A week after returning to a baseball mound for the first time in over a year Lewis Thorpe continued his ‘rehab’ program for the Doncaster Dragons in the away encounter with Fitzroy on the weekend. Thorpe was looking to extend his time on the hill this week as he continues to stretch himself out. Things were made easier for him as it took exactly two pitches for the Dragons to post a lead to protect with Takumi Tanaka doubling off the first pitch and being brought home by Brian Chen on the second pitch. Thorpe himself gave up a lead off hit and then a lost a long battle to walk the second batter but promptly struck out three of the next four hitters to escape the inning.

The Dragons would get hits in the 2nd and 3rd innings but would leave three base runners stranded in that time. The 5th inning is where we started to cause some real damage on the scoreboard. Co-coach Chris Nicholas led off with a single and was moved around by a Fraser Boyd sac bunt. Consecutive hits followed to Tanaka and Chen who went six for ten between them for the day, Jean Alvarado got on via a short stop error, Owen de Vries got plugged before Brendan McDonald singled to make it five runs for the inning.

A six-run lead would seem plenty enough for Thorpe to protect at this level and it was. He would finish giving up just two hits including the lead off to the game whilst whiffing ten over his 5 innings of work. Last year’s workhorse John Britton took over and had a clean inning before we would again score via de Vries reaching on error, stealing second and coming home on a Luke Utting rope making the score 7-0. But trouble would ensue for the Dragons in the home 7th when a couple of misplays put pressure on the field and in all seven Fitzroy runs would cross the plate and tie it up. Thankfully Utting made a great catch to end the inning.

From there the Dragons had to put up or shut up. Boyd led off the 8th with a long out on the fence at left field before Tanaka ripped a ball to right field and kept coming around second base causing an errant throw, meaning he would come home safely for a little league home run to give us the decisive edge.

Chen would take the ball for the last two innings and overcame a small jamb in the 8th to have a clean 9th inning and slam the door shut making sure the Dragons would notch their second win for the year.

Speaking after the game Chris Nicholas who wound back the clock to catch seven innings felt the game was there for the taking and whilst we had rough inning again, we were able to get ourselves back up and get over the line. It was a good result and some of the players in our squad are starting to turn their form around. We’re looking forward to next week.