Week 3 in the books, and the Tarpons fought hard but came out on the wrong end.

Game 1 vs the undefeated Trash Pandas

This one was a defensive struggle through most of the game as the crosswind from left to right knocked down anything hit to left. The Pandas started things off with one in the first, and the Tarpons didn’t answer. Pandas were held scoreless in the 2nd inning and then the Tarpons got on the board after a 2 run single by Barth and then a RBI 2B from Tae Lee.  In the 3rd, the Pandas put up 3, while the Tarpons went down silently. In the 4th, the Pandas would not score but this time it was the Tarpons chance to draw blood. A leadoff BB by Shorty, then single by Reitz, BB by Mendoza set up a scoring chance for the veteran Michael Barth. He delivered with a 2 RBI single and the Tarpons were within 1, down 4-3.  In the top of the 5th the Pandas would add one to their lead to make it 5-3. The Tarpons put up a goose egg in the bottom of the 5th, as did the Pandas in the top of the 6th. The bottom of the 6th is when the momentum really swung in favor of the Pandas. We started with a leadoff 1b, followed by a 2b from Shorty, and then a BB from Reitz. With bases loaded and no outs there was a sharp ground ball hit to Randy Ransom (who had already made a great play earlier in the game), and he tagged 3b and got the runner into a run down that ultimately was called out. Big double play to basically cut the inning to no runs (yes that was a lot of noise for no runs). Fueled by that defensive effort, the Pandas came up in the top half of the 7th and put up 4 big insurance runs that propelled the Pandas to their 5th W of the season, with the final tally being 9-3.  The game was closer than the final score indicates. Kudos to good pitching and defense from both teams, but the Pandas just made more plays.

Game 2 had the Tarpons licking our wounds headed to field 2 to try to redeem ourselves with the 2nd place team in the division, the Rumble Ponies. This time the Tarpons would get out on top early, scoring 3 quick runs off a Shorty BB, Reitz 1b, Enlow 2b, capped by a Mendoza 2RBI 1b. The Rumble Ponies, not to be outdone put up 5 of their own in the bottom half of the 1st, to make it 3-5. We would add another run in the 2nd with a Tae Lee 3b followed by a laser RBI 1b by Chris Keller. The ponies would answer again with 2 in the bottom half. The Tarpons decided to wake up the bats a bit in the 3rd with a leadoff 2b, followed by a Shorty 1b, Reitz RBI 1b, Enlow RBI 1b, Mendoza RBI 1b, and then a bases clearing Shalomer by Ro sent the fish’s dugout into a feeding frenzy. This was our best inning so far on the day and gave us our first lead of the day, 10-7. The Ponies weren’t having any of that so in the bottom half of the frame they put 4 more on the board for an 11-10 lead in which they would never relinquish, final tally is Ponies 15 Tarpons 10.

Tarpons Players of the week:

Michael Reitz 4-4, 4 runs, 3 RBI, 2BB’s

Rohit Gulhati 4-5, 5RBI, HR

Chris Keller 4-6, RBI