Four for July: USA quartet makes history as Guatemalans go hitless
COLEMAN FIELD/CARY It’s Game 2 of the USA National Team series against Guatemala, and the main suspense is to see whether or not the visitors can get closer than Wednesday night’s 15-1 loss in Kannapolis.
It’s partly cloudy and warm - temperatures in the high ’80s - and the crowd for this one is pretty sparse.
There are no food freebies for the media tonight. Bummer. At least I’ve called ahead to find out and had a good meal at home with the family.
Already today I’ve been at Durham Bulls Athletic Park to do an interview with a player for a “Top 50 prospects” project for a baseball website.
The Bulls weren’t home on Wednesday either and neither were the Carolina Mudcats, making it one of those rare days since March on which there wasn’t at least one high quality baseball game in the Triangle.
That off-day gave me some time for some serious exploration of Facebook, which I had never bothered to join until last weekend. I’m going to start posting my Indy posts to my page every day, as well as putting them all on Twitter, where I am “mikepotterrdu.”
Guatemala has about the widest age range I have ever seen on a baseball team that plays together regularly. Infilelder Jorge Gutierrez, who got the only two hits on Wednesday, is 42, while center fielder Manuel Hernandez is 16.
And apparently on what turns out to be an historic night, I am the only journalist covering the game for local media (Baseball America is also in the house) as the USA wins 10-0 on the first regular-season no-hitter in team history. UCLA’s Gerrit Cole (pictured), The Citadel’s Asher Wojciechowski, Tulane’s Nick Pepitone and Texas Tech’s Chad Bettis team up for the feat. (The 9-0 win against Canada in 2004 at DBAP was during the team’s “trials” phase.) Continue reading »
Christian Colon of Cal State-Fullerton had the only RBI hit as the Blues beat the Reds 2-0 in the USA Baseball National Team’s seven-inning intrasquad game Sunday at the National Training Complex in Cary.
