Mick Heating Up
Portland Has an Ace?
At the start of the season, Ghi-cheng Kum just wanted to make the opening day roster for the Lumberjacks. After two sub-par years in Des Moines, Kum probably wondered how long his BBA career was going to last. After a month and a half of the 2040 season, Kum has turned into a Lumberjacks legend and a must see at this point in the season. Why? "He's turned into the ace of the staff and a must see start" said Lumberjacks manager Tarafah bin Bahir. Thanks to six consecutive wins in 6 consecutive starts, fans are starting to view Kum as a bona-fide ace of the staff. Despite starts that don't exactly support it, the record thus far does and Kum is enjoying the moment. "I'm not this good" said Kum with a laugh. "I've been very lucky over this stretch. But hey, as they say, sometimes it's better to be lucky than good."
Lucky could be a good word to use. In his last start, an 8-5 win over San Fernando, Kum allowed 3 runs on 6 hits and 6 walks over 6 innings pitched. Fortunately, his offense gave him enough support and he got the win. Kum has turned into the definition of a "quality starter" at this point in the season. He has 5 quality starts in his 8 this season. He's allowed 3 runs in 4 of his 8 starts. Twice he allowed fewer than 3 but failed to make it to the 6th. And only once has he allowed 4 runs. Thus far, he's 6-0 with a 3.68 ERA and 1.34 WHIP.
Record Crowd Watches Home Team Win
The Lumberjacks haven't been blessed with large crowds to this point. Case in point, less than 19,000 fans came to watch the Lumberjacks play Twin Cities last week. And that was total, for the series. Both games had fewer than 10,000 witnesses. But that wasn't the case for the Lumberjacks first ever home series against their closest neighbor to the North in Seattle. The third and final game of the series, an 8-2 Win by Portland over the Storm saw the largest crowd to date for a Portland home game as 39,938 fans showed up to watch the Titanic Struggle. The crowd was just 62 fans shy of a sell-out. In fact, each game of the 3 game series saw over 36,000 fans each. Portland owner David Wallace commented on the crowd. "We are hoping this becomes the norm here very soon. We know a lot of the fans came South from Seattle to watch the team but the electricity in the air here was fabulous. Knowing these two teams are only separated by a 2-3 hour drive should make for some packed houses for many more seasons to come."
The Lumberjacks still rank next to last in total attendance. This series accounted for 25% of their total attendance on the season.