“Quite a crowd, eh?” I thought to myself, quickly remembering that it was the first Thirsty Thursday of the Salem Red Sox season. The Roanoke Times shaded area along the third base side AND the deck along the first base side were both fairly busy.
And with a very solid outing for the residents of the Roanoke Valley…I could only think…why not a VERY solid outing for the hometown ball club, too? And the Sox players seemed to be thinking the exact same thing.
“I could hear them when I was up to bat and stuff. I could tell they wanted us to get back into the game and they never gave up on us so, we never gave up on the game and didn’t gave up on them either,” explained the hero of the night, Matty Johnson. “I think they gave us a little extra boost to get back into the game. Hopefully we made everybody happy.”
Coming through with a huge game on his birthday was the center fielder, Matty Johnson. Johnson finished with four hits and three RBI with one of those being the game tying run and the other being the game winner! It doesn’t get much sweeter than being a game-winning hero on your special day.
“I was more focused on winning than anything. I knew I had four hits but at the end of the day if we lose, it’s going to feel like I went 0 for 4 instead of 4 for 5 so I was just glad we got the win,” said Johnson. “I remember one time in high school I hit a walk-off home run on my birthday so that was the last special moment I had on my birthday, baseball wise.”
Yet again though, it was the hot start that saved the Sox from defeat. In the sixth consecutive game, Salem put up the first run on the scoreboard and rode out the momentum to secure the win while claiming the three-game series over the Winston-Salem Dash by a score of 9-8.
But to be fair, it wasn’t your ideal, clean-cut game whatsoever. Both Salem and Winston-Salem combined for a total of six errors. Though it made the night much more entertaining, it wasn’t hard to tell that the season was still young as there were plenty of misjudgments and bobbled balls to go around.
Salem will be back at it on LewisGale Field tomorrow (Friday) through Monday in a four-game series against a Carolina League rival, the Myrtle Beach Pelicans. After sweeping the Pelicans in four games to open up the 2014 season, Salem will look to do the same thing and secure four more wins over the next four days.
Don’t forget, Friday will feature the Carolina League championship ring ceremony and Saturday will feature a visit from the real World Series trophy won by the Boston Red Sox in 2013!
I cannot express my anticipation to see that trophy without going overboard so, I’ll save that for another day. Stay tuned to TheRoanoker.com and follow me on twitter (@dferg06) to get inside stories and interviews with the Salem Red Sox all year long.
