Baseball! Disney Style!

     Before conveying my thoughts on today's game(yesterday's actually. It's after midnight), I want to first comment on Scott Richmond's performance yesterday. He pitched much better than his numbers would indicate. Unfortunately, his defensive backup was the kind of stuff that fuels blooper reels. I'm not really sure where inexperience gave way to complacency, but my heart goes out to Scott.

     Today's game at Disney's Wide World of Sports in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, offered a different sort of entertainment as I suffered through my $6.00 hotdog and $9.00 miniature Philly Cheesesteak Sandwich. The bats came alive today producing thirteen hits including doubles from Edwin Encarnacion and John Tolisano with RBI's from Cory Patterson, Encarnacion, Kenny Wilson, Jason Lane and Brian Jeroloman. Each man in the starting lineup reached base at least once. The only home run of the game came from Jose Bautista. Unfortunately, the brisk Eastern wind blew it back into the park causing one to ask the question, "How hard do you gotta hit the damn thing to get it outa here?"

     Equally impressive was the three scoreless-inning performance by Jesse Litsch. Allowing only one hit, he struck out four and walked none while facing only eleven batters. He had noticeably late movement on everything he threw. He constantly changed speeds on even his fastball which ranged from 88-93 mph. I noticed he went to his curveball more often than I've seen in the past. Throwing in an occassional change-up, the opposing hitters stayed off-balance.

     Without going too much into detail, Marc Rzepcynski had a bit rougher outing. Beginning  with a single by Chipper Jones, he surrendered five hits, a walk and three earned runs in a brief 2/3 innings.

    Again, Canada was well-represented as evidenced by the multitude of Ontario license plates in the parking lot.