South Bend SilverHawks at Burlington Bees
May 27th, 2002
| South Bend |
|
|
1 |
1 |
4 |
|
0 |
1 |
1 |
|
0 |
0 |
1 |
|
|
9 |
14 |
2 |
| Burlington |
|
|
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
0 |
3 |
0 |
|
0 |
8 |
X |
|
|
11 |
12 |
2 |
E-Hairston, Nichols, Groves, Guzman, LOB SB-7, BUR-5, 2B-Ball, Nichols, Haydel, Fallon, HR-Hairston, Loeb, SB-Haydel, Shanks, CS-Garcia, HBP-Ball, Loeb
HB-Kaanoi, Sanchez, WP-Wechsler, Kaanoi, PB-Draper, SO-Paredes, Hairston, Nichols 2, Loeb, Honeycutt, Vugteveen 2, Haydel, Shanks, Groves, Fallon, Figuereo, Gomez 2, BB-Garcia, Shanks, Groves, Guzman, Gomez
T-2:42, A-675
U-Barry, Hanson
South Bend Tribune
The eighth inning proved disastorouts for the South Bend Silver Hawks Monday afternoon.
Cruising along with a 7-0 lead going into the bottom of the fifth inning things slowly started falling apart for the Hawks as Burlington scored eight runs in the bottom of the eighth inning to come away with an 11-0 win in Midwest League action.
Despite out hitting the Bees 14-12, South Bend dropped it's third straight game and now stands 1-4 on it's current 13 game road trip.
The Hawks (19-30) we able to build up their seemingly comfortable cushion, thanks to an outstanding effort from Rich Haydel who had two hits and four RBI.
Scott Hairston added three hits, including his sixth homer, while Bryan Leob added two hits, including his first round tripper for South Bend.
Burlington Hawk Eye
by Susan Denk
Holy Cow!, The Bees win!, The Bees Win!
The Burlington Bees pulled off a miraculous comeback Monday afternoon at Community Field, scoring eight runs in the eighth inning to score an 11-9 victory over the South Bend SilverHawks.
With lackluster play and a 7-0 deficit after 4 1/2 innings, a Burlington win seemed to be the last thing the Memorial Day crowd would witness. But the Bees slowly chipped away at the lead before exploding in the eighth.
Chris Fallon had been waiting for this day for a long time.
Burlington's designated hitter, battling through a 3 for 19 slump as he came up to the plate with two outs and the bases loaded, lined a shot over Rich Haydel's head at short. The double cleared the bases and gave the Bees their first lead of the day.
Fallon had singled as the second batter of the inning and his game winning double was no accident.
"I was using a difference bat every time up today." said a smiling Fallon, who was ready to start grabbing random bats off the rack if he ran out of his own. "I was struggling and I was blaming the bat, because the superstitious baseball player. I ended up using four different bats today. I got to the last bat in my locker and I got a hit so I brought it up for the last at bat again. I think I'm going to stay with that one for awhile."
Fallon may not have gotten his chance if not for Brett Groves.
The Bees shortstop started off the inning by walking on four pitches from Cliff McMachen. He came back up again just in from of Fallon after Corbey Medlin intentionally walked Burlington leadoff hitter James Shanks.
Groves hit a sharp ground ball up the middle to Haydel, who instead of stepping on second base to get Shanks for the third out, threw across to first base, Groves beat the throw, John Draper scored and the sscore was tied at 8 all.
"I didn't want to do too much, just put the ball in play, especially with Fallon behind me swingining a hot bat," said Groves, who erased the memory of two fielding errors with the big inning, "I think the big thing on the ball I hit was Shanks getting down to second base. That forved (Haydel) to come across the diamond to try to get me and fortunately I was just able to beat it."
It's a huge win for us coming back from seven down. You don't see that very often. Our team did a great job of scrapping, every one of us."
The Bees took 3 for 4 from the SilverHawks to improve to 23-25. South Bend falls to 19-30.
The victory means more than just a game in the win column for a team that has been up and down all year.
"That's a big win for us, not just because we came back and won, but it showed them right there that it dosen't matter how many runs you're down. This game is crazy, Anthing can happen." said Burlington manager Joe Szekely, "You can talk to them about it and tell them about it but you have to experience it. As soon as you think the game is over, it will jump up and bit you."
Early on, the Bees seemed unable to do anything on offense. South Bend starter Justin Wechsler retired the first eight batters he faced before Alex Rodriguez singled with two out in the third. Wechsler then retired five more going into the fifth inning.
An error by SilverHawks firstbaseman Kyle Nichols put Ben Cordova on base. Three singles cut the deficit to 7-3 and woke up the Bees.