Urbana Locomotives crash against Portland

Capture

Portland’s Corey Dickerson hammers a HR in Game 3 of the NLCS

As manager/GM of the Urbana Locomotives in the Boys of Summer League, I was riding pretty high as of Sunday.  We had clinched the NL wild card with 97 wins.  We barely defeated Shawn Baier’s Traverse City Panthers in the NLDS with the help of D.J. LeMahieu’s 10 hits and Cole Hamels’ two wins.  We were psyched!

Then on Monday, it all came crashing down. 

Monday night, Brad Stark and I played our NLCS series head-to-head via join.me.  It didn’t take long.  Brad’s Portland Microbrewers swept my Locomotives 4 games to none. 

The first three games were close (4-2, 3-2, 5-3) and we even had the lead in two of those games.  But by game 4, Cole Hamels had pretty much given up hope.  The same Hamels that shut out the Panthers in the NLDS gave up 8 runs in one and third innings against the Microbrewers.  By the time the laughable game was up, Portland had won the game (and the series) 10-1.  Adrian Beltre’s rbi double accounted for the only Loco run in the game. 

For the series, we were outscored 22-8.  I will point out that Nick Markakis went 6 for 15 and D.J. LeMahieu (yes, the NLDS co-MVP) went 6 for 17.  Brad dubbed D.J. “The Gnat” for how annoying he was. 

Brad was a gracious winner and I will root for my fellow National League manager to win against Stray Corrado’s tough Chicago Nine in the Boys of Summer World Series. 

Good luck to both!

Thomas Nelshoppen

I am an IT consultant by day and an APBA media mogul by night. My passions are baseball (specifically Illini baseball), photography and of course, APBA. I have been fortunate to be part of the basic game Illowa APBA League since 1980 as well as the BBW Boys of Summer APBA League since 2014. I am slogging through a 1966 NL replay and hope to finish before I die.

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