Challengers 14, Unicorns 4

Full disclosure: This is going to be a pretty quick recap because I just started a new job, I have an 8 month old son that wakes me up at 5am every day, and tonight I have to pick up a college friend from the HB who thought that buying a ticket for a bus that got into Zurich at 10pm was a good idea. Also, the Unicorns only posted one of the two games on spielplan and their score-sheets are borderline illegible. But I digress.

When I first learned that the Unicorns had lost their relegation series to Thun last season, I was quite sad. Not just because Huenenberg has a nice field and a quality selection of toilet facilities, but primarily because Thun is so much further away (and has no bathroom facilities AT ALL). Imagine my joy then when I learned that not only was Bern dropping out of NLB, but that they would be replaced by the Unicorns (there was a lot of joy). Now the thing about Huenenberg is - particularly relative to Bern's NLB team - they're not very good. Nice guys, play hard, actually hit the ball pretty well, but they simply cannot make plays in the field ( they had 7 errors in Game 1, and I think that understates the real total by factor of 3). As a result, the two mercy-rule victories posted by the Challengers are nice, but let's not start printing playoff tickets yet.

On a sunny, but cold day in Zug, the Unicorns jumped out to a quick 1-0 lead. Actually, the damage could've been worse had new left-fielder Juan Batista not gunned out a Unicorn runner trying to stretch a single into a double with an absolute laser (Batista seemed to take his time getting to the ball, but his throw beat the runner by such a wide margin that Second-baseman Carlos Nepomuceno had to wait for the runner to get close enough to apply a tag.

Nonetheless, that early lead wouldn't last. In the top of the 2nd, newcomer Michael Recio led off with a bloop single, and then advanced to second when Center-fielder and all-around great guy Alex Gordon followed with a bloop single of his own. A walk to Hendrix Kaempfer loaded the bases, and one batter later Daiki Sato singled to bring Recio around with the Challengers' first run. Shortstop Kurt Kovac followed with a Fielder's Choice grounder to short that brought in Gordon from 3rd, making it 2-1 Challengers. After starting pitcher Nick Lehmann mowed the Unicorns down in order, the Challengers got back to work on offense. Nepomuceno led off with a single, then took third on a double by Batista (Carlos would have scored had he not inexplicably decided to admire the flight of the ball for a good 10 seconds before starting to run!). With runners in scoring position, Recio struck out swinging, but it turned out to be a scoring play for Zurich: the Huenenberg catcher couldn't handle the third strike, and his throw to first skipped into right field. Nepomuceno came into score, Batista took third, and Recio ended up at second. By the time the inning was over, the Challengers had scored 6 times on only 3 hits, aided greatly by 3 Unicorn errors. The game was never close after that. Lehmann struck out 7 over 5 innings of work, and Oli Christen struck out 2 in the bottom of the 6th to close out the 14-4 Zurich victory.

by Alex Gordon