SQUIRRELS BLAST FIVE LONG BALLS, TAKE 2-0 SERIES LEAD

SQUIRRELS BLAST FIVE LONG BALLS, TAKE 2-0 SERIES LEAD
Northern Territories—The shellacking of the seemingly-hapless Finches continued in the second game of the 2008 BARB World Series, as five different players homered for the visiting Frostbite Falls Flying Squirrels in route to an 11-5 drubbing in Darwin.

The Squirrels got off to a rolling start, scoring twice in the first inning against Randy Johnson (0-1, 27.00) when the club bunched together four consecutive singles after the ‘Big Unit’ had fanned the first two batters of the game. Johnson seemed to be on a mission, pumping his fist after the second 'K', and this was interesting because he was widely rumored to be one of the believers in the Darwin clubhouse sniping at skeptical manager PZ Myers.

But Johnson's emotions may have got the best of him, with too many fastballs getting too much of the plate in the second. RF Corey Hart walked to lead off the frame, and after Johnson whizzed a called third strike past Carlos Pena for his third whiff of the affair, SS Edgar Renteria tied into a 1-1 pitch, punching it over the wall in left-center for a 4-0 lead! Michael Young then hit a DEEP fly to dead center that Aaron Rowand had to leap at the wall to corrall. Two outs, but Carlos Beltran then PULLED a no-doubted over the wall in right: 5-0, Frostbite Falls!

Johnson, apparently, was just leaving the ball out over the plate on pitch-after-pitch. The panicky Finches, already down 1-0 in the Series, yanked the big lefty and brought in Oliver Perez, who promptly walked Albert Pujols. Then, with the runner going and two out, Magglio Ordonez doubled into the left-center gap under the glove of a diving Milton Bradley, and the game was essentially over.

Cole Hamels (1-0, 6.14) basically dealt gooseeggs for the next three frames, and when he finally had a hiccup (giving up a boundary belt to Bradley), he already was nursing a 9-0 lead. As the game went on, Pena would homer against the lefty Perez and both Hart and Victor Martinez would add solo shots in ‘garbage time’ against venerable knuckleballer Tim Wakefield. Tony Pena and B.J. Ryan finished off the Finches in the final two frames:

FROSTBITE FALLS 11, DARWIN 5!

The Squirrels, having taken a 2-0 lead in the Series, would now head home for three games. If things continued to go their way, they might easily be world champs in just two more games. GM Andrew Haynes had a definite skip in his step exiting the Southern Hemisphere: it would be just fine with him and the rest of the Frostbite crew if they did not have to return, and with three world titles in five seasons, they could be forgiven for their quiet confidence.

The Finches, meanwhile, were a disaster but more subdued than their clubhouse meltdown after Game One. Manager PZ Myers declined to answer reporter’s questions about the role that religious belief might’ve had in poisoning the team’s chemistry, and instead pointed to what he called ‘the silver lining’: namely, that durable knuckleballer Tim Wakefield had saved the bullpen with three innings in long relief, as he had in the second game of the playoffs with Las Vegas, and that with a travel day, the club’s pitching would not be unduly strained. "If I didn’t think we could win four of the next five games," Myers concluded, "I’d say so. No more questions."