TriValley game vs. Crushers on March 30, 2003

We won our season opener against the Crushers, 19-12.

The Crushers jumped on Denny Brown for a 7-run first inning. We gave up a couple of extra outs, and the Crushers hit a few ropes.

We got two back in the bottom of the first when Zach Jones got a base hit to drive in Danny Moore and Phil Montes. Danny and Phil both reached on walks.

Art White led off the bottom of the second with a walk. He ended up scoring on Frank Bower's 1-out grounder.

The Crushers scored a pair of unearned runs with two outs in the third. It could have been worse, but a perfect relay from Randy Cobb to Mike Rezzonico to Phil nailed Don DeCordova at the plate.

We got those two right back. Phil walked, stole second and third, and then stole home on the back-end of a first-and-third double steal. Zach walked, moved to third on Jim Gardner's double, and scored on Mike's sac fly.

After a one-two-three inning in the top of the fourth, we put up 5 runs to go ahead in the bottom. The Crushers contributed a couple of errors, 4 walks, a hit batter, and a balk. Sal Esposito and Zach got base hits in the inning and Sandy Speier contributed a sac fly. Zach's hit produced two more RBI.

The Crushers tied it in the top of the fifth by manufacturing a run. Jim made a nice play on a tough grounder up the middle, but pulled Mike off the base at first. The runner from second barely beat Mike's throw home.

After getting two outs in the top of the 6th, Denny turned the ball over to Zach who struck out the lead-off hitter to end the inning.

We promptly gave Zach a big cushion to work with, scoring 9 runs in the bottom of the sixth. Danny led off with a base hit and ended up scoring on a wild pitch. Zach got another two-run single to put us up by three. Four walks and a couple of Crushers' errors contributed to the big inning.

Zach closed out his "vulture" win by getting Al Hillman to ground out to Gus Manning to end the game. He made it interesting by giving up 3 walks, a hit batter, and an infield hit before getting the final out.

Zach had a pretty good individual game: Winning pitcher, 3 for 3, 6 RBI, 2 runs, and a walk.

We need to shore up the defense. Our six errors gave the bad guys a bunch of extra outs. But the Crushers were even more generous than we were. The key statistic for the game was 16 walks and hit batter given up by Crusher pitchers. Those 17 free bases gave us plenty of opportunities to score. We cashed in on enough of them to overcome our sloppy defensive effort.