Greensboro Grasshoppers in it to Get The Pennant and they Win It…
(Former Southeast Guilford Falcon, taking the Team to Title)
LHP Dominant Dominic Perachi takes down the first 16 batters he faces, and Nick Cimillo with a C-Note Two HRs, and Hoppers are SALLY North First Half Champions for 2024
This is sort of weird but with GreensboroSports.com being down last night, due to the the foreign malware attacks that hit us on occasion, so I thought I would lay out my baseball story tonight, Facebook…
Usually, if I have what I feel like is a good one, then I bring it on over from GSOSports to Facebook, but with this on, I went the other way around going from Facebook to GSOSports.com this morning…
What a win tonight for the Greensboro Grasshoppers at First National Bank Field…The Hoppers are South Atlantic League Northern Division First Half Champions, after their 4-2 win over the Hudson Valley Renegades…
The Grasshoppers came into the contest with a 1/2 game lead over the Jersey Shore BlueClaws, and by the end of the first inning, you tell the Hoppers were right tonight…Termarr Johnson led off the bottom of the first with a BB, then he scored on a two-run Double from Charles McAdoo…Greensboro up 1-0, and then the home team made it 2-0 Hops, when McAdoo took off for third from second, and then MAC scored on a poor throw to third by the Hudson Valley catcher…McAdoo to the dish/plate, and Greensboro now up with that 2-0 lead and here comes Nick Cimillo to the plate next…
Cimillo goes deep to left field, and that ball was LONG GONE, and in the bottom of the very first inning, the Greensboro Grasshoppers in a must-win situation, are in front 3-0…The Hoppers had to win, and they were taking care of business/bidness, as Dusty Rhodes used to say…
Up 3-0, and the home run from Cimillo was his first of the night, as he came to plate in fourth inning, and he drove the ball deep again, and Cimillo has another Hopper Homer, and this one was a real C-Note by Cimillo…This was the Greensboro Grasshoppers’ 100th homer of the first half of the season…A real C-Note off of the bat of Cimillo, and home run #100 of 2024 for the Greensboro Grasshoppers…That’s 100 Home Runs, in 65 first half games…
For a team that is batting just .230, those 100 home runs, are a huge boost…And by the end of the fourth inning, and in a must-win situation, the Hoppers led the Hudson Valley Renegades, 4-0…
And by the time this game was over, the Hoppers were walking away, and in some jumping up-and-down, with a 4-2 victory…
Cimillo was red-hot, or white-hot, take your pick and the Hoppers starting pitcher, Dominic Perachi, a left-handed thrower, took down the first 16 Renegade batters he faced in the ballgame…Dominic was nothing but DOMINANT…Dominant Dominic Perachi….
Between Perachi and Cimillo, I guess you could say those two were the major movers and shakers in the win….
Hoppers Win, Hoppers Win, Hoppers Win, Hoppers Win Again, and they take The Pennant…In it to get the Pennant, and they Win It…
More on the “Dominant Dominic”, with Perachi going 6 innings, and he gave up 0 Runs, on just 1 hit, with 0 BBs/7 Ks…And Perachi only threw 58 pitches total, and 45 of them went for strikes…That was some kind of effort by that young man, with some very high stakes on the table, in this game….
More on Cimillo’s C-Note two home run night, with Nick Cimillo wearing #22 on his jersey, and that is the same jersey uniform number of another hard-hitting Greensboro professional baseball player Matt Winters, who played for the Greensboro Hornets, back in the early 1980s…Cimillo in 2024, and Winters back around 1982, making Greensboro Baseball Great…
Taking a closer look at other Hoppers who got in on the Pennant-Winning Effort, and we see Termarr Johnson went 1-3/BB/Run…Charles McAdoo was 2-4, with a double, a run and an RBI…It was RBI #52 on the season for MAC, and he is batting a highly active .336, as the First Half of the season comes to a close…Mitch Jebb goes 1-4…Lonnie White Jr. had 1-4 evening…Hudson Head was 0-2/BB…And that was the story of the Greensboro Grasshoppers offense on Thursday night…
One more look at Cimillo shows he was 2-3/2 HRs/BB/2 RBI…The Hoppers were a busy bunch on offense, and you would think that they won by a larger margin, than the 4-2 finish….The Grasshoppers had the bases loaded and left three men on in the sixth inning, and then they had two more base runners in the seventh inning, and they couldn’t move those men…Still the 4-2 win and the first half Title, are very sweet…
Hudson Valley did get a solid effort from their starting pitcher, Sebastian Keane, with Keane working 5 1/3 innings, allowing 4 runs, on 4 hits, with 2 BBs/6 Ks…Keane was keen, but Cimillo got mean he was seen sending two of those Keane pitches way out into the far Green…
Another positive perk from the Hoppers’ pitching staff was their 8 strikeouts, plus-plus they walked 0/ZERO Hudson Valley Renegade batters…And that Dominic Perachi kid took down the first 16 batters he faced and that was perfect baseball for 5 1/3 innings…That comes out to Three-Up/Three-Down Hudson Valley batters for the first five innings in this game, and if you are getting that type of effort, and you can find a couple of runs, you can win your fair share of ballgames…
DH Garrett Martin went 1-3, and he homered for the HV Renegades…Josh Moylan was 1-3, and he Doubled and scored for HV…Renegade Beau Brewer goes 1-3 and he drove in one run…Hoppers pitching staff with Perachi, and then Scott Randall and Brandon Bidois super strong, there on the mound, only allowing 3 total Renegade hits…
Key game points…
Final Score:Greensboro Grasshoppers 4, Hudson Valley Renegades 2
WP:Dominic Perachi(4-1)
LP:Sebastian Keane(5-5)
SV:Brandon Bidois(4)
Hoppers' Line- 4-7-0 'Gades' Line- 2-3-1
Greensboro Grasshoppers (39-26)
Hudson Valley Renegades(33-32)
Game Particulars:
Attendance-4,436
Time of Game’TOG-2:00
Game Time Temp-83 Degrees
Up Next:Hudson Valley Renegades(33-32) at Greensboro Grasshoppers(39-26) on Friday night, with the first pitch set for 6:30pm, at First National Bank Field, in beautiful dowtown Greensboro…If you can’t make it to the game, be sure to listen live at GSOHoppers.com or on Bally Live TV…
**********Interesting Greensboro Grasshoppers note….The Hoppers field manager is Blake Butler…Blake played high school baseball for the local Southeast Guilford Falcons, and his high school head baseball coach was David Beasley, with assistant coaches, Charlie Gamble III, and Charlie Gamble IV….Blake Butler played college baseball for the College of Charleston Cougars, and was a professional baseball player, in the Cincinnati Reds organization…He played his last professional baseball game for the Daytona Tortugas, and Blake Butler played all nine postitions for the Tortugas, on September 2, 2017…This is Blake’s very first season, as the head manager for a pro baseball team…His dad, Chris Butler, runs the Bob’s Curb Market, out on Holden Road, near the Wet and Wild Emerald Pointe Water Park…***********
(First time out as the head man, not too bad for Blake Butler, as he leads his Greensboro Grasshoppers team to the SALLY/South Atlantic League First Half Pennant.)