With the Pirates in the midst of 9 games in 15 days, why not mix in a bachelor party.  It isn’t hot enough out, why not starve your liver of water.

Friday the Pirates played in the River Rumble, the annual game in Hastings for Rivertown Days.  Adam Barta squared off against Derrick Marks and they didn’t disappoint.  Both threw exception but in the end, Hastings walked off on the Pirates in the bottom of the 9th inning giving them a 2-1 victory.

Saturday was a full day for the home squad.  Spring Valley came to town and the bats woke up by scoring four in the first inning.  They would continue to hit the ball all over the park and eventually would run rule the Hawks in the 8th.  Nick Johnson started and pitched well, only giving up one run on a few hits, walking zero and striking out a handful.

Saturday night was a fun-filled evening at the Ross residence as most of the team celebrated Alex Ross’s bachelor party.  I don’t know who organized the bachelor party in the midst of 4.5 games in 5 days but he should be fired.

So we come to Sunday, Plum City is in town to not only play our regularly scheduled game, but also finish of 4.2 innings from the postponement in Plum City.  The Pirates finished off the first game winning 7-0 and took care of the second game 9-3.  The offense kept chugging  along, putting together great AB’s and squaring up a bunch of balls against the great Tony Garner.  Eric Monson picked up another W in the first game and Jesse Tollefson came in relief of Monson in the second game to pick up another W as well.

Sorry for the lack of statistics and in general, really piss poor reporting.  All I know is we got through the week going 3-1, the bachelor party was a success but most guys need a minor reprieve.

Prescott traveled to Cannon Falls to take on Bears in a non conference matchup.  Mark Erickson was on the mound for Prescott for his first start of the season and did well, throwing four shutout innings.  Eric Monson came in relief of Erickson and pitched three more scoreless innings before giving way to Billy Brookshaw.  Brookshaw allowed a single run in two innings of work.  Overall the pitching and defense were solid sans a few HBP’s.

Offensively the umpire kept the Pirates in check.  Oh wait, I am not supposed to write that but it was true.  He called two of our runners out at home that were clearly safe and it was apparent early he didn’t want to be there.  It was either that or he had sweat running in his glasses or there was some bombshell blondy in the stands because a monkey could have made those calls.

Either way, the Pirates were up 1-0 going into the 5th where they scored 5 runs with 4 straight two out hits.  Jake Hintz, William Brookshaw, Derrick Funson and Jared Powell all drove in runs.  I clearly can’t remember how we scored the final two runs as I am pretty sure we all had heat exhaustion by then, it was pretty foggy from the 7th inning on.

One final thing to note.  There was a magnificent double play turned by new combination of Powell and Funson in the middle, caveat being the MGR had to nicely scoop Powell’s errant throw.

River Rumble on Friday, game starts at 8.

Saturday, Hager City traveled to Prescott for a division clash.  Nick Johnson started on the hill for the Pirates and didn’t disappoint.  He threw five shutout innings, striking out 4 while giving up 4 hits.  Eric Monson came in relief of Johnson and picked up another save throwing four shutout innings.  The offense struggled again against Skeeter starter Elliot Foley.  He has had their number lately and until Chris Terrazas’s three run HR in the 8th, the offense was only able to manage three runs.  The final score was 6-0 which moved the Pirates to 8-1 over all in the SCVBL.

Sunday the Pirates played in Hudson against the River Rats.  Alex Ross had a big game going 4-5 with four rbi.  Ross drove in the first run of the game put the Pirates up 1-0 in the 3rd.  Hudson scored 2 in the bottom of the third but the Pirates scored five times in the top of the 4th to break the game open, putting the squad up 6-2.  Ross’s single in the 7th plated another run to make it 7-2, which was the final score.   Jesse Tollefson threw 7 innings giving up zero earned runs, 2 runs were charged to the umpire for being old and decrepid and not seeing an obvious touch of the bag at second, and Adam Barta came in the close up shop.

Overall another successful weekend with the Pirates now 9-1 in the SCVBL.  This week we have four games which should be interesting.  We have really fun games in Cannon Falls and Hastings and then home conference games vs Spring Valley and Plum City.  The whole squad will be on display, come out and catch a game.

Quote of the weekend.

Old Man umpire “I know they were strikes but I want to see the other team hit the ball.”

Prescott traveled down HWY 35 to play the Red Wing Aces, a team on a 10 game winning streak, just one shy of the Pirates.  We knew going in that it was going to be a good battle and it was.  Both teams played clean baseball but Red Wing scored 6 runs off of Adam Barta in the 3rd inning to erase a 2 run Pirate lead.  Prescott jumped back with 2 more runs on Jared Powell’s single to plate Jake Hintz and Billy Brookshaw.  Both teams traded runs as Jim French launched a solo shot to left field, but unfortunately for the Pirates, they didn’t push across anymore runs and lost 7-5.

Chris Terrazas had 3 hits, Jared Powell had 2 with 3 rbi, Billy Brookshaw had two hits and the aforementioned French hit a solo HR.  On a side note, the manager was spined like a deer with a bow and looked pretty embarrassing doing so.  Inside joke.