On Thursday, May 12, 2016, the Zehr Insurance Bantam OBA team travelled to St. Thomas for its season opener game. Few errors coupled with a dominant presentation at the bats by the entire team, resulted in a 14 to 2 mercy over the St. Thomas Cardinals.
Jake MONDEN and Eric GETTLER both scored in the 1st inning with the RBI's going to Drew MACLEAN and Curt EIDT. After the 1st, the boys were in the lead and remained there for the duration of the game.
Alec MURRAY scored in the 2nd after hitting a single and then stole his way to 3rd. He was on the ball (pun intended) when he took advantage of an overthrow to the pitcher and slid across home plate.
MONDEN, GETTLER and MACLEAN all scored in the 3rd giving the boys a very comfortable lead.
The 4th inning the boys proved that they do not cave under pressure. While their first two batters were thrown out at first the rest of the team persevered and five more runs were scored by Ryan HARMER, MONDEN, GETTLER, MACLEAN and Kyle RICHARDSON. Aggressive base running put the runners in scoring position and allowed several RBI's. EIDT and James COPELAND both had hard hits earning them each an RBI. They made it through the entire batting order before getting their 3rd out.
With a thunderstorm imminent in the 5th, HARMER, Jackson MACARTHUR and Ben SMALL all scored runs to put the team in a position for a mercy. St. Thomas took their last at bat, but was unable to score any runs and just like that...the game was over.
Mitchell clearly had a solid offence, but its defense was stellar too. Both MONDEN and GETTLER attacked the strike zone while pitching and RICHARDSON demonstrated his powerful throws from center field. HARMER protected the plate and kept his teammates in the game yelling out calls and keeping the other team on its toes with his quick hard throws to second base.
Tremendous first game boys!