Blazers win a comedy of errors

APRIL 19, BLAZER FIELD-

All season long, manager John MacDonald has harped that his Blair Blazers can't afford to make defensive mistakes. But if there was ever a time to make a cacophony of errors in the field, today was it.

Despite fielding that MacDonald called "atrocious," Blair's opponents managed to be worse. Blair made the Walter Johnson Wildcats pay for their six errors with 11 hits, and WJ didn't do the same in return. As a result, the Blazers cruised to a comfortable, if not pretty, 12-4 win at home tonight.

Blair (4-7) got five runs in the first inning off of WJ starting pitcher Jon Rapport and never looked back. Already up 2-0 with Gabe Fonte on second base, Blair's Jesse Mueller hit a lazy fly ball to Mike Doniado in left field. But Doniado lost sight of the ball, and it dropped over his head. Fonte scored and Mueller wound up on second base.

Alec Burns made the Wildcats (1-9) pay even more for their error, scoring Mueller with a triple that nearly cleared the fence in right field. Jason Meer singled to bring Burns home, and Blair cruised from there.

Mueller said that Blair's timely hitting helped them win tonight. "We hit really well in the clutch tonight," he said. "And more than that, when they made defensive errors, we made them pay."

Tommy Dugan started for Blair on the mound tonight, and pitched very well. He allowed one unearned run, which came home following a dropped fly ball in left field in the top of the third inning. But Dugan was pulled after three for what MacDonald would only call "disciplinary reasons."

In the bottom half of the third inning, Burns tripled again on his next at-bat, bringing home Zach Hall, who reached on yet another error. Then Meer hit a ground ball through the legs of shortstop Anthony Breen to bring home Burns.

Robert Riker replaced Dugan and was strong, going four innings and getting out of a major jam early. In the fourth inning with nobody out, he allowed a single and Mueller was charged with an error. Then the umpire called a balk on Riker. But he then got the next three hitters to pop out, strikeout and groundout to end the inning with no damage.

MacDonald glowed about Riker's relief appearance. "Riker picked us up when we needed it. If I was [WJ], I wouldn't have wanted to face him. He stepped up when we desperately needed him to."

Blair continued after that to take advantage of WJ's terrible fielding. In the fifth inning, Riker reached on a Nic Sutherland error at second base, and came home on Mueller's double. In the fifth inning, Sam Morris scored on a passed ball, one of three charged to the Wildcats in the game.

The Blazers allowed three inconsequential runs thanks to errors in the sixth inning. Jason Meer had two errors, while Morris and Burns had one each. At one point in the inning, an exasperated MacDonald yelled to nobody in particular, "Can someone on this team catch the damn ball?"

Of his team's defense, MacDonald was far from happy. "We were really bad out there in the field tonight. I can't explain why varsity baseball players can't catch a fly ball. All you have to do is catch it!"

But WJ's six errors neutralized the problem, and Blair managed to out hit the Wildcats 11 to five. And because the mistakes were so spread out, it created some interesting stats. Only six Blazers had a hit, but nine scored at least one run. Mueller, who went 2-for-4, reached base three times and scored on all those occasions. Even Avi Wolfman-Arent, who went 0-for-4, scored a run.

Lee Shields had two hits and a run. Morris, Dugan, Justin Vlasits and Meer each had one hit and one run. Burns scored twice and went 2-for-2, with both hits being triples.

MacDonald did credit his hitters for hitting the ball on the ground more, putting the Wildcats in a position to make mistakes. "When you hit the ball on the ground, there's a lot of ways that they can screw the play up. We made them have to earn every out tonight, and that was great."