Reading Bulldogs

Free baseball was played Wednesday night between the Reading Bulldogs and Lexington Bluesox. In what felt like a playoff game atmosphere, the Bluesox narrowly escaped a well-played game beating the Bulldogs 4-3 in 8 innings.

Reading struck first, putting up a run in the second inning. It started with back to back singles by Kevin Marciano and Zac Talis, who then were advanced to second and third respectively off a Corey DiLoretto sacrifice bunt. With runners in scoring position, Chris Bosco delivered a line drive single to left field scoring Marciano to take a 1-0 lead.

Alex Mandrus got his first start of the year and did not disappoint. He was dominant through four innings, giving up only 1 hit and 0 runs. Coming back out for the fifth, he gave up his first run of the game off of 2 hits. Max Mardeny came out of the bullpen to record the final out of the fifth after Mandrus’ stellar night was over allowing only 1 run on 3 hits.

Looking to take the lead in the 6th, Reading’s Mike DeDonato singled and Ryan Wolfsberg reached on an error to start the inning. After advancing to second and third with two outs, DiLoretto singled down the right field line to drive in one run, and Bosco followed that with an RBI single of his own to push the lead to 3-1.

After Lexington knotted the game up at three apiece in the bottom of the 6th, the game went extra innings after neither team scored in the 7th inning. The game came to end in the 8th inning when a Lexington pinch hitter came up with a bases loaded walk-off single to win by a score of 4-3. The winning pitcher was Blout and the losing pitcher was Mardeny.

This was a hard one to swallow for the Bulldogs, but the team looks to bounce back Friday night at Arlington before the break to get back in the win column.

All photos can be found at: http://shartwell.zenfolio.com/bulldogs17