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One thing I didn’t mention earlier, that already happened on April 8, 1977: Samuel Serra of the Dallas Stars has become the first player in ABL history to hit for the cycle in a 20-10 blowout of the Pittsburgh Miners.
Now, back to our Raccoons, who were facing a 12-game home stint. I had experimented with our leadoff hitter a bit and had for the moment decided on our Luxembourgian Johan Dolder, who was put in LF. If production from Wyatt Johnston (.188) and Ben Simon (.220) would kick in now, we could be just fine.
Dolder also homered to left to start the first inning in the first game against the Indianapolis Indians. From there, the Raccoons never trailed thanks to fine pitching by Matt Huber, Kevin Hatfield, and Ben Green, who finally got his first save in a 2-1 win. Another low-scoring game followed, this time with the Indians up 2-0, after their starter Jorge Vallejo limited the Raccoons to three hits in eight innings. The Raccoons lost the rubber game, when Brett Justice walked in the winning run for the Indians in the top 10th in a 3-2 loss.
The Raccoons continued with shockingly weak offense. They scored two to start against Oklahoma City in the second inning after a nicely executed double steal, but Alex Miranda was burned for four runs on four hits in the seventh inning and we lost 4-2. No offense. After hitting .450 in the first two weeks of the season, Sánz was now barely hitting anything, and the rest of the lineup followed suit. The middle game in the series was another depressing loss, 3-2 after 12 innings. The sweep was completed with another 4-2 loss to Thunder.
Slowly but surely this started to look like a boat load of trouble. Now at 5-14 the Raccoons had long lost contact with the rest of the division. They were leading the majors in K’s and were close to the bottom in batting average with very few walks in there as well. Mediocre pitching didn’t help. They would next face the Atlanta Knights, who were 9-9, but had lost their last four. Would they be able to jump on the bandwagon?
No. Ned Ray was wrecked for six runs in three plus innings and the Raccoons only got their usual two runs in the 8-2 wipeout, followed by a 100% increase in output by the Raccoons lineup. This was still far from enough against the big bats the Knights had brought and the team went down 9-4. I was clueless. On paper, this should really be a .500 team. Now they were not even a .250 team anymore. I demoted Robby Davis to AAA and brought up David Correa, a 32 yr old veteran. Correa was put into LF, Dolder moved to CF, and Anderson benched. Anderson led the team in steals with six, but was outright horrible at the plate. Turned out, Correa was as well, going 0-3 in his first game. Knights won, 3-2.
In other news:
April 20 – The Las Vegas Aces’ outfielder Fabio Tigre is out for the season with a broken elbow. He looks like a solid player and started hitting at .308 before being injured.
Raccoons dead last. Pyth. Record is 8-14, by the way, while neither the Titans nor the Indians would have a winning record this way. Loggers would lead 12-9, Raccoons 4.5 GB. We have actually scored nine more runs than the Indians.
I don’t know, maybe it’s me, maybe I’m just too much of a useless dumb moron for this game. I’ll be crying behind the bat rack. Once I’m done being a pussy, the home stint will conclude against the Crusaders, followed by a weeklong road trip for Milwaukee and Pittsburgh, the latter marking the first interleague series, followed by one at home against Los Angeles.
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