<\/div>\nOne of the most frustrating things for an athlete to deal with is being yelled at by a coach to do something that you’re pretty sure he or she couldn’t do. <\/p>\n
“I’d like to see him try to guard this guy,” I muttered to myself all too often in my high school days, and usually received support from my teammates. <\/p>\n
Well, after Friday night’s rousing victory over the Yuma Scorpions in front of a packed Blair Field, the Long Beach Armada will never be able to second-guess their coaches again.<\/p>\n
Pitching coach Rik Currier threw a three-hit complete game and hitting coach Ryan Lehr went 3-4 with an RBI in the Armada’s 11-1 victory that included a 9-run flurry of firepower in the bottom of the fourth. Long Beach improved to 7-8 on the season. <\/p>\n
With the game knotted at 1-1, rightfielder Chris Klemm (2-4, RBI) sent a blooper over the second baseman to bring in DH Tony Torcato (2-5, RBI) for the go-ahead run, and the rout was on.<\/p>\n
With no outs, the Armada juiced the bases for catcher Octavio Martinez (2-4, 3 RBI), who obliged and cleared them by crushing one to the wall in the right-center gap. The three runs made it a 5-1 Armada lead that would never be threatened, and Martinez slid safely into third and promptly called time for a water break.<\/p>\n
Long Beach added four more runs to notch seven hits and nine runs in the fourth. The exciting inning was of little surprise, considering the Armada posted an average of 10.2 runs per game in their five most recent victories. Coach Steve Yeager promised that his team would bring tenacity to the plate, and they proved him right in front of the Long Beach faithful on a perfect summer night.<\/p>\n
Currier responded to the run well and never allowed Yuma another scoring chance, sending the next nine Scorpion batters back to the dugout empty-handed. The 30-year-old righty dominated right-handed hitters by making them chase outside curves, using an elastic release to throw across his body with surprising velocity. The performance earned him ten strikeouts and his team their first home victory of the season.<\/p>\n
Long Beach will look to keep the momentum going tonight in the second of a four-game series against Yuma at 7:05pm.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5754\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5754"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=5754"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}