The Green Bay Bullfrogs baseball team picked up a 5-4 win June 21 over the Lakeshore Chinooks.
BY RICH PALZEWIC
CORRESPONDENT
GREEN BAY – Green Bay Bullfrogs player Eddy Gonzalez came to Joannes Stadium a litte early last night to put in some extra work … it paid off in a big way for the Texas native.
Gonzalez (Incarnate Word) was 3-for-4 with three RBI in the ‘Frogs 5-4 win over the Lakeshore Chinooks in a Northwoods League baseball game.
“I’ve been struggling a little bit the last few games,” said Gonzalez, who raised his average 27 points and is now hitting .217 in 23 games this season. “It’s really a challenge playing every day like we do, but every day is a new day. I showed up with an aggressive mentality and I was able to get good, solid contact. It’s a grind playing every day like we do … definitely different than college.”
Gonzalez, who is a Cowboys fan, took a tour of Lambeau Field this past Monday on the team’s day off. The ‘Frogs opened the season by playing 20 games in 20 days.
“It was really nice,” added Gonzalez about the day off. “I was able to relax a little bit. Also, being from Texas it was probably 100 degrees today on the first day of summer, but the weather here in Green Bay is nice. It gets a little chilly for me at night sometimes, though.”
After the first two ‘Frogs were retired in the first inning, consecutive singles by Adrian Damla (UC Irvine) and Tate Soderstrom (Arizona) set the stage for Rudy Aguilar (St. Johns), who had a nine-pitch at bat before drawing a walk off Lakeshore starting pitcher Brendan McGuigan. Gonzalez then delivered a clutch two-out single to score two.
McGuigan came into the game with a 0.00 earned-run average and had struck out 18 batters in his 19 innings of work, but in a NWL rule, he was forced to come out of the game after his 35-pitch first inning.
“Sometimes on the opposing team’s scorecard (for their pitcher’s name) I put ‘who cares’ because I don’t want them to be in the game long,” said a smiling Bullfrogs manager Kirk Shrider. “The schedule gave us a little more time to work on a few things, so it paid off. This game is so much about confidence. We had a louder dugout last night … for the most part we played well. I jokingly say to the guys sometimes that when I see us having good success against a pitcher, I’d like to have us keep his pitch count to 34 in one inning so we can see him again.”
Gonzalez added another RBI hit in the third, knocking in Aguilar who had led off the inning with a double. Gonzalez would later score on a wild pitch after stealing third.
Damla and Soderstrom each had two hits, while Hugh Chapman (Georgia Tech) started on the mound and went four innings. The big righty gave up just one earned run on two hits. Colby Morris (Middlebury College) and Zach Autin (Nicholls State) pitched innings five through eight, before Travis Kuhn (San Diego) picked up the save in the ninth.
The win for Green Bay (8-15) snapped a four-game losing streak. They will head to Mequon tonight for the second game with Lakeshore (9-14) in the home-and-home series.
Box Score
Lakeshore: 001 002 010 – 4 7 1
Green Bay: 202 001 00x – 5 10 2