Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 30, 1993 TAG: 9308300138
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RAY COX STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The Bucs collected 13 hits, including three home runs, three triples, and a double, and took an early lead, only to be trumped - again - this time by the Prince William Cannons, who prevailed 8-5 before a Municipal Field gallery of 5,239 Sunday night.
These Bucs, no wonder they're contending for the Carolina League's worst record. This club squanders good deeds like intoxicated bank robbers on the lam spend money.
This time, the breakdown came swiftly and without fanfare in the fourth inning. Starting pitcher Sean Evans had been sailing along on his buzzing fastball and hard slider before the Cannons began to decode his offerings in a hurry. Six hits and six runs later, Evans was pondering his grisly fate from the dugout and the Bucs were trying to find some daylight from the bottom of a deep, dark well.
"That fourth inning really smoked us," Salem manager Scott Little said, paraphrasing remarks made more times than any Buc wanted to count.
The Cannons, meanwhile, could board the bus back to the hotel in a jolly mood, congratulating themselves en route. No Cannon deserved more of a salute than Tim Flannelly, who belted two home runs and a double, scored three runs, and drove in three more.
"It's late in the season and we're out of the race and everybody just wants to stay loose and have a little fun," he said. "You still want to take pride in what you do and maybe help the team and yourself out a little, too."
Flannelly's two-run dinger in the fourth continued that big inning on an explosive note and his solo shot in the fifth, his seventh of the year, led off the fifth.
Flannelly allowed that either might have been contained in other parks. If that had been so here, perhaps Bucs Chance Sanford, Jon Farrell, and Ramon Espinosa might have been to enjoy their postgame refreshments with more gusto.
Sanford tripled twice, homered, drove in two and scored two. Farrell went 3-for-5 with a homer and Espinosa also had three hits, including a homer and a double.
Keywords:
BASEBALL
by CNB