Breaking out the Brooms again!

A slow offensive beginning on both sides made this a pitcher's duel until the 5th when the Blue Crabs would take a one run lead scored by Travis Garcia on a Chuck Jeroloman RBI single. Travis singled and was moved to second on a Jeremy Owens ground out and then on to third on a Lance Burkhart sacrifice fly, the most beautiful play in all of baseball.

The Blue Crabs would score a total of 6 runs in the game, 3 coming in the 6th scored by James Shanks, Jermy Acey and Eric Crozier. And then a run each in the 8th and 9th scored by Jermy Acey and Mike Just respectively. James lead off the 6th with a double and would come in to score on Jermy's single which would be the game winning RBI as the Ducks were unable to get more than one run off of ace pitcher John Halama. Jermy moved to third on Eric's double and then both were brought in on sacrifice flies by Travis Garcia and Jeremy Owens. Jermy singled again in the 8th and would come in on a Jeremy Owens single 3 batters later. For the final run Mike would single to lead off the 9th move to second on a James Shanks walk and then come in to score on an attempted "strike-em out, throw-em out" double play that resulted in a throwing error by the catcher as no one was covering second base. Also on the throwing error James would move to third but was however stranded there.

Defensively the Blue Crabs were again on fire. Left handed starting pitcher John Halama went for his third complete game win improving his record to 7-0. Last season John only pitched 8 games with the Blue Crabs before being called up by the Cleveland Indians to play in their AAA team in Buffalo. Last season he had a record of 4-1 with an era of 1.91. Although a year older having gone 3 complete games and holding a record of 7-0 he shows that he is still able to play the game with the best of them. It would not surprise me if he was called up soon, although should he stay in this league he is almost a shoe in for pitcher of the year. He gave up 7 hits in todays game surrendering one run, struck out two batters and walked a guy. Most impressively I think was him catching the final out, that was lined right back at him by Ducks catcher John Pachot.

In other Blue Crabs news: They look to return home for a 7 game series against the Bridgeport Bluefish who lost tonight and the York Revolution who were not in action tonight. With the Blue Crabs win they extend their lead over Long Island to 5.5 games, improve 5 games ahead of Camden who were not in action tonight, and move to 10 games ahead of the Bridgeport Bluefish. Again third baseman Patrick Osborn was not in the line-up but he himself was quoted as saying he was expecting to be out of action for 7-10 days. As the Blue Crabs return home I would expect to see him worked back into the line-up slowly. Also it is anticipated that John Ramistella will be returning to Southern Maryland with this opening series against Bridgeport. Hopefully this comes to fruition and perhaps he can help us to continue our first place dominance.

Tomorrow's game is scheduled for a 7:05 pm start with a free team poster giveaway to the first 1000 fans. The hometown weather forecast calls for isolated thunderstorms in the area throughout the day. Hopefully there will be about a 5-hour break in the storms from 6-11pm so we can get the whole game in.