Raptors early efforts foiled by Musketeers

British Single-A League
London Musketeers 25 Herts Raptors 13
Adrian Smithers reporting form Grovehill Ballpark

Baseball relies upon its history and traditions more so than many other sports that are played nowadays. Personally I have relied upon the technologies allowed to me, as invaluable assets, whilst compiling my reports so far this season. Gamechanger and other apps being a huge aid to the memory, when concentration at the time is focused purely upon the game and its current situation. This week I don’t have that. So in the interest of accuracy, no stats will be quoted.

The Raptors started the game playing error free baseball and accordingly found themselves with a 6-0 lead after the first three innings. Raptors starting pitcher Michael Cresswell (pictured above) holding the Musketeers to a single hit whilst walking two batters. The London team put their first run on the board in the fourth, with Raptors replying in kind to keep their lead at six runs.

The Musketeer bats finally found their rhythm in the fifth inning scoring five runs without reply to pull the game back to within a run at 7-6. They scored five more in the sixth inning as Witter took over the pitching duties from Cresswell, with men already on base. Raptors could only add one run to their score in the bottom of the inning and found themselves behind for the first time in the game with the score now 11-8 to London.

The momentum was now firmly with the Musketeers. Despite Raptors manager Jones’s roboration between innings, Musketeers scored a further four runs, in the seventh, as mistakes and frustrations appeared to creep into the Raptors game. Musketeers repeated this feat adding a further four runs in the eighth inning. Needing to score twice in order to prolong the game into the ninth, Raptors scored 3 runs without an out before a pick off play to first base saw Kosak called out, to the astonishment of the Raptors dugout, on a tag that was applied to his leg that seemed clearly to already be back on the bag. The resulting protest and comment made after a warning for equipment abuse led to his ejection by the umpire.

The Musketeers scored a further six runs in the top of the ninth widening the void to 25-12. Raptors failed to score in the bottom of the inning. So with the aid of a ghost run – that doesn’t appear on the j.peg of a scorecard that I’ve been working from – the final score was 25-13!*

Raptors manager Rob Jones said, “This game was much closer than the score line suggests. Michael Cresswell pitched a gem for us and it was frustrating to let the game get away from us at the end. But London came back very strong. We have to work hard on keeping our bats going and close games out for the win.”

Raptors travel to Haverhill Blackjacks on Sunday 8th June.

*As submitted by London Musketeers.