sfoggi posted on July 05, 2011 21:10
WINTER PARK, Fla. (July 5, 2011) - Tuesday night’s game pinned the top two teams in the Florida Collegiate Summer League against each other as the Leesburg Lightning took on the Winter Park Diamond Dawgs in a battle of supremacy. The teams were at a virtual tie atop the standings as Leesburg sat at 14-6 and the Diamond Dawgs were 13-5-1.
The Lightning would win 10-9 in exciting fashion to take a one game lead in the standings.
Nic Kovacs (Lake Sumter CC) took the mound for the Lightning against Winter Park. Kovacs was the Lightning’s Opening Day starter and so far this season he has fit the bill. In his last start, he ran out of gas against Winter Haven. The Lightning would come from behind to win that game and it would be a similar story Tueaday night at Winter Park.
In the second inning, the Lightning put runners on with no outs but came close to stranding both runners until first baseman Chase Durham (Howard College) came up with a big single that plated Hunter Mayfield.
Mayfield, who plays for Rollins College and is very comfortable with Alfond Stadium, showed his familiarity with the park going 3-for-3 with a pair of runs in the game.
A balk in the third inning gave the Lightning a two run lead.
Kovacs didn’t allow a run until his fifth inning of work. He hadn’t allowed a walk all season, but broke that impressive streak with a base on balls in the third. Kovacs was able to get out of a jam in the fourth inning, but couldn’t work out of trouble in the fifth. He had trouble getting the final out of the inning and Winter Park knocked in four runs to take a 4-2 lead. Kovacs was pulled in favor of big right-hander Carlton Patton (Dallas Baptist).
Both teams traded runs in the sixth inning to move the score to 5-3.
The Lightning would explode in the seventh inning though. With the tying run in scoring position Georgia Tech product Zane Evans put a hurt on a ball sending it to deep right centerfield and narrowly missing a home run. The double tied the game and Evans would score off of a Durham single, who then scored on a single by red-hot Tom Sicking (UTPA). The Lightning took a 7-5 lead, but it didn’t last long.
In the home half of the seventh, the Diamond Dawgs fought back and tied the game off of Patton. The skipper would then turn the ball over to the ever-dominant pitching machine that is Max Rusch (Flagler), who worked out of a jam in the seventh.
His team would pick him up, breaking the tie with a three run eighth. Once again Evans crushed a ball to the wall for his second double in two innings and his third and fourth RBIs of the game.
With a three run lead, it looked as though the Lightning had delivered the knockout blow, but in the bottom of the eighth a rare off pitch by Rusch was sent a good 400 feet from home plate by Ted Blackman (Coastal Carolina) for a two-run home run. And like that, the lead was cut to one.
But this lead, the most important, would be one the Lightning would hold on to, as Rusch would stay in to finish the game pitching 2 2/3 innings.
The 19 run, 29 hit parade against Winter Park continues with a doubleheader on Friday, July 8 at Pat Thomas Stadium starting at 5:00 p.m.
Nick Beardi (Medaille College)