Recap
The Kelowna Falcons (15-9) broke out the brooms and swept the Cowlitz Black Bears (9-12) in a marathon five-hour game by a score of 6-5 in 14 innings.
The Falcons have now taken over sole possession of first place in the West Coast League’s North Divison and continue to fight for a first-round playoff spot. There are three games left in the first half of the season and the Falcons have put themselves in a very good position to make a nice run.
The Falcons opened up the scoring in the first inning. They would add single runs in the third and fifth innings as well. Cowlitz, trying to avoid getting swept, rallied late in the game and scored three runs total in the seventh and eighth to make it a tie game at 3-3.
After that, neither team gave an inch. The innings rolled by and the die hard fans stayed in their seats as the Falcons and Black Bears battled for that winning run.
Cowlitz almost had the win in the 12th inning. The Falcons got in a spot of trouble and the Black Bears scored a pair of runs. In the bottom of the 12th, Alex McGarry walked to start the inning. The next two batters were struck out. Taylor Wright came up to bat and belted his second home run of the night to deep center to tie the game up 5-5. It was an amazing shot from Wright, who continues to be the Falcons offensive dynamo.
The game went on to the 14th inning where Matt Bottcher led off the inning with a double. Connor Gurnik struck out trying to advance Bottcher, which brought the catcher Josh Glenn up to bat. Glenn’s timing was spot on and he hammered the ball to deep center field which scored Bottcher and won the game for Kelowna by a score of 6-5.
Coach Bryan Donohue was happy with his team’s big win. He said, “Putting up those runs early is big.We’re a really good team when we play with the lead. The story of the night obviously is Taylor Wright hitting two huge home runs for us.” He continued on saying,”The key for us in the later innings was executing good bunt defense. We kept them off second base and that was huge.”
Donohue also had praise for Glenn, who played the walk-off hero. He said, “Josh had already seen Nick Strange (the Cowlitz pitcher) twice. he made a mistake throwing a fastball up and over the plate and thank god Glenn was on time for it. He put a charge into that ball, which isn’t an easy thing to do.”
The Falcons will wrap up the first half of their schedule against the Yakima Valley Pippins on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. First pitch for the opener is slated for 6:35.
Falcons Play by Play and Recaps provided by Anthony Fusco.
