Cold weather
and colder bats made for a chilly result in Battle Creek's season-opener
at C.O. Brown Stadium Thursday night.
The same Lansing club that eliminated Battle Creek from the 2003
Midwest League playoffs also handed the Yankees their first loss of
2004. Battle Creek managed just four hits while dropping a 3-0 decision
to the Lugnuts before 1,009 fans, all of them bundled up to ward off a
game-time temperature of 44 degrees.
"It's not very fun to lose, especially your home opener,"
said Battle Creek's Bryce Kartler, who served as the team's designated
hitter Thursday. "You'd like to come out and put your best foot
forward, but tonight they took one from us. But the best part about
baseball is you get to come out and do it again."
The Yanks, who announced a paid attendance of 1,360, host Lansing
again tonight at 6 p.m. and hope to heat up the chilly temperatures up
with a postgame fireworks display.
But the team, which suffered an Opening Day shutout for just the
second time in 10 seasons, wasn't using the cold weather as an excuse.
"I didn't think it was that bad out there today. We played in
worse last year," said Battle Creek manager Mitch Seoane, who began
his second straight season as the team's skipper. "I'm not gonna
blame anything on the weather. They had to play in it too."
And Yankee starting pitcher Chase Wright made sure the Lugnuts had a
hard time playing in it. During six strong innings of work, the
left-hander held Lansing to five hits and one run while striking out
six.
Lansing's lone run against Wright (0-1) came in the sixth when Ryan
Dopiriak led off with a double down the left-field line, went to third
on a wild pitch and scored on Drew Larsen's sacrifice fly to center.
"He pitched well," said Seoane. "For the most part he
worked ahead in the count and he pitched good enough to win."
So did Lansing starter Sean Marshall,
who also went six innings and stuck out seven while allowing just three
hits.
Melky Cabrera delivered the first of those hits, leading off Battle
Creek's season with a sharp single to right. But Marshall
(1-0) would erase Cabrera on a double play and retire 13 straight
batters before allowing a two-out single to Omir Santos in the fifth.
Marshall also worked around
Rafael Rodriguez's one-out single in the sixth, then handed things over
to his bullpen.
Meanwhile, Lansing extended its lead with runs in the seventh and
eighth against reliever Brandon Harmsen, though Battle Creek's second
error of the game made the last run unearned. Ryan Fitzgerald's
seventh-inning sacrifice fly drove home Kyle Boyer, then Boyer capped a
4-for-4 night with his eighth-inning RBI single.
Battle Creek's best chance to avoid duplicating the franchise's 2002
Opening Day shutout came in the seventh inning. Lansing reliever Clay
Rapada opened the frame with a strikeout of Eric Duncan, then Erold
Andrus delivered a single to left and Kartler was hit by a pitch to put
runners at first and second.
But Rapada ended the threat with strikeouts of Santos and Estee
Harris, then Lansing's Randy Wells worked a scoreless eighth. Sidearmer
Weston O'Brien finished things off in the ninth, surviving a one-out
walk of Andrus to earn the save.
"A couple of the opportunities that we had offensively, we
didn't come through with a hit," said Seoane. "But we'll get
better. I'm not panicking. It's the first game."
Originally published Friday, April 9, 2004
