florida in the bottom of the seventh. And that’s where she stayed when the pinch runner at third was sent home and tagged out by yards.
The TV announcers didn’t do her any favors, questioning her handling of a ground ball (out) and seemingly at a loss for any words other than “UAB didn’t come here for a moral victory, it came to win.”
BY THE NUMBERS – Grand Island baseball sent up 17 batters in its 13-run third inning vs. Sweet Home; in the whole rest of the game, 18. The inning took 28 minutes; the rest of the game, 26. It seemed longer to Base Paths, sitting with the parents of the Sweet Home pitcher.
Signal back to Base Paths via pollyndoug@hotmail.com
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