Royals outslug Miners
Fort Macleod and Lethbridge kick off American Legion season
The sticks sounded off as the Lethbridge Miners and Fort Macleod Royals opened up Americian Legion regular season baseball play.
However, the Royals sticks were at tad louder as Fort Macleod won 21-16 in the first game of a doubleheader Monday night at Spitz Stadium.
The Royals hit double digits quickly with 13 runs in the first inning for early cozy lead.
The Miners managed to chip away at the deficit with three runs in the second and one more in the third before batting around in the fourth inning for seven more runs.
But Fort Macleod’s early barrage stood up as the visitors added four more runs in the fourth inning and two more in the fifth to break the 20-run barrier.
The second game of the doubleheader was in progress at press time.
“We kind of had ourselves a football game in the first one,” said Miners head coach Trevor Sakatch of the run parade in which a few errors benefitted both sides. “I think you could maybe chalk that one up to some preparation, maybe some first-day jitters. What can you do? We’re going to go out here and compete in the second one. As far as the first one, it is what it is, we’ll just move past it, it’s the only way. There were some unforced errors. We’ll address the negatives, look at the positives and keep those in mind and try to have a good product out there.”
The Miners managed to close the gap a bit more in the seventh inning with another pair of runs in a loss where getting runs across wasn’t a problem.
“The 16 runs speak to themselves,” said Sakatch. “Some hitters took some good approaches, but if we have that one through nine in the next game I think we’re going to have a good outcome. We just have to cut down on the unforced errors. I think maybe a little bit of our youth showed in that one, but we’ll go at the next one and try and get it and get our first win at home.”
American Legion action continues tonight as the Lethbridge Elks open their American Legion schedule witha doubleheader against the Medicine Hat Monarchs starting at 5 p.m. at Spitz Stadium.
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