The C’s started this season like men possessed, but it’s a rare team that can hit the ground running and maintain that momentum for the entire season. Sadly, the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes are looking like one of those rare teams, and they’re in our division.
Still, it’s a long season… okay, it’s a short season, but there’s still plenty of it to go.
Tonight sees the C’s trying to restart the engine with new recruits, Lance Sewell and Josh Horton.
The VANCOUVER CANADIANS lineup:
Beanball Pruitt DH .174
Hornet Horton SS .000
Amblin’ Hamblin 1B .263
Uptown Brown CF .203
Young Love C .148
Excellentic Sulentic RF .254
3-0 Keough LF .167
WAAALT! Correa 2B .211
Ham Frash 3B .195
Goose Guzman P
The EUGENE EMERALDS lineup:
Dodge Durango CF .372
Beano Parrino SS .262
Spam Canham C .400
Kielbasa Kulbacki RF .220
Booger Pickett DH .224
Abdominal Payne LF .237
Spliffy Joynt 3B .158
Bruschetta Buschini 1B .146
Hokey Stokes 2B .269
Hambone Garramone P
We’ll be updating as the game rolls along, so check back often!
1st inning: Goose Guzman, looking to get back to his early season form after two disappointing outings, started tonight’s game with more of the same, walking the first two batters he faced, but credit The Goose with knuckling down and utterly dominating the next three hitters, ending the inning with line-outs and pop-flies, and holding the base runners fast to their spots.
For Eugene, Hambone Garramone was in control on the mound, with a Danny Hamblin double ending up bookended by strikeouts to JD Pruitt and Uptown Corey Brown.
2nd inning: The Goose has been largely great with ball in hand for the C’s this year, but he is prone to the bad inning. This was one of those, as Spliffy Joynt singled with one away, and Bruschetta Buschini nailed a 2-run dinger out of the ballpark to right. A pair of ground-outs got Goose out of the inning after Hokey Stokes dealt another base hit, but the home crowd was suitably quieted as the Em’s led 2-0.
With the bat, Justin ‘Ham’ Frash came to the plate with Dante Love and Shane Keough on the corners with two outs away, but The Frashmaker did nothing at all with the lumber, going down watching strike three.
3rd inning: Typical Guzman inning on the mound: fly-out, single and wild pitch put a man in scoring position, before two strike outs end it clean.
The C’s gave up two quick outs in the bottom of the third, but Josh Horton found his way to base with a hit to center field, which brought Uptown Corey Brown to the plate with just the feintest hope that the C’s could do something with no outs in hand.
Corey Brown: Triple down the right field line, Horton scores the run, and the C’s trail by one run.
4th inning: The Goose continued his rollercoaster routine on the mound in the 4th, giving up a pair of singles to put two on, before luring Ray Stokes into a fly-out to center, and then taking down Luis Durango AND Buschini when the former lined to Danny Hamblin at 1st, allowing him to double up the latter.
At the other end, Sulentic, Keough and Correa did nothing with the bat. Emeralds continue to lead by 1.
5th inning: You can be good, and you can be lucky, but you can’t be both for an entire game, so when Guzman gave up a walk and single to open the 5th, the C’s coaching staff were quick to give him a rest and bring in the useful arm hanging off the side of Aaron Jenkins [seen above], who wasted no time in using his off-speed plethora to strike out the next two batters (Eugene’s best, at that), and ended the inning with a comebacker ground-out. Way to go, Junk Jenkins!
Taking Jenkins’ fine work as inspiration, the C’s got right to the business of manufacturing runs in the bottom of the frame, with The Frashmaker atoning for his earlier at bat by doinking a single. A wild pitch saw him to 2nd, and though JD Pruitt completely blew his attempted sac bunt, popping it up to the pitcher, Jeremy McBryde was all arms and legs as he put his limbs everywhere but where the ball came down.
Josh Horton followed that with another bunt, and though this one too was all kinds of Ashlee Simpson (IE: it sucked), Eugene catcher Mitch ‘Spam’ Canham threw the ball past third base and into the Vancouver dugout, allowing both Frash and Pruitt to score. C’s lead 3-2, but a pair of K’s to Hamblin and Love and pop-fly to Brown ended the inning without further incident.
6th inning: If you’re looking for Eugene runs, forget it, because Aaron Jenkins permits no scoring on his watch. Another inning, another two K’s.
With the wood in hand, and with the BC Utilities Workers Beaver having schooled Mr Peanbut in the mascot race, the C’s sent Matt Authentic Excellentic Sulentic to the plate looking for a spark to build on. And that’s when Rob Fai, C’s media honcho and TEAM 1040 radio caller, said the words, "Sulentic is rated as a power prospect, but not really showing much of that pow… AND AS I SAY THAT, SULENTIC DRILLS ONE OFF THE OUTFIELD WALL!…"
Shane Keough picked up the nickname 3-0 from NFTN earlier this year, and he seems to be living up to it. Getting the sign to bunt from manager Rick Magnante, Keough dropped one that fouled away, took for another, and then worked his count to the point where he drew a walk for a free trip to the empty bag.
Walt Correa tried to follow suit, but Tortellini Bruschini was playing in shallow at 1st and, rather than send the bunt at 3rd, thus tying up the infielder so the lead runner can cruise to 3rd base, he instead put it right at Bruschini, who took the rolling ball in quickly before firing a rocket to 3rd base to get Sulentic out by a whisker. And that’s something, since Sulentic isn’t yet old enough to grow whiskers.
The Frashmaker shifted the runners across on a hard hit infield shot to 1st which was well snared by Bruschini for the groundout, which brought up Pruitt, who did not walk and did not hit and did not get hit by any pitches. Instead, he calmly struck out to end the inning with two stranded.
7th inning: Junk Jenkins has a ridiculous curveball and great off-speed stuff, which makes his fastball a real surprise for many hitters, and though he walked the lead-off hitter - and the fastest hitter on the Emerald teams, at that - he followed up by teasing Parrino with the junkballs before blowing the heater by him for strike three.
With Spam Canham sitting on a .455 average, Jenkins found himself in a situation where he has a steal threat on base, and a homerun threat at the plate, but if you can say nothing else about Jenkins, it’s that he fears no man. Full count; sends in a pitch that falls off the table, Canham swings at fresh air, and Jenkins racks up his 6th K of the evening in just 2.2 innings of ball.
Oh, you think that’s good? He’s not done - with Kielbasa Kulbacki at the plate, Jenkins strikes out the side. 7 K’s in 3 innings, Vancouver maintains the one-run lead.
With the bat in hand, the C’s continued with tradition and got their first two hitters to base, as Horton drew a walk and Hamblin drew a fastball to the shoulder (credit the Ems for doing the right thing and taking their pitcher out after he beaned the hitter), but could they actually build on that start, or would they leave men stranded like Tom Hanks and a volleyball?
With two on and nobody out, the new pitch for Eugene was the 6′5 righty, Crusty Dusty Gibbs, who could do nothing to stop Corey Brown from squibbing a slow-roller to 3rd for the fielders choice at 1st that put two in scoring position. Which brought up the heavy power hitter… Dante Love.
Love [seen right], hitting just .138 in limited at bats this season, was shown much faith by Rick Magnante when he was put behind the meat of the order for tonight’s game, but Dante’s peak was about 70 feet straight up, leading to him being caught in shallow right by the 2nd baseman, with nobody scoring.
And that brought up Matt Sulentic with two outs, who promptly shaped to bunt (!), fouling one off before watching two more to get ahead in the count. His fourth pitch wasn’t gonna be bunted, however, as he drilled one to left that had the crowd on their feet. But you know who else was on their feet? The Eugene left fielder. Inning ends with the C’s AGAIN failing to bring home the runners.
Oh well, they are in the Oakland A’s system, after all, so it makes sense they’d strand nine runners so far, right?
8th inning: Aaron Jenkins pitching into the fourth inning, see if you can predict what happens next…. Yup. K.
With Abdominal Payne at the plate, a broken bat doink headed over the pitcher’s head towards 2nd, and most infielders probably would have taken it on the bounce to get the runner at 1st… maybe. Or they could dive, full-stretch, face-first towards home plate and snare what’s known in the Australian parlance as a ’speccy’.
Walt Correa - nice catch, sir, but it’s not your show; this is the Aaron Jenkins Hour, and thus he dropped a mofo of a curveball on Bryan ‘Spliffy’ Joynt to get strike three - his 9th K in four innings.
The C’s brought Shane Keough to the plate to lead-off the bottom of the 8th, and though he grounded out to 3rd, I’m going to say that I like what he brings to the ballclub. He can draw a walk, he’s great in the field, he steals at will, and when he hits into an out, it’s usually an out that the infield/outfield has had to work for. I’m pegging his average as getting up to .270 by the time the season is out, but his real value is in on base percentage and speed.
Correa and Frash couldn’t find their way to base in the remainder of the inning, which brought us to the 9th with Leonardo Espinal [seen left], who has only given up one hit in 6 innings this season so far, coming in to nail it closed for the C’s.
9th inning: Espinal is a beast. His first pitch to Buschini left him looking like a high schooler. His third left Buschini walking back to the dugout with a K under his belt.
With two outs on the board, Hokey Stokes, who is all of 145lbs in size, knocked a hard shot out to center left, but Shane Keough got on his horse, motored after it, dived full-stetch and ended the ball game in style.
C’s win! C’s win
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GAME NOTES:
* Grant Desme is about a week from swinging a bat, says Rob Fai, which means the outfield is going to get even more crowded.
* Salem-Keizer is 17-3 so far into the year, which means (failing a monumental win streak by us or loss streak by them), the playoff representative s are all but decided on this side of the NWL. Of course, maybe the NWL East teams could, oh, win a game against them once in a while? When Spokane is .450 on the season and LEADING the NWL Least.. Sorry, East… there’s some sort of ridiculous disparity between the divisions going on here.
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