THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 3, 1994 TAG: 9407030271
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM ROBINSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
After a furious rainstorm swamped Harbor Park a few hours before the game, the conditions seemed favorable for the Norfolk Tides on Saturday against the Richmond Braves.
The largest paid crowd of the season - 12,358 - filled the stadium in which a nervous 21-year-old righthander, Chris Seelbach, would make his Triple-A debut for the Braves. On local TV, no less.
And had a line drive found turf instead of leather in the first inning, the Tides might have made Seelbach quick work. Instead, Aaron Ledesma's shot at first baseman Tyler Houston was turned into a double play.
It short-circuited a potential big inning and foreshadowed Richmond's 6-2 victory in which Seelbach shined and the Braves capitalized on a bunch of bloops and one long fly that barely fell in.
``They hit a lot of balls in the right spots,'' Tides manager Bobby Valentine said after the Braves (47-35) cooled his team for the second consecutive night following the Tides' 16-6 romp Thursday. ``They hit the ball hard, too, for outs, but a lot of the hits happened to be somewhat of the seeing-eye variety.''
In the sixth, for instance, when starter Frank Seminara (1-3) was nibbled at for two runs that erased the Tides' 2-1 lead. The Braves dinked a pair of singles into short leftfield and another into right to tie it. Then catcher Joe Kmak was charged with a passed ball that allowed Mike Kelly to score and give Richmond the 3-2 lead it extended on Houston's three-run triple off Mike Cook in the eighth.
A .229 hitter with only 16 RBIs coming in, Houston pulled a 1-2 pitch toward the rightfield corner that Jeromy Burnitz, after a long run through the wet grass, just missed with a lunging attempt at the warning track.
Even with dry ground, ``I don't know that it would've made a difference,'' Burnitz said. ``I didn't slip a bit. I should've dove for it.''
Mistakes were few from Seelbach, 4-6 but with a 2.33 earned-run average in Double-A, after the Tides (39-44) scored a run in the first and second. He allowed one hit over his final four innings and finished by striking out the side in the sixth.
``I was all right after I got over my nervousness the first two innings,'' Seelbach said. ``I was basically out there throwing, trying to find my rhythm and get the nervousness out.''
Only Seelbach knows how rattled he was when Quilvio Veras walked and Doug Dascenzo moved him to third with a single to start the game. But then Ledesma doubled off Dascenzo with his line drive, on a ball that otherwise would have gone for at least a double, and the course was abruptly changed.
``You're looking at a big inning,'' Valentine lamented. ``First and third, no outs, middle of the order.''
Then boom. Short end of the stick. by CNB