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Giants open the season with a win

May 14, 2014   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart – The Orangeville Giants Senior division baseball club showed what they are capable of during their season opener double header against the defending champion Bolton Brewers on Saturday, May 10, in Bolton.

The Giants had a stellar first game when they took an early lead off a couple of triples from Nathan Drury and Josh Hickey to start the scoring.

Going into the mid innings neither team could do much to score.

Bolton got on the board when they loaded the bases and an errant pitch clipped a batter on the elbow to walk in a run.

The Giants’ Drury stole third base in the 7th inning and when it looked like they might have a chance to bring in a couple of runs, the Brewers managed a double play off a short hit to end the inning.

The O-ville team managed to hang on with some slick defensive moves and some serious pitching from hurler Scott Dash, who stayed on the mound for the duration.

The Giants are the newly reincarnated Orangeville team who have a new uniform and new sponsor – Rack-Ataz Installations.

Orangeville took the year off last season when they failed to fill the roster.

That shouldn’t be a problem this yeas as coach Nathan Drury has a full roster of 15 players plus ‘five or six’ back-ups ready to step up if needed.

Drury, who also coached at Orangeville District Secondary School, said most of his players this season were asked to be on the team rather than go through an open try-out session.

“We’re feeling good after that start, of course,” Dury said after the opening game. “This team is the result of a process over about the last five years. I coached a lot of the guys at ODSS, so now I’ve got five of the top players who I was coaching and brought them to join our team and we formed a new squad.”

Despite not scoring in the latter half, Drury said they had chances and he was happy with the team’s performance.

“We had the bases loaded twice. There was a double play at second that could have gone either way. Then we had another bang-bang play at first. There was two close plays at home were we could have had another run. We were still on base almost every inning. We were getting guys on. Offensively, that’s the top pitching in the league so it doesn’t get much better than that.”

The teams returned for game two of the double header, but the second time wasn’t the charm when the Giants failed to score and took a 16-0 loss to the Brewers to end the day.

The squad took their second loss of the season when they hosted the Midland Indians at Springbrook Park in Orangeville on Sunday, May 7.

That game ended with a 7-3 win for Midland.

The Giants will have a couple of road games coming up. On Thursday, May 15, they will face the Knights in New Lowell.

On Wednesday, May 28, they will again be in Bolton to face the Dodgers with an 8:30 p.m. start.

They return to home turf on Sunday, June 1, to host the Lisle Astros for an afternoon game at Springbrook Park in Orangeville.

The first pitch is scheduled for 1:00 p.m.

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