Friendly Fire vs Prairie Dogs - 19/07/2005

Friendly Fire turned up with the prospect of completing the double over the Prairie Dogs after winning the reverse fixture earlier in the season, but a 11 run first inning from the Prairie Dogs proved vital as they overcame Friendly Fire 26-23 in blustery conditions.

Going into this game Friendly Fire were confident of winning having put in a much improved performance against Orange the previous week. Friendly Fire opted to start the game with back up pitcher Griff, leaving Moon the Magnificent to pitch the later innings. Coping with the conditions admirably Griff was tempting the Prairie Dogs batters into hitting, uncharacteristically the normally tight fielding of Friendly Fire was not to be seen and by the time the 3rd out was registered in the book Friendly Fire were 11 runs down, giving Fire an awful lot to do to win this game, Fire responded well with a couple of runs in the bottom of the 1st.

With the fielding tightening up and Moon the Magnificent replacing Griff, the Fire slowly started to close the gap on the Dogs with a combination of good hitting by the Fire and poor fielding by the Dogs, this meant by the top of the 7th inning Friendly Fire were only 4 runs behind.

Unfortunately for the Fire the fielding demons were to return and allowed the Dogs to score 4 runs in the top of the 7th and extend their lead to 8 runs leaving the Fire with an uphill battle to win this game, home runs from Jess and Arwel gave Friendly Fire hope but sadly it was not to be and they came up just 3 runs short giving victory to the Prairie Dogs.

Disappointed with defeat there were some high points for Friendly Fire to look back on, 2 home runs each for Griff and Jess, home runs for Arwel, Alistair and Ben. All this however was over shadowed by the highlight of the evening.....A huge 6ft hit by Susie into the shallow infield which caught the Dogs off guard, charging towards first base she caused first base person into an error, the ball went sailing into the outfield and with lightning speed Susie turned a base hit into a stand up triple, well done Susie