Caissons Baseball Off to Winning Start

Report from Coach C

Last night, the Caissons Baseball team took to the field for its 3rd, Season opener (first 2 snowed out). They travelled to Lynchburg to take on Holy Cross who had the on-field edge having already played 4 games. Because of weather, this was the first time the Caissons would put its starting 9 all on the field at one time as a team. Naturally, there would be kinks as we determined where we stood as a unit.

The game started out rough as Duffer found out that pitching in a game is a lot different then throwing off the mound in the gym. He stated out okay, but then struggled and gave up 2 quick runs and Holy Cross had the bases loaded with 2 outs. Before the game could get out of hand, a pitching change was made and in came Dwyer, he gave up one walk for a run to make the score 3 – 0 and then got the final out of the inning. Time to bat. The caissons got some base runners but unable to push a run across the plate.

Dwyer would pitch the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th innings, giving up no more runs as the Caissons’ bats got on track to come back and take a 4 – 3 lead going in to the 5th inning. Again, a pitching change was made and Wade was brought in to try and close out the last few innings. A HR by Holy Cross in the 5th tied the score at 4 each. Wade would then shut them down for the rest of the 5th, 6th, and 7th. The only problem was that the Caissons could not get another run across.

So at the end of the 7-inning game the score was tied 4 – 4. On to extra innings. The 8th inning would see both teams scoreless and we’d move on to the 9th. The light was starting to fade, so there was not much time left. And not much was needed. After a lead-off walk and a stolen base followed by a grounder, the Caissons had the go-ahead run sitting on 3rd base with one out. Wade came to the plate and hit a long fly ball  that was caught, but we got the run across to give a 5 – 4 lead.

On to the bottom of the 9th inning. The first batter was struck out. Just 2 outs to go…then a slow roller, a walk and a double steal gave Holy Cross runners on 2nd and 3rd with the same batter up who hit the HR in the 5th. Wade cranked it up a notch and struck him out for out number 2, but Holy Cross still had 2 runners in scoring position. But that is where they would stay as Wade notched his 9th strike out to end the game and get a big W for the Caissons.

Final Score in Extra Innings 5 – 4. (see full box score here: http://www.gc.io/game-512c4391d181008dee000007).

For a first game and, really, our first time out of the gym and onto a field, the team did very well. Much tougher tests await in the coming weeks with 3 more VIC games. The Caissons are 1 – 0 in the VIC now.