The
Blog of Regular Joes World
Season 27 -
Issue #7
May 23, 2021 - PM2
Edition
Houston Bulls Start Championship Defense In winning
Fashion
The Houston Bulls received their World Championship Rings before
taking the field at Minute Maid Park, Houston to start the defense of their
Season 26 ML World Championship. They
won a hard-fought pitcher’s duel over the visiting inter-division rival, San
Antonio Lightning by a score of 4-to-1.
Dexter Smith was awarded the start on the mound for the Bulls and
he did not disappoint the home town crowd, going eight innings, allowing only
four hits and one run while striking out seven and walking none.
In the top of the first inning, Smith struck out the side,
sandwiched around a Dorssys Moya double.
The #3 hitter for San Antonio, rookie, Jesus Samuel; he of a total of
20-major league at-bats, went ballistic on home plate umpire T.B. Myce when he
was called out on strikes and received the heave ho!
Baseball-Reference is scanning their huge archives of game data to
see if Samuel set a record or not for fastest ejection of a player at the start
of his ML career. It’s not the 1st
time, nor will it be the last that Samuel, known to have a hot temper; has been
thrown out of a game in his professional.
It was not a good way to ingratiate his way into the good graces of the
umpire fraternity.
San Antonio starting pitcher Greg Freitas, made only two big
mistakes. The first was when he gave up
a solo homerun to Houston’s star left fielder, Benny Domingo to lead off the
bottom of the 1st inning.
Then he made a drastic mistake in the bottom of the 3rd inning.
After Houston’s shortstop, Ivan Syndergaard blooped a single to
right field, Domingo grounded one in the hole between 1st and 2nd
base that San Antonio 2nd baseman, Max Martin dove for and knocked
it down, but it rolled too far away from Martin for him to retrieve it in time
to get Domingo at first.
Freitas didn’t hold back his emotions, looking angry given the two
cheap hits that had him in a heap of trouble.
Freitas got the first out, but on his first pitch to Houston’s Hiroki
Wan, he hung a curve ball right in Wan’s wheelhouse, and Wan lined a blast 20
feet up into the stands over the 373-foot marker in right center field to give
Houston a 4-run lead.
Freitas would get out of the 3rd inning without any
further damage, but he was replaced by reliever Dom Bowman to start the 4th
inning. This appears to have been by
design of the San Antonio management…to use tandom pitching starters for this
game.
Meanwhile Houston’s, Smith was breezing on the mound. Through five innings, San Antonio was only
able to put a single runner on base, with the game settling into a pitcher’s
duel and the hitters on both sides looking bad at the plate in the process..
San Antonio would score a run off Smith on 22-year old, Rookie catcher
Gene Coppolecchia’s solo home run to lead off the sixth inning. It was Coppolecchia’s 2nd at bat
in the big leagues. This game sure was a
game of firsts for San Antonio rookies.
Two San Antonio relief pitchers would throw five shoutout innings
of one hit ball, striking out seven Houston batters in the process, but The
Lightning could not “strike” against Dexter Smith in the seventh or eighth
innings and he turned the game over in the ninth to Houston’s newly acquired Noel
James who shut down San Antonio’s bats 1-2-3 to seal it.
San Antonio put up a valiant battle but it was not enough to take
the first game of this season opening series from the mighty defending Champs. Between both teams, there were only nine
total hits and one walk, and the sell-out Houston crowd pretty much fell asleep
in the latter innings.
Houston 1 – 0 1.000
San Antonio 0 - 1 0.000
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