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Freedom Triumph on Independence Weekend

Sunday, July 3, 2011 2:37am

The Lightning lost a heartbreaker in front of a packed house at Pat Thomas Stadium. The loss, a 3-2 defeat at the hands of the last place Orlando Freedom will leave a bitter taste in the mouths of the players and coaches.

Coach Therneau has been adamant all season in stressing the importance of clutch hitting and in games that Leesburg has won, their timely hitting has been spot on. And when it hasn’t or when they catch a few bad bounces like on Saturday, they find themselves battling from behind.

In the second inning with runners on first and second, Troy Drummond was hit by a Mike Miller line drive that would have scored the runner on second but instead went for an out and kept the runner on second. Orlando escaped the inning without allowing a run.

The Lightning struck first when Hunter Mayfield scored off of a fielder’s choice on a Zane Evans grounder in the fourth.

Starter Dylan Hathcock was fantastic in his last start and continued to be lights out on the mound for the first few innings Saturday. He didn’t allow a hit through three innings and only allowed a blooper single in the fourth.

In the fifth inning, a dropped fly ball in the infield would come back to bite Leesburg. The next two batters smoked two Hathcock pitches for doubles. Probably the only two pitches that got away from Hatchcock all night, the extra run that they produced via the error would prove costly in the later innings.

Hathcock continued to pitch and lasted seven innings, working himself out of trouble in his final frame on the mound. With runners on second and third and no outs, Hathcock got the next Freedom hitters to line out to the shortstop, strike out swinging and then made a great tag on a runner at the plate to keep the score 2-1.

David Lucroy would come in to relieve Hathcock in the eighth and couldn’t quite find his location. With the bases loaded, he walked a runner home and the score became 3-1. Max Rusch entered the game and struck out A.J. Mackey to end the Freedom threat in the eighth.

The home half of the eighth started with a walk by Mike Miller who proceeded to advance to second and then to third on a balk and a wild pitch, respectively. A questionable strike call to Troy Drummond resulted in a strikeout and would have ended up loading the bases for the Lightning. They were to score one run off of another fielder’s choice but remained trailing 3-2.

Rusch would shut the Freedom down in order again in the ninth with two more big strikeouts that fired up the crowd and had everyone anticipating the bottom of the ninth.

The Lightning made two quick outs before Jacob Tillotson drove a single up the middle. With the tying run on first, Hunter Mayfield stepped to the dish looking to even the odds and had a grueling final at bat, battling the pitcher and fouling off a bunch of pitches before grounding out to first on a bang-bang play.

The story of the game was the runners left on base for the Lightning, who left a rare 11 runners on base.

The team is off Sunday but hosts the U.S. 9 Military Team at Pat Thomas Stadium at 6:00 as part of the 4^thof July festivities.

By: Nick Beardi (Medaille College)