Sea Dogs split with Senators; Bugs Slaughtered
Thursday, May 31st, 2012Myworld was in Harrisburg to watch the doubleheader between the Portland Sea Dogs versus the Harrisburg Senators. The stadium is near a river, so when the lights came on the bugs showed up in mass, outnumbering the fans by at least 1,000 to 1. Leaving the ballpark you could not get to your car without crunching at least ten bugs for each step. I can’t imagine the pizza and hot dogs that became bug infested before a person could take their first bite, getting a bit of extra protein with their cheese. PETA would not have been happy with the carnage.
Once I got to my car there were at least 100 or so of these flying insects resting, hoping for a ride back to Virginia. I couldn’t help but allow a few of the critters to come flying into the car once I opened the door. Who knows how many of them were resting in my hair. While there is a law that does not allow texting while driving, fortunately there is no law about crunching flying bugs in your car while you are driving. I think I killed them all before I returned to Virginia at sometime after midnight.
The games was entertaining if the bugs were not. The Sea Dogs won the opener 3-2 after trailing the whole game. They scored two in the seventh inning on a Bryce Brentz lead off homer that he whacked into right field. They scored the go ahead run on a Zack Gentile single scoring Derrik Gibson from second. The throw from Eury Perez easily beat Gibson to the plate, but catcher Devin Ivany allowed the ball to skip past him.
The Senators got a good effort from Eury Perez who singled three times and stole second base after each single. His single in the first inning allowed the Senators to jump out to a 2-0 lead that they held for the first six innings. Jose Lozada drove him in for the first run with a double while Tim Pahuta hit a deep drive to center that was caught, but Lozada scored from third for the second run.
Jeremy Hazelbaker launched a deep drive into right field in the third inning. At 25 he is probably too old to start appearing on a top prospect list for the Red Sox, but myworld liked him.
The two starting pitchers for the game, Billy Buckner for the Sea Dogs and Mike Ballard for the Senators had the scouts resting their speed guns. There was no point in measuring each of their 85 mile an hour fastballs. Buckner got the complete game victory, while Ballard left with a one run lead after pitching six strong innings.
Game two saw the fire balling Stolmy Pimentel pitching for the Sea Dogs. His fastball was hitting between 94-96, but his other pitches were not getting over the plate. Myworld didn’t see much of a curveball or a change. After being shutout for the first three innings the Senator bats wailed on him for five in the fourth to win the night cap 5-2. The Senators massed six hits together, Chris McConnell getting the big blow with his bases loaded triple. Pimentel threw all six innings so the Sea Dogs must have been hurting with the pen for the manager to leave Pimentel in for the complete fourth inning thrashing. He pitched all six innings to get the loss.
Juan Carlos Linares drove in both runs for the Sea Dogs with an RBI single in the third and a solo blast in the sixth. The Senators only allowed Ryan Tatusko to go three innings and then brought in four different pitchers to finish the seven inning game. Hector Nelo picked up his fifth save after putting two runners on, bringing the tying run to the plate. He struck out the last two hitters Hazelbaker and Linares to finish the game.
Myworld completed our Star Spangled Banner tour. Francis Scott Key is buried in Frederick and lived there for much of his life. He penned the words to the Star Spangled Banner after watching the British bombard Fort McHenry for 25 hours and seeing the American flag still waving after the bombing was complete.
The words to the Star Spangled banner were brought to the attention of Harrisburg resident George Heisely, who was with the the First Regiment of Pennsylvania, called upon to assist the troops at Fort McHenry. Since he was the only person among the regiment that had a musical instrument (flute), he was the one selected to play the music that fit the poem written by Key. They looked through a song book and found the music to an old English drinking song “To Anacreon in Heaven”. It is a good thing there was not a lot of enforcement of copyrights or trademarks during those days because the music to the Star Spangled Banner was plagarized from an old English drinking song. Heisely lived at 2nd and Walnut, which is just a long stone’s throw from the stadium on the other side of the river.