Nesbitt delights Suburbs with two home runs

Press, 1 February 1988, Page 21

Nesbitt delights Suburbs with two home runs

Dean Nesbitt was a delighted fellow after blasting two automatic home runs to help Suburbs to a 4-2 win over Richmond in an important Lion Red premier men’s softball match at Western Park yesterday. Not especially noted for his power batting, the first baseman put king hits out of the park in both the first and seventh innings.

Nesbitt’s second home run could not have been better timed. It came in the bottom of the seventh with the scores all tied up at 2-2 and a runner, Dion Kerr, already on base.

When he put the hit over the fence at left field he rounded the diamond to rapturous cheers from the Suburbs dugout and some of his team-mates bestowed hearty bearhugs.

The week-end’s matches completed the first full round of the post-Christmas competition. With another full round left Suburbs shares the lead with Papanui and two more teams, Richmond and Burnside, are only two points behind.

Papanui was one of only two teams facing a doubleheader and it had to travel from one ground, Western Park, to another, Papanui Domain, to play its second game.

The second game was considerably more comfortable than the first, Papanui disposing of Merivale, 10-0, in only five innings, and racking up 11 safe hits to two.

Merivale’s pitcher, Murray Britt, was probably feeling the effect of throwing nine

innings against Burnside in the early game at Papanui Domain and was unable to stop Papanui stringing the hits together. For Papanui, Wayne Durey, Tim Hickey, Brett Williams and Rennie Tai all collected two hits each. Earlier in the afternoon Papanui had to come from two runs behind to shade the bottom-placed Woolston-Car-dinals, 5-4. Woolston-Cardinals piled on four runs in the top of the fifth innings, including a three-run automatic home from the bat of Aaron Flynn, to take a 4-2 lead before Buzz Terrey was replaced on the mound by Colin Sutherland.

Sutherland himself came home for Papanui in the bottom of the fifth to reduce the deficit by one and both Tim Hickey (automatic home run) and Rennie Tai scored in the sixth to give the team the win.

Papanui, sporting new uniforms, went through the week-end unbeaten as it had overcome Richmond, 3-1, on Saturday. This was its first win over that side in five games this season. The Burnside players were breathing sighs of relief after their 3-1 nine-inningp tiebreaker win over Merivale. Both the automatic runner, Chris Britt, and John Daly scored for Burnside to give that team the decisive edge in the top of the ninth, with Merivale unable to advance its runner past third. However, Burnside had been very lucky not to see the game slip away in the first tiebreak innings when, in

the bottom of the ninth, Merivale had loaded bases with one down. The situation was rescued with a Larry Dahlseide strike-out and an outfield catch by Grant Thomson.

Burnside had initially taken the lead in the top of the fifth when the in-form batter, Graeme Anderson, hit home Mike McLennan but Merivale replied in dynamic fashion with a beautiful Shane Vincent home run in the bottom of the sixth.

In Saturday’s games a Mike Timu home run was enough to give Richmond a slender 10 win over Burnside while another home run, from the bat of the Canadian, Dick Martin, was vital in Suburbs’ 3-2 win over Merivale. Martin’s homer tied up the game at 1-1 in the seventh and Suburbs went on to win in the second tiebreak innings. After its very long first game lasting over two hours Suburbs crushed WoolstonCardinals, 10-1 in the second half of the double-header with the Texan, Chris Zink, hitting his sixth automatic home run of the season.

Largely responsible for Papanui’s 3-1 win over Richmond were the 12 strike-outs collected by the pitcher, Colin Sutherland, and Rennie Tai’s two-run automatic homer in the second innings.

POINTS TABLE P W L F A Pt Suburbs 5 4 1 23 9 8 Papanui 5 4 1 24 12 8 Burnside 5 3 2 14 10 6 Richmond 5 3 2 12 13 6 Merivale 5 I 4 6 19 2 Wool-Card. 5 0 5 11 27 0