Recap
Harmony Sea Kittens (4-1, 8-1) wrapped up MSCR Monroe League first-half make-up play with a convincing 18-5 win over Caribou Bou Crew (1-4, 3-6) at Olbrich Park Wednesday night, a week after eking out a 7-6 win over the same team to clinch the league’s second-half title.
After back-to-back games in which Sea Kittens scored only seven runs and on a night when the squad was held scoreless for the first two innings, Roadrunner Hauer and Dan DynamOele reignited the offense with four hits apiece. Backed by outstanding defense, pitcher Joe Hennessy carried a shutout to the bottom of the 6th inning, where only a badly missed call opened the door for the Bou Crew offense to post a handful of runs.
The early innings reprised the teams’ previous 2018 matchup, in which both starting pitchers stayed around the plate and induced generally weak contact. After exchanging zeroes for two innings, Los Gatos got a spark from the bottom of the batting order in the top of the third inning. Sweet Thing Harkins drilled a triple to left-center, and came home on Hauer’s first hit of the night. KC “Ropes” Curtis reached on a brilliantly executed swinging bunt, and when the late throw to first sailed down the right field line the Bou Crew learned where Roadrunner gets her name, as the speedy Hauer scored from second on the play. Curtis alertly scampered to second, and the baserunning moxie paid off when Oele followed with a double.
Harmony set Caribou down 1-2-3 in the bottom of the inning and came back to bat looking to add to its 3-0 lead. And add it did. Mama Cat O’Brien opened the inning with a two-bagger. Polish Puma Latzka blooped an infield double, and Red Shoes Hewitt loaded the bases with a walk, something the Cats began to do once the weather started to get really hot. Harkins let his walking do the talking and brought home two runs on a three-pitch base on balls. Hewitt scampered home on another Bou Crew overthrow trying to catch Hauer, and an out later Curtis smacked her second hit of the night and collected her first run batted in of the season to push Harmony’s lead to 7-0. Hits from DynamOele and Schultzy Oele loaded the bases for Hennessy, who missed clearing them by scant feet, banging a line drive double off the center-field fence to extend the advantage to 10-0. It was not until batters 11-13 in the inning that Caribou was able to record the final two outs it needed to stop the bleeding.
The Kitten defense stayed on task and Hennessy worked around two tow-out hits to post another goose egg in the scorebook, and the Cats’ bats got back at it, sending another 10 batters to the plate in the fifth to score six more runs, highlighted by a worm-burner two-run triple from Man-Aaron Jossart.
Entering the bottom of the sixth inning with an 18-0 advantage, Sea Kittens set out to secure the second shutout in franchise history. Hennessy was greeted by a booming double to right-center, but when the Bou Crew batter tried to extend the hit to a triple, Latzka hit Jossart with a perfect cut off throw and Jossart’s relay to DynamOele mowed down the runner three feet short of third base… but perhaps shrouded by dust or perhaps mildly sympathetic to the lost Caribou cause, Le Bleu didn’t see it that way. The Crew broke through on the next batter, when a throw to first sailed past O’Brien, and with the opening, staged a mini-rally. The home fans still left in attendance were treated to consolation fireworks by virtue of a two-out three-run homer to right to cap the Caribou scoring.
Bou Crew