Hicksville, New York - The season debut of Dave "Kegstand" Kheel and the addition of random peeps, Ken Neidert and John Schaefer, ignited a season high 40 run outburst as the Gamers swept the Hurricanes 22-10 and 18-3 to improve to 5-1 on the young season. Lcf Brian Malfettone went 7 for 8 with 6 rbis and SS Rob Roll went 9 for 9 with 3 legit homeruns to lead the Gamers attack. However, their impressive hitting outburst was overshadowed by their uncharacteristic sloppy play.
A day after watching the Mets and Yankees commit 5 errors, the Gamers turned in a similar performance on a windy and dusty day at Hicksville's Cantiague Park. Kheel who went 5 for 7 with 5 runs and 5 rbis, dropped a would be double play return throw from 2b Rob Rathbun and later stepped on the wrong base allowing another runner to reach base.
Not to be outdone by Kheel, lf Dave Roll slipped turning a single into a double and ran past another ball in route to allowing another extra base hit. He was later moved to rf to hide his defensive defencies but it did little good as he dropped a routine fly ball. In his defense, Roll said, "I dropped the ball on purpose because I wanted to nail the guy out at home plate."
And he did just that as his relay throw to Rob Rathbun resulted in one of the Gamers 5 putouts on the day at 3rd base or home plate. 2 of those putouts were on flip plays to the catcher on bases loaded comebackers to the mound that starting pitcher Craig Shames should have just taken himself to get the safer out. Instead he dangerously risked the throws on a day when the Gamers made a season high 9 errors.
Speaking of Shames, he had a performance that only Victor Zambrano could be proud of, as he walked an ABA record 37 batters in the two games. Amazingly, he only allowed 13 runs on the day as he got the Hurricanes to strand at least two runners on base in every inning.When asked why he struggled so much, Shames said, "it was so dusty that I couldn't see home plate because it was buried under a layer of dirt. On top of that I didn't have a pitching rubber to work off of because that was buried too. And my glasses were blocked with a layer of dirt as well that made it hard to see. "
Gamers manager William Bezouska saw it differently though. "Craig's probably going to make excuses for why he didn't pitch well, " Bezouska said. "But truth be told, Craig was just afriad to throw the ball over to this team's minority players. Craig's afraid of any minority that is over 6 ft tall or weighs more than 180 pounds. And it didn't help that one of them had a mean looking goatee."
The Gamers have a bye next week for Memorial weekend, which will give them plenty of time to work out their kinks and for Shames to find the strike zone.
"In a pefect world, every batter would be like Jose Reyes," Shames said. "But we don't live in a perfect world."
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