SAN PEDRO DE MACORIS, Dominican Republic — The Kingsmen Baseball Academy played its first ever games in the Dominican Republic on Saturday, winning its first contest before falling in its second game of the afternoon.
It was a hot and humid day on the southern coast of the Dominican, which saw nine innings of exhilarating baseball played. Both locals and Kingsmen families were on hand to take in the action.
The first game saw the Kingsmen power their way to a 10-0 victory over Esperanza, led by impressive pitching performances. Noah Entrekin, who started the contest with two shutout innings, paved the way for Jake Donaldson and Tate Johnston to keep the door from ever opening.
While the bats never truly exploded, Kingsmen hitters took advantage of their opportunities to supply a steady stream of runs and put the game away.
Initially, game two looked to be heading the same direction. The Americans scored two early runs on Cano Baseball, and starting arm Micah Irving went 2.2 innings without any trouble on the scoreboard.
After Cano plated two to tie the game in the third, the Kingsmen answered with two of its own in the bottom half. The Kingsmen scored three more runs in the fourth to answer another Cano push, and led seven to four going into the game’s final inning.
Harris Clark, who came into the game in the fourth in a big spot and retired three straight hitters, got into some trouble when timely hitting combined with defensive mistakes; Cano never looked back.
Ten runs later, the game was out of reach for Coach Joe Hudak and his squad.
While the results were mixed, there was certainly a lot to be excited about in the first real game action of the spring. Coach Hudak commented later saying that one bad inning shouldn’t “take away from what was otherwise a great day”.
The Kingsmen look to return to the win column Monday morning against a local La Romana ball club. The game, played minutes from Casa de Campo in Buena Vista, will begin at 10am local time, 9am eastern. The game will be streamed on the Kingsmen Baseball YouTube channel.
