The Mercer Cup

The town of Bluefield and Princeton supposedly have a huge rivalry.  I'm guessing they do not get along too well or something (I'm not too entirely sure nor do I know the exact details, all I know is that we have to beat Princeton).  They call the rivalry the Mercer Cup.  The winner at the end of the season gets to take home a trophy (the Mercer Cup).  We play Princeton more than any other team in the league.  Princeton is in affiliation with the Tampa Bay Rays.

We started the first leg of the Mercer Cup on Thursday, June 30.  The series had been hyped up more than I would have figured and I was told every game was going to be sold out and the fans were not going to be holding anything back when they start heckling.  Going into the first game, I was expecting the worst, but in all reality nothing could be much worse than what I endured during college when we went to Tulane or East Carolina or Southern Mississippi.  I think I was expecting a little too much.  Don't get me wrong, there were a good amount of fans there, but there was basically no heckling.  If anything, all they wanted was an autograph from us.  They were on the umpires more than anything.  A good line I heard from the stands after an umpire made a border line call,
"EVEN THOUGH JACK'S YOUR ONLY FRIEND, STAY AWAY FROM HIM!" (referring to Jack Daniel's, I thought it was pretty clever)

Game 1 -- The first game of the series was really exciting.  We won behind an outstanding pitching performance from our starter.  Although he did not figure in the decision, he pitched unbelievable allowing only 1 run in the first inning.  Arik Sikula got his first professional win.

Game 2 -- This game was not nearly as exciting as the first.  We blew them away because we jumped out to an early lead and capitalized on some defensive errors on their part.

Game 3 -- This game was the good old pitching duel.  Both pitchers went deep into the game and held the opposing offenses at bay.  It was 1-0 us going into the bottom of the eighth inning.  Princeton was able to make a late rally and managed to tie it at 1 going into the ninth.  We were unable to plate a run even though we had a runner on second with one out.  In the bottom of the ninth, they led off the inning with a cheap bloop hit (a pitcher's worst nightmare).  The batter got lucky!  They bunted the guy to second and the next batter had an unbelievable at bat.  He battled through the entire at bat fouling several pitches off before he finally flared a ball into left center field, scoring the winning run from second.

We lead the series 2-1, but should be up 3-0.  There are two more games in the first leg of the series tomorrow and Monday.  Hopefully, we can pull out both games.  They are not better than us; we just beat ourselves.  There really has not been a team that has been better than us.  We always shoot ourselves in the foot costing us the game.  Im interested to see how many fans show up for the game on the fourth.  It's at our home field and SUPPOSEDLY, its completely sold out with standing room only, but I'll believe that when I see it...