Maybe the BG baseball team should take extended periods of time off more often before games this season.
It certainly wouldn’t hurt their offense.
After 10 days of indoor practices and seven canceled games, the Falcon bats came alive yesterday against the University of Findlay at Steller Field.
BG downed the Oilers 12-8, putting up 17 hits in the process.
Then again the offensive explosion could have been a result of Findlay’s less-than-stellar pitching staff that has now surrendered 17 earned runs in the last two games combined of Dayton and BG.
Whatever the cause, the Falcons were happy to not be stuck practicing inside Perry Field House and get their first home win.
‘We definitely looked like we had a little rust on us,’ said BG coach Danny Schmitz, referring to the recent layoff caused by dismal March weather. ‘The main thing is that we got outside after going seven games without playing. It was very, very important to get this game in, and I credit our grounds crew – they get the game ball.’
Both teams came into the game sporting a 7-7 record, but the Falcons made sure they would be the team getting their eighth win that afternoon.
It didn’t look that way early on, however, as the Oilers came out and claimed a 3-0 lead off BG starter Brett Browning heading to the bottom of the second inning.
Mark Galvin stepped to the plate and got the offense going with a one-out walk. Derek Spencer, Ryan Schlater and T.J. Blanton all followed with singles to bring the score to 3-2.
Falcon hurlers Brennan Smith and Nick Cantrell came in and shut down the Oiler offense for the third, fourth and fifth innings, which allowed BG to grab a 6-3 lead through five. Logan Meisler, Spencer, Schlater and Blanton (the six through nine batters, respectively) manufactured those six middle-inning runs and also combined for nine hits on the day.
‘We worked some magic early on to get some runs, but then the long-ball took over from there,’ Schmitz said.
The long-ball Schmitz referred to was provided by two sophomores; Mark Galvin in the seventh inning and T.J. Blanton in the eighth.
‘It’s been a while since my last one,’ Galvin said, recalling that until yesterday he had not hit a home run since before his high school days. ‘I got all of it and I knew that immediately, but the wind helped too. When the ball got up there I thought I had a shot.’
Galvin’s bomb cleared the right-center field fence near the scoreboard, while Blanton’s flew out of left-center an inning later to secure the a crucial ninth Falcon run.
The two blasts, along with eighth-inning hits by Ryan Shay, Andrew Foster and Chris Gacom, helped to insure the Falcons’ first win at Steller Field in 2008.
Brian Hangbers, who came in to pitch the inning after Galvin homered, ended up getting his first win of the season for the Falcons.
Having three hits at the plate yesterday himself, Hangbers certainly appreciated the insurance runs his teammates provided in the eighth.
‘It was definitely a slugfest with the wind blowing out and both teams getting a lot of hits,’ Hangbers said.
‘Whenever you can score in a game like that, it’s huge. You never know when the game is on lock.
‘We’re a team this year that will have to score runs every inning to be successful, and today we did a good job of doing that.’
Jeff Peters led the Oilers with four hits and two RBI’s, including his second home run of the season in the sixth inning.
