Glenn
Forrester and Crete Whaanga hit lead-off home runs to inspire the Cardinals to
an upset 9-4 win against Ellis Park on Saturday.
It was
just the second win this season for the Cardinals, who went into the weekend
with a 1-9 record at the foot of the premier men's competition.
Forrester
took a ball, sliced two fouls and then took a second ball before putting
veteran Ellis Park pitcher Pete Mathieson over the fence in the first at-bat of
the game.
Simon
Maole added a two-run homer in the first inning to give the Cardinals immediate
control against Ellis Park.
Whaanga's
big blast came at the top of the third, when he saw off Mathieson with a 1-1
count.
Cardinals
led 6-1 going into the bottom of the fifth inning, with young pitcher Joshua
Ludlow doing a sterling job on the mound.
Ludlow
coughed up two runs before each side got a run in the sixth, making it 7-4 with
one to play.
The Cards
could smell blood by now and added two more runs at the top of the seventh,
with a Doug Hill double scoring Dave Arthur, and a Forrester double bringing
home Hill.
There
were no such heroics for the Cardinals in the early game against the Saints,
which ended in a 13-1 win to the second-placed side.
The
Saints led 2-1 after two and a-half innings but smashed the game open with five
runs at the bottom of the third and six at the bottom of the fourth.
Mike
O'Neill provided the moment of the day when he smashed a grand slam (bases
loaded) homer off Ludlow in the third inning.
The
Saints backed up with an upset of their own, 5-3, against the
competition-leading Dodgers, who had lost just one game all season.
Sam Jones
pitched six clean innings for the Saints, his only blemish a three-run fifth
inning when he walked four batters.
With the
bat, the Saints were effective rather than spectacular, scoring one run in each
of the first four innings and in the sixth.
The
Dodgers produced one big inning to beat Ellis Park 6-2 in the other game of the
doubleheader round.
Both
teams' bats were cold through the first three innings before the Dodgers leaped
into the lead in a chaotic four-run, four-error fourth inning.
Ellis
Park responded with a two-run Chang homer but the Dodgers pushed further ahead
with runs in the fifth and six innings.
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