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KANNAPOLIS — First, the good news. The Piedmont Boll Weevils’ annual July 4 postgame fireworks show on Tuesday night attracted the the largest crowd ever to watch the Weevils play baseball at Fieldcrest Cannon Stadium.
The bad news? The overflow throng of 5,534 that assembled in Kannapolis got to see their beloved rockets, but didn’t really get to see the Weevils (55-29) play their usual brand of baseball. The Weevils suffered a miserable 9-3 loss to the Columbus Red Stixx (46-38).
But trust us folks, these weren’t the Weevils.
At least not the Weevils that manager Greg Legg and 1,500 or so hard-core Weevil fans have gotten used to seeing. These weren’t the Weevils who won the first-half pennant going away in the South Atlantic League’s Northern Division and who started crisply in the second half.
Prior to last night, the Weevils had been beaten by as many as six runs only three times — and one of those was opening day. This was only the eighth time in 94 games that the Weevils have yielded as many as nine runs. No one had put up a nine-spot on the Weevils since May 27.
Piedmont, second in the SAL in hitting and first in pitching, didn’t hit or pitch. That happens to every team occasionally over the course of a long baseball season (note the Atlanta Braves, who lost 17-1 the other day). Unfortunately, it happened last night to the Weevils with a whole bunch of potential new fans in the stands.
Both the fans and Legg played a waiting game from the first pitch onward.
Legg waited for his offense to show up. The fans waited and waited and waited for those fabulous fireworks. Through a game that lasted 3 hours, 10 minutes, and through a 45-minute sixth-inning rain delay.
Most of the fans, to the delight and amazement of GM Todd Parnell, hung around to the bitter, bitter end at nearly 11 p.m.
It started badly for the Weevils and got worse.
Starting pitcher Matire Franco continued to have tough times. Franco hasn’t won since tossing a gem against Greensboro on June 5. The Weevils have won 17 times since June 5. No fewer than seven different Piedmont hurlers have notched wins since Franco last claimed a victory.
Sadly, Franco didn’t have his good stuff — or even his average stuff. Columbus rapped him for eight solid hits in a hurry, driving him from the box with no outs in the third and with the Weevils already down 5-0.
But that was OK. The Weevils have come back so many times this season that the statisticians have stopped counting. And they had every chance to come back again because Elio Serrano provided a lift with four shutout innings of relief. Then bullpen newcomer Ryan Brookman added two more scoreless frames.
But the Weevil bats were conspicuously silent. In the first four innings, the Weevils had 12 baserunners — four singles, seven walks and a hit batsman. Somehow, they turned that gracious plenty of opportunities into a mere three runs.
It was ugly. The Weevils loaded the bases with no outs in the second and couldn’t score. Buzz Hannahan and Julio Collazo struck out, sandwiching a Shomari Beverly lineout.
In the fourth, three walks set up a sacrifice fly by Collazo and a bloop two-run single over first base by Nate Espy. But that was it. The only other shouting by the damp crowd was for Marlon Byrd’s two steals and, of course, for the anticipated fireworks.
Columbus’ last pitcher, Rick Matsko, looked like the new Roger Clemens, fanning six of the 11 Weevils he faced.
The game became unkempt in the ninth when the Weevils’ fourth hurler, Justin Fry, suffered a rare bad inning. Fry surrendered three walks and four runs in an awful outing, which did not endear him to fireworks-hungry fans. Fry’s ERA soared nearly a full run — from 2.45 to 3.44. He had yielded only nine earned runs all season prior to last night’s disaster.
The good news is that Piedmont’s hottest pitcher — 19-year-old Brett Myers (9-2) — throws tonight and there’s little doubt the Weevils will return to playing like world-beaters.
The bad news? Roughly 4,000 fewer people will be there to see them.
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