Bears Rebound 10-1

By Mark Krulish on June 21, 2008

NEWARK, NJ – After last night’s defeat, the Newark Bears players had a closed-door meeting before reporters were able to enter the locker room.

It is not known what was said amongst the players, but they responded by crushing the Camden Riversharks 10-1 on Friday night at Riverfront Stadium.

The Bears offense came on in the early innings. Newark picked up two quick runs on a sacrifice fly by Keith Reed and an RBI-single by Randall Simon.

They opened the floodgates with a seven-run third inning which Vic Gutierrez got started with a double down the left field line. Mike Just followed with a walk and then the RBI carousel began. Ramon Castro and Jose Herrera both plated runs with RBI base hits. Both of them came home when Cory Aldridge slammed his ninth home run of the year over the left-center field wall. Val Majewski reached on a single and then Keith Reed launched a two-run shot to right field giving the Bears a healthy 9-0 lead.

John Pachot added an RBI-single in the fifth inning to close out the scoring for the Bears.

It was pretty smooth sailing for Jose Garcia (2-1), Newark’s starting pitcher for the evening. Garcia picked up the win and kept the Camden lineup quiet, yielding just six hits and one run over seven innings of work. Garcia was very aggressive, throwing first-pitch strikes to 20 of the 27 batters he faced. He was also hitting his targets well, throwing 76 of his 107 pitches for strikes.

“Well, we feel Garcia is capable of doing that every time,” said manager Wayne Krenchicki. “He was aggressive and I’ve been trying to pound that into our pitchers. We’ve been giving up a lot of runs lately and they’ve been constantly pitching into 2-0, 3-0 and 3-1 counts and we can’t have that.”

Cory Willey finished the final two innings for Newark and gave up just one hit.

Camden’s one run was a solo home run by L.J. Biernbaum which led-off the sixth inning. It was Garcia’s only mistake in an otherwise outstanding performance.

It was an all-around effort for the Newark Bears offense. Six different hitters contributed RBIs, led by Aldridge and Reed who picked up three RBIs apiece.

After the game, there was a special moment when reliever Rich Scalamandre proposed to his girlfriend on the field with all the Newark players and coaches staying in the dugout to watch after the team celebrated their win. It was a sweet sight for all those in attendance and it perfectly capped off a big night in Newark for a team that really needed a big win.

Notes: Their seven run third inning tied a season high. They previously achieved this on April 29th during the fourth inning against the Bridgeport Bluefish. The time of the game was a very brisk two hours and eleven minutes. Attendance was 4,256.

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