Posts Tagged ‘Mahoning Valley Scrappers’

Being in last place means the end of a season can’t come soon enough regardless of what sport.  For the Mahoning Valley Scrappers, the spoiler role made a final game worthwhile, and they responded by having one of their most productive days of offense in 2010.  The game was entertaining and the outcome was in doubt until the ninth inning, but the Scrappers ended up on the short end of the stick, dropping a hard fought verdict to the Jammers.

Jamestown jumped out to a 1-0 lead when Marcell Ozuna knocked in Pedro Mendoza in the top of the first inning.  The Scrappers responded in the home half with a run of their own.  Tyler Cannon trotted home on a passed ball by Jammers starter Adam Veras.

In the third inning, Ozuna had yet another RBI against the Scrappers when he hit a sac fly knocking home Brent Keys.  Mark Canha then hit a three-run bomb to put Jamestown up 4-1.

Uncharacteristically, Mahoning Valley then put together a seven run bottom of the fourth, an explosion they must have saved for their last game.  Jesus Aguilar (pictured, top) connected for a grand slam home run knocking in Cannon, Nick Bartolone and Giovanny Urshela.  Brian Heere got in on the fun when he singled home Diego Seastrunk.  Anthony Gallas capped off the rally with a two-run homer, his first as a Scrapper, to raise the score to 8-5 in favor of the Scrappers.

Kyle Smith entered the game in the top of the sixth inning.  After loading the bases, Mendoza lifted a bloop that RF Kevin Rucker dove after.  The ball landed just fair and bounced out of play for a ground rule double and two runs were plated to cut the lead to 8-7 in favor of the Scrappers.

The Jammers scored a tying run in the eighth inning when Mendoza singled off of JD Goryl.  Dale Dickerson came in to relieve Goryl and inherited runners on first and third.  Ozuna doubled off of the left field wall to give the Jammers a 9-8 lead.  Ryan Fisher then hit a long sac fly to increase the lead to 10-8.

In the bottom of the eighth, Gallas opened the inning with a double.  Aaron Fields bunted Gallas to third.  Bartolone got hit in the batting helmet to put guys on first and third.  Cannon doubled home a run to make it 10-9.  Urshela was intentionally walked.  This set the bases up for Aguilar with the bases loaded.  Aguilar was 3-3 in the game, but in this particular at bat, he smoked a two-hopper right at the shortstop for the 6-4-3 inning-ending double play.

After the game, Travis Fryman reflected on the season.  “Collectively, it was ugly.  We were the worst-hitting team in the league, finished in last place, and finished third to last in pitching.  There is no way to sugar coat that stuff.  On the upside, Giovanny Urshela has a bright future.  Carlos Moncrief has turned into a great story and a prospect, Jesus Aguilar got hot at the end, there were positives and good things despite the record.”

I will be posting the Scrappers organizational report card later this week.

The Mahoning Valley Scrappers were playing for pride and individual development.  The Jamestown Jammers were playing for a playoff spot in the New York-Penn League Playoffs.  The weather was colder than what it had been all Summer and the Scrappers were definitely in the Christmas spirit, committing 5 errors and ultimately losing, 6-4.

Manager Travis Fryman said this game was hard on the eyes.  “We saw how sloppy things can get.  This was game 74 and it was the worst game I had to watch all year.  It was a horrible ball game out there tonight and I could count at least nine defensive mistakes.”

Trailing 1-0, the Scrappers put up three runs in the bottom of the third inning.  Two of the three runs were unearned as Aaron Fields, and Brian Heere scored on errors.  Giovanny Urshela and Jesus Aguilar had RBI hits in the inning which put the Scrappers up 3-1.

Not much for receiving gifts, the Scrappers returned all of the favors in the top of the fourth.  Jamestown collected three runs on two Scrapper errors and a wild pitch.  Aaron Dudley delivered the big blow on an RBI-double.  Each team added a run over the last four innings, and when the dust settled, Jamestown made less errors than the Scrappers and won 6-4.

Season finale is Sunday, first pitch is at 5 p.m.  There will also be a legends of pro wrestling show after the game featuring Doink The Clown, Scott Steiner, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, and Greg “The Hammer” Valentine.

It was a familiar scenario for the Mahoning Valley Scrappers. The formula this season has been for a starting pitcher to throw well and then hope the bullpen can hold on.  The Scrappers starters all have respectable ERA’s.  The formula held true as Michael Goodnight (above) pitched five solid innings of scoreless baseball and struck out six Auburn Doubledays before exiting the game with a 1-0 lead.  True to the script, the offense struggled and the bullpen could not hold the lead in a 3-1 loss.

The Scrappers got the first run of the game in the second inning when DH Kevin Rucker reached base and scored on a Moises Montero ball that should have been caught.  Doubledays LF Yeico Aponte ran too far in on a routine fly ball and Rucker trotted home uncontested to give the Scrappers a 1-0 lead.

JD Goryl started the sixth inning for the Scrappers.  Jon Fernandez started the inning with a double.  Giovanny Urshela (below) had an uncharacteristic error to put men on first and second with nobody out.  Goryl was hit hard but in his defense, could have gotten out of the inning unscathed.  As the law of averages would have it, Auburn pushed a run across to tie the game.

The other JD, JD Reichenbach, came out to start the eighth for the Scrappers.  The big lefty was pumped up and threw hard, in the eighth.  The ninth inning however, was a different story as Lance Durham connected for a monstrous two-run homer to right field to put Auburn up 3-1.

The Scrappers put together a ninth inning rally showing some heart.  Rucker and Montero had back-to-back singles for Mahoning Valley.  Aaron Fields bunted to move the runners to second and third.  Trent Baker struck out to set the stage for Nick Bartolone who walked.  Enter Carlos Moncrief with two outs and the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth.  Moncrief was 0-4 in the game with three strikeouts coming into this key at bat.  Moncrief fouled a ball inches off of the left field line that would have, at the very least, tied the game.  On the next pitch, Moncrief whiffed and the Scrappers lost, 3-1.

Travis Fryman said the game indeed followed a pattern of predictability.  “Our lack of run production all year has forced our pitching staff to be perfect. By putting a young pitcher in those types of pressure situations, they are more likely to make mistakes.  We are just concentrating on development of the guys and we saw that with the effort from Goodnight tonight.”

The Mahoning Valley Scrappers have had a disastrous season statistically.  The team batting average heading into Thursday’s game with State College was barely above the Mendoza line at .233.  Offense has been the issue all season.  How fitting that on reality TV night, that the Scrappers got voted off their own island (lost), got gonged, and couldn’t dance (5 errors) to save their lives.

State College tallied a run in the opening half of inning one when Adalberto Santos hit into a double play allowing Drew Maggi to score from third.  Maggi reached base on a Scrappers error.  Mahoning Valley responded in the bottom of the first when Carlos Moncrief walked and moved to third on Jesus Aguilar’s double.  Diego Seastrunk then hit a one-out sac fly plating Moncrief to tie things up.

Taking a 2-1 lead into the fifth, State College scored again.  Maggi walked, advanced to second on a groundout, stole third, and scored when Scrapper catcher Diego Seastrunk’s throw got by 3B Tyler Cannon and scooted into left.  Santos kept hurting the Scrappers as he homered to left-center to jack the lead up to 4-1.

Kyle Smith started the eighth inning and mixed walks with hit batters to load the bases and allow State College a couple of freebies. Without recording an out, Smith was yanked.  Clayton Ehlert inherited the bases loaded, nobody out situation and one grand slam later, there was nobody on base and the Scrappers tailed 10-1.  Six runs on two hits in the inning.

Giovanny Urshela should be returning to the Scrapper lineup soon which would definitely give the starved offense a much needed boost.  Manager Travis Fryman talked about Urshela’s progress.  “He looked good today and was cleared a couple of days ago to resume full workouts.  If he is symptom-free he will start playing again the first game in Auburn.”  Urshela has been sidelined since August 13 when he was plucked on the knuckle by a pitch.  Despite missing so many games, Urshela still leads the team in batting average and RBI.

Fryman also said that Jordan Casas would be out the rest of the season.

With Youngstown State and Penn State preparing to open their respective football seasons next weekend, it would only be fitting that a Youngstown area team played a Penn State area team in another sport.  With neither the Scrappers or Spikes in the playoff hunt, the game would be played for pride.  The Scrappers entered the contest winning three of their last four,  but could not muster enough offensive firepower to win this one, falling 3-1 at home.

State College drew first blood in the top of the first inning.  Adalberto Santos tripled into the left-centerfield gap.  Scrappers starter Michael Goodnight (pictured) should have gotten out of the inning unscathed, but a Kevin Fontanez error allowed Santos to scamper home with the opening run.  In the second inning, Santos walked and made his way around to score again on a clean single off the bat of Matt Curry.

The score stayed 2-0 in favor of State College until the top of the seventh.  The Spikes added a run to their lead on Matt Curry’s RBI single.  In the bottom of the seventh, Fontanez tripled to drive home Brian Heere to get the Scrappers on the scoreboard and cut the State College lead to 3-1.

For the Scrappers, it was another rough night on offense.  The run scored gives them a grand total of two in the last 18 innings.  With the loss, the Scrappers fell to 28-37.  The Spikes improved to 31-33 and inched closer to a .500 mark of respectability.  These two teams will play the rubber match of the three game series on Thursday.

Momentum and inspiration are a lethal combo.  Last night, Mahoning Valley seemed to have found the instruction manuals for the bats they use.  Tonight ,Luke Holko was honored before the game which had everyone’s heart pumping.  The end result was an 8-7 loss as the bullpen blew a four-run ninth inning lead.

Manager Travis Fryman was as frustrated as I have ever seen him after the game.  “This was brutal”, said Fryman, “This home stand we swung the bats extremely well.  Our situation is that we have problems with guys throwing strikes out of the bullpen, and if they can’t throw strikes then they shouldn’t be playing baseball.  That’s the bottom line, and if they can’t throw strikes then we will have to find somebody who can.”

Mahoning Valley had their most productive inning of the season when the offense exploded for six runs in the bottom of the second. Chase Burnette doubled to start things off.  Jesus Aguilar then walked.  Diego Seastrunk then nailed the Tim Adleman offering to right field for his third homer of the season to put the Scrappers ahead, 3-0.  Dan DeGeorge reached via error and Aaron Fields walked.  Carlos Moncrief singled driving in one and new signee and sixth round pick, Nick Bartolone, singled knocking in two more. The half-inning went 51 pitches.

Aberdeen broke through in the fourth as David Anderson hit his second bomb in as many nights.  This one traveled an estimated 430′ to dead center and hit about halfway up the screen.  It was all that Owen Dew would surrender in his five innings.  For Dew, it was nice to finally get some run support in one of his starts.

Aguilar tacked on an RBI-single in the 7th inning.  Giovanny Urshela led off the inning with a ground rule double.  Urshela advanced to third on a Burnette groundout before trotting home with the seventh run of the game for the Scrappers.

Gregorio Rosario pitched two innings of scoreless relief for Mahoning Valley.  Julio Ramirez didn’t fare as well as he surrendered a run and left the bases loaded with one out for Dale Dickerson. Dickerson was very effective and recorded the two needed outs to minimize the damage in the inning.  Things didn’t go as well in the ninth for Dickerson as the first couple of batters reached base. JD Goryl entered and could not hold the lead as the Iron Birds rallied to put up five runs and take an 8-7 lead in the final frame.

The Scrappers play Aberdeen again Monday afternoon at 1 p.m. on Senior Citizen Day.  Anyone who held a ticket from the Lebronfire postponement will receive free admission with their receipt from the August 5th game.

Last season was the most successful in Mahoning Valley Scrappers history.  Shy of winning the Penn League Championship, the year could have been called nearly perfect, except for one unfortunate incident.  In the early innings of the second game of a doubleheader, Luke Holko was struck in the back of the head by a foul ball.  Holko made his triumphant return to Eastwood Field on Sunday, as GM Dave Smith announced that Luke would be signed to an honorary one day contract.

“He is still a little wobbly when he walks and they had to put some botox in one his legs for balance purposes, but all-in-all he is doing great“, remarked Chad Holko.  “Nicole was driving with him in the car a couple of weeks before Christmas, and he was eating Goldfish Crackers or Cheerios, and he uttered the word ‘more’.  It made the holidays much more fun.”

Young Luke seemed a bit overwhelmed at times.  In the picture above, Travis Fryman greeted Holko in the dugout during batting practice.  Luke was later introduced as he was escorted to the mound by his parents to throw out the first pitch.  The crowd was very supportive and provided a standing ovation.  Luke then made his pre-game pitch, which was a strike.  The paramedics who worked on and transported Luke that night were here and given props.

Fryman commented on the Holko situation.  “We have been following it closely for eleven months.  My wife and I have their website marked in our favorites and check the status several times a week.  We have spoken with Chad and Nicole and have stayed in contact.  It’s miraculous how good he looks, he looks like a normal four-year old boy and that is fantastic to see.”

There was a lot of emotion shown as people watched Luke’s every move.  For what the family has been through over the past eleven months, Sunday was a celebration of what good humanity and prayer can resolve, even in the bleakest of situations.  I also praise the Holko family for never holding a grudge against the Scrappers for what happened.  It is an amazing story and Chad Holko said it best, “It’s amazing how something like this makes you realize what is really important in life”.

It should also be noted that the visiting team, the Aberdeen Iron Birds,  participated in the pre-game festivities and presented Luke with an autographed ball.

 

George “The Animal” Steele was recently at a Mahoning Valley Scrappers game.  There was a laser hair removal promotion on the same night in which Steele picked the fan with the hairiest back to receive a free treatment.  For years, Steele was the ultimate WWF (WWE) heel.  He struck fear into some fans and amused others with his antics.  Eating corner turnbuckles, flashing his green tongue, losing focus during matches, and being the uncontrollable x-factor with the white-taped foreign object,  made Steele so much fun to watch.  I was lucky enough to have a few minutes with The Animal.

Paneech:  I want to get your views on today’s professional wrestling as compared to 40 years ago.  What difference have you noticed and do you still watch?

Steele:  It has changed drastically and is a totally different business now.  I don’t watch wrestling anymore.  I got my faith in 2002, I was very, very sick and was given only six months to live.  When I made it through that, Vince [McMahon] wanted me to sign a Legends contract, but I chose not to sign as a tribute to my new-found faith.  At that time they were using angles involving fornication in a coffin, gay marriage, and all kinds of stuff that didn’t cater to my new lifestyle.  So I chose not to get involved and if I watched, I felt as though I was condoning it.

Paneech:  Do you keep in touch with any other pro wrestlers or have you eliminated all contact?

Steele:  I am on the board of the Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame.  The web address is PWHF.org  and it is not just an internet site, we have a building that is three stories.  The guys that are in wrestling today will sometime be going into that Hall of Fame.

Paneech:  How did the whole “Animal” persona evolve?

Steele:  I got that name, George Steele, when I was wrestling out of the Pittsburgh promotion.  I was a school teacher making $4300.00 a year.  I started wrestling in the Detroit area as a masked man called, “The Student”.  Bruno [Sammartino] came to Detroit with an entourage and they spotted me.  I took my cap, gown, and mask to Pittsburgh, but they decided that they did not want a masked man, they wanted me.  I knew I couldn’t use my real name, Jim Myers, because of teaching and coaching.  Johnny DeFazio said this is Pittsburgh, the steel city, but I didn’t like Jim Steele, so we went with George.  They wanted me to quit teaching and coaching to wrestle full time, but I loved what I did, so the wrestling stayed a part time venture for me.

Paneech:  For years, you didn’t speak, then Capain Lou Albano takes you to Dr. Rodney Papoofnick’s office to get you some electric treatments that will miraculously have you articulating.

Steele:  How Now Brown Cow.

Paneech:  Exactly, that is what you said.  Then Albano tried to convince the doctor to give you more juice to say more and it was too much and you relapsed. 

Steele:  Before that era, I actually did all of my own interviews.  When I was assigned a manager, I would not talk.  Because I was not there very long due to teaching and coaching, the manager would fill spots talking about me, but that whole thing with How Now Brown Cow was my own adaptation of what Vince originally wanted.  Vince gave me a poem to memorize, it was about a page-and-a-half, and I’m dyslexic, so c’mon give me a break.  When the time came to recite this poem verbatim, I said “screw him” and just said How Now Brown Cow.  I always did everything my own way.  If you watch Vince’s reaction during that segment, he was wondering what I was doing.  If I would have read that long poem, no one would have remembered and it would have been garbage.  I still have people come up to me randomly and say How Now Brown Cow.

Paneech:  You went from a notorious heel for years to this endearing lovestruck being with the whole Macho Man / Miss Elizabeth angle in which you were drawn in to Savage’s valet.  How did that angle work?

Steele:  I didn’t become a face, I became a cartoon character.  I went from being one of the most viscious heels in the industry to a cartoon character.  Me, Barry Windham and Mike Rotundo were involved in a match at Madison Square Garden during my cartoon character era.  We were fighting Big John Studd, Bobby Heenan, and I think Mr. Wonderful [Paul Orndorff] and nobody knew how to get out of the match to end it because nobody wanted to lose.  so I said “I’ll get us out of it”.  I cleared the ring with a steel chair and ended up hitting the ref with the chair and getting disqualified, so nobody lost anything.   

 

Paneech:  Who was a wrestler you really liked to work with, and conversely who did you not like working with?

Steele:  I really enjoyed my matches with Bruno Sammartino, they were bigtime hardcore.  Later on, I had my feud with Randy Savage, which was very lucrative.  That feud lasted three years and had a long run, he was very jealous.  People would ask me if I was in love with Miss Elizabeth, and I would just laugh and say no, I have been married to my wife for 55 years, and she [Elizabeth]  doesn’t do windows.  I never had anyone I didn’t like to work with until they started throwing people who didn’t belong in the sport into matches with me.  At a television taping, I faced one such opponent and over the span of four minutes, I threw him out of the ring 17 times.  He couldn’t lace his boots and did not belong in a ring, so I got my point across.

Paneech:  Today’s wrestlers sometimes whine about working 320 days a year.  Is this a realistic number?

Steele:  No, absolutely not, they work about 150-200 days a year.  Two days out of the week, they do television shows, one live and one taped.  I was an agent with WWE for ten years after I retired, so i was pretty familiar with the schedule.  I once wrestled 97 straight days.  Many days in a row, I bounced back and forth between the East Coast and the West Coast, just back and forth every day, that was a tough span. 

Paneech:  There was a rock band called Kiss that was huge in the seventies.  The deal with them was that you could not see them without their makeup.  When you were in public, did you stay in character, or were you a free talking person?

Steele:  I was 6’2″ and weighd 290 pounds, pretty imposing.  People would come up to me and I would just look at them (pauses) and they would leave.

Paneech:  Do you resent Vince McMahon for the direction he has taken the sport? 

Steele:  No, I don’t.  Vince did what he had to do.  Verne Gagne’s AWA promotion in Minnesota and Canada was moving Southeast fast.  The NWA was gaining major television exposure on TBS and moving North, everything was moving toward Vince.  He came up with Wrestlemania as a way to prove he was smarter than the rest of these guys and it caught.  I was closer with his father, Vince McMahon Sr., than I was with Vince, although I did watch Vince grow up and aided in his nurturing.  I don’t agree with everything he does, but he is definitely very good with business and marketing, and has succeeded.

Steele came off as very articulate and cordial.  He took pictures with anyone who asked, but the highlight of the night came between the fifth and sixth innings of the Scrappers game.  Steele was on field with Heather Sahli’s hard working promotional team and he clotheslined Scrappy, the oversized mascot.  He then encouraged one of the kids on the field to pin the mascot (and hook the leg), and in typical George Steele fashion, started to walk back to the exit, turned and looked at the laid out mascot and ran back to deliver a patended George Steele kick to the head.  The audience loved it and he really seemed to enjoy himself.  Very classy individual, but obviously, a great performer who had so many people fooled about who he really was all those years.

In probably one of the most enjoyable nights in Mahoning Valley Scrapper history, Aberdeen brought “The Animal” out of the Scrappers.  Ingenious promotion.  George “The Animal” Steele was on hand to sign autographs and chose the winner of a laser hair removal contest awarded to the contestant with the hairiest back.  The weather was perfect.  The Scrappers, paced by the hot bat of Giovanny Urshela, were victorious with a 9-6 triumph over the Cal Ripken Jr. owned Aberdeen Iron Birds.

The Scrappers hit the board first in the home half of the opening inning.  Carlos Moncrief was hit by a pitch.  Kevin Fontanez singled, and then Giovanny Urshela crushed the ball into the left field visitors bullpen to stake Scrapper starter Michael Rayl to some rare early-inning run support and a 3-0 lead.

Aberdeen scored a pair of runs in the second on a Michael Rooney sac fly and a Trent Mummey RBI-single to make it a 3-2 game.

In the bottom of the second, Moncrief  (pictured) destroyed a 2-0 pitch to deep right field, and he knew it.  After the contact, Moncrief flipped the bat out to the side and watched the ball.  Rounding third, Manager Travis Fryman did not congratulate Moncrief and was obviously irritated by the display of celebration.  In fact, Fryman did not return to coach third base the next inning but stayed in the dugout to have a heart-to-heart with Moncrief about the situation.

“If we were not shorthanded, he would not have stayed in the game”, commented Fryman.  “We had a talk.  Carlos has been stellar this year and he works as hard as anybody on this team.  I have never seen that side of him, and I don’t think we will see it again.

The Scrappers added another run in the third when Aberdeen pitcher Tyler Sexton’s throw to first base went to the stands allowing Urshela to sneak home from third and build the lead to 5-2.  One of the newest Scrappers, Jesus Aguilar, belted his first homer of the season in the fifth, a two-run jack, to increase the lead to 7-2.

Giovanny Urshela had a huge game for Mahoning Valley going 3-4 with four RBI to raise his batting average to .292.  The 18-year old Colombian has been stellar at third base all year and has been coming to life with the bat.  Fryman commented on the offensive progress of his young prospect.  “He seems to get better and better and has been one of the few bright spots this Summer.  He is maturing and looking like he has a chance to be a great player someday.  Playing at this level with older guys has been good for him and forced him to get better.”

The win brought the Scrappers record up to 19-30.  The two teams will play again Sunday at 5.  The game will feature Luke Holko who will be accompanied by his parents, Chad and Nicole, to honor his one day contract as an honorary Scrapper.  Holko was struck in the back of the head by a foul ball last September at a Scrappers game.  Nobody was sure where young Luke would be in a year, but all signs indicate significant progress toward his recovery.

Three Mahoning Valley Scrappers have been named to the New York Penn League All-Star Team.  Two starting pitchers, Owen Dew and Alex Kaminsky and 2B Dan DeGeorge garnered the honors Friday evening.  The All-Star Game is played at Richmond County Bank Ballpark at St. George, Staten Island, New York and will take place August 17.

Owen Dew is currently 1-2 with an ERA of 2.53 in nine starts.  In his 42 innings, Dew has racked up 22 strikeouts against just four walks and has not received very much offensive support in his starts this season.

Alex Kaminsky (pictured) has a record of 4-3 as of this writing.  His ERA is a skinny 2.15 and he has 41 strikeouts in 51 innings pitched.  The former Wright State pitcher also has a 0.80 WHIP, so keep him on your fantasy draft boards as a three-category machine for the future.

Dan DeGeorge is batting .263 and is known for the intangibles.  DeGeorge is a hustler and has been coming into his own.

Congratulations Scrapper All-Stars!

Dew