The Palm Beach Cardinals traveled to Florida Auto Exchange Stadium to face the Dunedin Blue Jays in their home opener of the season. Meanwhile, the Cardinals looked to pickup right where they left off, to the point of getting a five run lead over Dunedin.
But the Blue Jays weren’t going to be overlooked.
Dunedin started the scoring off in the bottom of the first off of a single by DH Jonathan Davis. Palm Beach immediately bounced back by scoring two more runs in the third inning, as well as one more in the fourth inning off of Blue Jays’ pitcher Juliandry Higuera.
In the fourth inning, the Blue Jays had a key opportunity to tie the game. D.J. Davis hit a double to the right field wall with runners on first and second. The ball wedged between the dirt and padding, resulting in Nick Thompson trying to signal for the ground rule double.
The umpires did not make a ruling at first which led to Davis rounding the bases and touching home for an inside-the-park home run. However, field umpire Matt Snodgrass headed out to the outfield, and ruled it was actually stuck. According to the official rules, Davis was instead given an RBI double, and Ryan McBroom was told to go back to third base. The end result of it all made it a 3-2 Palm Beach lead.
Over the next two innings, the Cardinals scored four more runs off of pitcher Tom Robson.
Trailing 7-2, a bases clearing triple made it a 7-5 game, with Palm Beach still narrowly hanging onto the lead.
Eventually, the game was tied heading into the tenth inning, and heading into the bottom of the tenth, Kyle Grana was brought out to pitch the inning. With one out in the bottom of the tenth, David Harris doubled to Thompson, bringing up Derrick Loveless. He grounded out, but advanced Harris to third. An eventual wild pitch by Grana allowed Harris score the game-winning run to snap the six-game winning streak of Palm Beach.
Game two will take place at 6:30 on Saturday night.
