Rangers open Firecracker with a dud

by Bobby Abplanalp
Wyoming Sports.org

Some days you got it and some days you don’t.

That was the case for the Laramie Rangers AA American Legion baseball team against the WESTCO (Scottsbluff, Neb.) Zephyrs at Cowboy Field Thursday night in the first day of the annual wood bat Firecracker Invitational.

The cool and windy opening night for the home team did not go well for the Rangers, as they were thumped the Zephyrs 9-2.

Zephyrs manager and former Ranger and Laramie native Mark Moran got the better of his former team.

“I always love coming back to Laramie. It’s a great place to play,” Moran said. “It’s a good tournament and we see good competition here. Every year four or five people come out of the stands and say 'hi' that I haven’t seen for years, so it’s always fun for me to come back.”

Laramie, 17-9, has now lost two straight and seemed to be still hung over from last weekend's Dooley Oil Classic championship loss to Colorado Springs Baseball Club. The Rangers never got going against the Zephyrs.

“Uninspiring. We were uninspired tonight,” Rangers manager Sean McKinney said. “We are just not in a good place right now and I need to get that corrected. We’re just not playing baseball, we’re not doing the little things right and we need to get that figured out quickly.”

WESTCO, 15-17, came off a hard-fought 5-4 loss just 25 minutes before this game to the Loveland, Colo., Indians. Yet, the Zephyrs wasted no time against the Rangers, jumping out to a 3-0 lead after two innings, as Laramie pitcher Nolan Carter gave up five hits. Rylan Harding relieved Carter in the fourth inning.

Both teams would play even for a while, until a six-run fifth inning by WESTCO broke the game open. The Zephyrs had four hits in the inning and took advantage of one big Laramie error for a 9-0 lead.

Laramie would avoid the five-inning mercy rule by scoring two runs off of bases-loaded walks by Zephyrs pitcher Michael Hoppes in the bottom of the fifth for the final margin.

“I was impressed with the way our kids bounced back, because that was a tough game to lose in game one,” Moran said of WESTCO'S loss to Loveland, as the Zephyrs took a two-run lead into the bottom of the seventh.

Hoppes would get the complete-game win for the Zephyrs, with seven strikeouts, only giving up three hits.

“(Michael) Hoppes had pretty good stuff today and Laramie really couldn’t solve him,” Moran said.”

Center fielder Coleton Wilson, Harding and pinch hitter Kevin Dooley all had singles for the Rangers.

“He only threw five curve balls, so the rest were fast balls,” McKinney said of Hoppes. “We weren’t ready to hit that. We just stood there and watched him pitch it and we weren’t aggressive with it and the kid just kept doing it, and we weren’t able to hit it.”

The Rangers will try to rebound Friday against the Loveland Indians at 7 p.m. at Cowboy Field.