April 14th, 2035
Offen Sichtlich der Kunstgriff
I'm back! Did you miss me, Crusaders fans? It was a bit of a frustrating week. The good news is that we're 6-5 in April so far. That's outstanding. Just great. How we've gotten there is a bit frustrating though. Especially this week. We started off great! Finished off the Calgary series with a win for a sweep, then took two of three from Vancouver. Good wins all. After a dud in the season opener, Luis Gracia bounced back to throw six strong innings, allowing only one run versus Calgary. Then Cisco Morales was great over 8 innings of shutout ball in Vancouver for the first game, but Miguel Ramos just hasn't gotten things sorted out yet. He was better than his showing versus Valencia, but still wasn't very good in game two of this set. However, Jaime Mercado had just enough over six innings in game three to keep the Crusaders in it. After that the bullpen was AMAZING! Nine plus shutout innings. Reynaldo Garza was just incredible over 5.2 innings. Tradat Kazarov and John Cochran hit solo home runs in the top of the 16th to give our Crusaders the lead, and Rein Van der Heyden came back for his second inning of work to close out the win. What a game!
Speaking of Kazarov, he's just been on fire. Though those games I mentioned, he was 7-20 with three homers and seven driven in. I've gotta tell you, I was pretty pumped during the middle of this last week. This had to be the best start to a Crusaders season in a good long while! About time, I say! Well, just like Mama always does, the Crusaders found a way to dampen my spirits. In the first game against Edmonton, Ricardo Diaz was just okay. This game was actually pretty close, but Diaz ran into trouble late. Maybe the team should have a quicker hook on him. Hmm .. I really don't like saying that about Diaz. Oh well. Game two was worse. A lot worse. After it looked like Gracia had gotten it going in his last start, he laid an egg in the first game against Edmonton. Combine that with facing Bobby Lynch, and things didn't go well. Let's just not talk about it anymore. What we could talk about is that idiom, "laid an egg". Why is this considered bad? Eggs are good! They are part of a new life! They are good for eating or painting! They are fun to throw!
Let's hope the Crusaders can turn it around in the last game of this set. Morales will get the start against Johnny Morin, and then it's off to Madison for four games, before coming home to face Des Moines at the end of the week. I do have to say, I'm excited about the series against Madison. They are giving up lots of home runs, and the Crusaders are hitting lots of home runs. I think you see where I'm going. Oops! I hope they don't read this. Well, I'd imagine the likelihood is pretty low. I mean, why would a professional baseballer in Madison read a team blog from another division, or even his own division? Whew! Just looked. No players from California. Only one (Jody Nunez) from the entire west coast. I think we're good. Go Crusaders!
