[BirdWatcher]

SJL:



On Saturday, two teams in the middle of the SJL standings and fighting to not fall out of contention when the Milwaukee Cadets hosted the Jacksonville Wolf Pack. The teams battled to a scoreless tie until the bottom of the 9th when the Cadets 29-year old second baseman Rob Bello, who earlier in the week had a 5-hit game against Philadelphia, came in to pinch-hit and tripled the first pitch he saw from Jacksonville starter Juan Maldonado on the ground down the first base line. The very next batter, Sun-min Yi, the aw shucks kid from Indian Hills, Nevada known more for his great defense in right field (2 gold gloves the past 2 seasons) than his bat hit a line drive single through the right side of the infield to plate Bello with the walk-off run. For the left-handed starter Maldonado it was the second superb performance of the week though this one ended in heartbreak. The big lefty out of the Dominican Republic led the league with 20 wins and 179 strikeouts in 1974 but in spite of fine pitching since has hovered near .500 due to a lack of support from his team and is seeing more of the same in 1977.




MGL:



At the beginning of the week two of the more surprising teams in the early going in the MGL- the Portland Wild Things and the Oklahoma City Diamond Kings- squared off in Oklahoma City. The Diamond Kings held on in a wild one, having scored 5 runs in the bottom of the 8th to take a commanding 9-1 lead only to see Portland plate 5 in the top of the 9th to put fear into the partisan crowd. Dan Knauff got the win for the Diamond Kings to remain perfect thus far (he would later in the week finally suffer his first loss at the hands of the Brewers) and Ben Bakeman continues his emergence as one of the best young closers in the game.