It was a wild night at the fields as we saw that it is, in fact, possible to shake up the standings even more than they already had. The most shocking moment of the night was the Welfare Warriors achieving their first victory of the season. Yes, you read right. The Warriors caught the Terrorhawks by surprise and escaped with a 4-1 victory. Michael Sumner has recently taken over the mound and done a great job getting the ball into the strike zone. Julie Meadows took the mound for the Terrorhawks and did pretty well with the exception of walking 15 batters. Both teams played well defensively, especially Luke Davis on the Welfare Warriors. Video from the game will be posted on the video page sometime within the next 24 hours.
Holy Balls also managed not to defeat the Maroon $quad, losing 7-2 in the final game of the evening. The game featured some of the best pitching thus far this year. Maroon $quad's team captain, Josh Hager, has been absent for the past 2 weeks and James Clagg has been improvising on the mound. He has risen to become one of the fastest pitchers in the league. Holy Balls answered later in the game by putting Brent Thompson on the mound, who can also throw quite fast, with fantastic results as he gave up no hits and struck out 6 batters. But the damage had already been done. The Holy Balls managed to score two runs in the bottom of the first but remained scoreless throughout the rest of the game. The main advantage Maroon $quad seems to exhibit over its opponents, including the Holy Balls, is the ability to take pitchers deep. All three of the team's players (Ryan Briers, Randy Steele, and James Clagg) hit two home runs each. Most of the home runs were solo shots so the damage could have been much worse. But this also tell us that Holy Balls are a hard team to play small ball on. They gobble up grounders and quickly get runners out and rarely drop a fly ball.
Maroon $quad remain undefeated (10-0) and have risen to #18 in the national rankings. The Holy Balls are not far behind at #23. As for the rest of the league, teams seem to be fighting for third place. Currently the Terrorhawks and Beaver Fever are tied for third, both with 4-6 records, while Pink Penguins are close behind with a 3-7 record. The real question seems to be will the third place team even have a record over .500 by the end of the season? Welfare Warriors, while finally winning one game, remain in the dust with a 1-9 record and have a lot of catching up to do. Can they catch other teams napping? Will they genuinely improve on offense and pose a real threat to the teams fighting for third place?
Week 6 looks to be promising as the schedule enters the time frame in which teams play double headers against the same teams for the next few weeks. These games will surely shake up the standings a little as teams figure out the strengths and weaknesses of their opponents. But with the season a little under halfway finished its still anyone's season. Below you can click on the scores to see the box scores and there are also a few pictures (CLICK HERE to see the entire album)
