By ADEM SARICAOGLU
BASEBALL fans were treated to a highly entertaining Australian Baseball League shootout at Altona’s Melbourne Ballpark on Sunday.
However the majority of the crowd went home disappointed with the final score, which read 18-13 in favour of the Canberra Cavalry over the Melbourne Aces by game’s end.
The result ultimately tied the four-game series between the two which began with a 4-3 Melbourne win on Friday night.
In the first of two games on Saturday, the Aces again managed to scrape home 2-0, before dropping the following fixture 5-1 to a very clean Cavalry outfit.
But, for the neutral fan at least, the best was saved for last.
Both the Aces and Cavalry made a mockery of the opposition pitching to combine for a whopping 42 hits, resulting in a 31-run thriller that almost came down to the wire on Sunday.
The visitors didn’t take long to set the tone for the day, scoring four runs in the opening inning before RBIs from Jared Schlehuber and Josh Davies made it 4-2 at the top of the second.
After two, the Aces held a 5-4 lead courtesy of another big Schlehuber play – a three-run homer with two out.
Canberra then managed to level the score 8-8 after the third inning and snatch the lead back with another run at the top of the fourth, before holding onto its slender buffer through the next two innings.
Scoring eventually resumed at the top of the seventh with Canberra taking Aces reliever Trevor Holder to the sword, twice loading the bases for three more runs.
However the Cavalry’s four-run buffer was short-lived and soon enough the Aces got it back to one after a fielding error gifted the host three runs in the bottom of the seventh.
Catcher Ryan Casteel then delivered a two-run homer down the third base line in the eighth to hand the Aces back the lead going into the ninth.
However the ABL-leading Cavalry again managed to take control at home plate, piling on an ultimately insurmountable six runs in the final inning to keep Melbourne at bay.
The Aces were able to get themselves off the bottom of the ABL table thanks to their two wins earlier in the series, however their overall record remains 5-9, just one game better than last-placed Brisbane at 4-10.
This weekend Melbourne will again host a four-game series at the Altona ballpark, this time against the 7-7 Adelaide Bite beginning on Friday night.
