Dateline: Eagle Field
The Reston Royals took the field to open their fall campaign against the Falls Church Devil Rays. Eric led off by beating out a ground ball to short, Matt walked and Alec grounded into a fielders choice to move Eric to third. A wild pitch scored Eric. Matt started on the mound and looked sharp. The leadoff man walked and foolishly tried to steal on Robbie, the Royals catcher. He fired a perfect strike down to second where Alec deftly applied the tag for out one. A couple of errors and a couple of weak singles later and the Devil Rays had two runs. After one it was Devil Rays 2 Royals 1.
Royals bats were quiet in the second and Matt settled down to retire the Devil Rays quickly on a ground out back to the mound where Matt, a strike out and another ground out back to the mound. The Royals threatened in the third as with one out Danny and Ryan singled to put runners on first and second. A wild pitch moved them to third and second. Unfortunately, the Devil Rays pitcher settled down and struck out the next two batters. Jake came on in the third and looked great as he struck out the first batter, the next hitter popped out to Alec at short and the last batter hit a foul boul that Spenser made a great catch for out three. After three it was still Devil Rays 2 Royals 1.
The Royals threatened again in the fourth as Alec led off with a single. Robbie bunted to move Alec to second. A wild pitch moved Alec to third but he was out at home when he tried to score on a wild pitch. Robbie came on in the fourth and hit the first two batters. With runner on first and second an error resulted in one run and a double and an error resulted in two more runs. Robbie settled down and struck out two batters and got another to ground out to short where Nihal made a nice play as he fired to Spenser for the out. After four it was Devil Rays 6 Royals 1.
Royals bats were quiet in the fifth. Eric came on and threw heat and struck out two and induced a weak groundout back to the mound. Unfortunately, in the sixth, the Royals went down in order. Final Score: Devil Rays 6 Royals 1.
Coach Goldstein was available for a postgame comment only briefly. He said, “Our team looked pretty good out there. All of our pitchers are throwing strikes. We only walked one batter today so anytime you are throwing strikes that often, you are putting a lot of pressure on the other team. If we keep up our exceptional control, I’m sure we’ll be fine this fall.” Coach Grossman was reached only via a telephone interview as he was busy scouting talent for the Spring season. He said, “I hate missing these games, but it sounds like we had a very reasonable first game and offense typically lags early in the season. Once we get our offense rolling, I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
