End Times Avoided

Game 132, August 27, DBAP
Durham Bulls 3, Charlotte Knights 2
Season: 75-57; Home Games Remaining: 4
Wrap, Box, Indy Week, Herald-Sun, Wild Card

Funny how a win, even a shaky win, defers the Apocalypse. Just yesterday we were wondering if the Bulls had been abducted by aliens and today we're standing in the sunshine on the back porch and checking the playoff calendar.

Let's deal with Hurricane Irene first. The Triangle area dodged the bullet and besides, as broadcaster Neil Solondz noted the night before last, the team is the Durham Bulls, not the Apex Bulls or the Cary Bulls or the Raleigh Bulls. That is, they are tough guys — once they get over this abduction thing. So what's a little wind and rain gonna do?

Well, for one thing, a bunch of those Apex, Cary and Raleigh folks (like me) stayed home and watched the game on TV. The attendance number of 9,549 needs a great big "paid attendance" asterisk, because if there were more than a couple of thousand I'll chew up a page of my scorebook. And what we TV watchers saw for the first four innings or so was a lot of wind and rain and interesting pitching.

This was Chris Archer's first AAA start. Pretty good. More than that, and good news for Bulls fans, he needs a good bit of work. That means we'll likely be seeing a lot of him next season. The bad news is that, much like Matt Torres, he's likely to scare/disappoint us from time to time. Last night, for example, he got two quick outs in the 2nd inning then a walk, double, and two more walks brought in an easy run for the Knights. Except for that inning, however, he looked very good and put in a nice six innings for the Bulls. For more background on Mr. Archer, Adam Sobsey did a piece for Indy Week a couple of days ago.

Meanwhile, Charlie Montoyo sent out a lineup of all right-handed batters against Charlotte lefty Doug Davis, leaving on the bench lefties Dan Johnson, Stephen Vogt, and Leslie Anderson. They did just fine, especially outfielder Matt Carson who had two doubles.

Dane De La Rosa (need to do a feature on him) did a solid two innings. Rob Delaney had a thrilling 9th that we could have done without. And there we were, a win!

Remember: Double header tonight! Two for the price of one.