Lightning Beat Weather, Diamond Dawgs in Ugly Battle

Winter Park, FL - It wasn't pretty, but the Leesburg Lightning (5-1) picked up their fifth straight victory, an error-filled, weather-shortened game against the Winter Park Diamond Dawgs (3-3). The Lightning won the game 9-1 thanks to a whopping seven unearned runs on six Winter Park errors.

The disarray started an hour before the originally scheduled start time of 7:00 p.m. when rain and lightning forced league officials to push the game back literally as far as it could go. The first pitch finally came around 9:00 p.m., the latest allowed start time according to Florida Collegiate Summer League rules. The game was shortened to seven innings also due to official league rules, which did not draw any complaints from the players or the few fans that stuck it out through the bad weather.

"Really it's just about making sure they don't get struck by lightning," head coach Rich Billings said half-joking, half-serious when asked about the key to keeping his team loose and upbeat during long weather delays like this one. "You let them just hang out, have fun and tell stories and just goof around. There's not really anything else you can do. Just keep it loose."

Starting pitchers Codie Lunday (College of Central Florida) for Leesburg and AJ Chacon (Undecided) for Winter Park both came out of the delay looking sharp, keeping the opposing bats relatively quiet through the first three innings.

The madness began in the top of the fourth inning when Luke Brown (Western Kentucky) reached on an infield single before advancing to second and then to third on an errant throw by Chacon to first. Jay Prather (North Florida) followed that up by reaching first base thanks to another error, this time by first baseman Christian Snow (Mobile). Snow's error also allowed Brown to come home and score the first run of the game. Wes Weeks (North Florida) was up to bat next, but before he could reach base Prather took second after Chacon sent an attempted pick-off throw sailing over Snow's head at first. Weeks eventually reached on an infield single, and Prather scored the second unearned run of the game. One out later, Weeks came home to score yet another unearned run thanks to an error by Winter Park catcher Connor Andrews (Lake Sumter-State) during Javeon Cody's (Alvin CC) second at-bat of the game. For those of you keeping track at home, that's four errors and three unearned runs in a single inning so far. Things didn't get any better for the Diamond Dawgs after Cody singled to right field, and the home team was forced to pull Chacon in favor of Maxwell Clark (Creighton). Clark walked the first batter he faced, Tucker Rayburn (Tallahassee CC), and then got Ja'Kobi Dasher (Flagler) to groundout for out number two of the inning. The frame was far from over, however, as Clark's wild pitch to Garrett Bogart (Savannah State) allowed Cody to move to third and Rayburn to second. Bogart eventually walked to load the bases. Another wild pitch from Clark, this time to Harrison Schnurbusch (Central Missouri) moved all the runners up 90 feet once again, making Cody the fourth unearned run of the inning. Schnurbusch finally struck out to end the inning, but the damage was already done.

They say Lightning never strikes twice, but they would be wrong for multiple reasons. The top of the fifth turned into another disaster for the Dawgs after Luke Brown, Jay Prather and Javeon Cody all scored unearned runs thanks to errors by third baseman Bo Taylor (Winthrop) and right fielder Hunter Phillips (Alabama State), running Winter Park's total to six for the game.

Jackson Damon (Eastern Florida State), the son of former MLB All-Star Johnny Damon, came in to pitch for the Diamond Dawgs in the seventh inning and didn't fare much better. He hit the second batter he faced, Harrison Schnurbusch, with a pitch before getting Luke Brown to ground out for the second out of the inning. The next batter up, Jay Prather, smacked a double into left field to score Schnurbusch, making him the Lightning's first earned run of the contest. Wes Weeks singled to move Prather to third one batter later. Prather would eventually come in to score Leesburg's ninth run of the game on a wild pitch from Damon before Jake Matulia (Flagler) grounded out for the third out.

Winter Park put up one run in the bottom of the seventh against Lightning reliever Kevin Barham (Georgia Highlands) but it wasn't enough to overcome their sloppy play in the field.

Leesburg and Winter Park will go at it again on Friday night at 7:00 p.m. in Leesburg. That game will be the second of a three-game series between the two teams.

Matt Holzapfel (Elon University)

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