As many punters expected, it only took two games out of a possible three for the National Baseball League’s London Mets to knock off the Southampton Mustangs and take their first National Championship title since 2008 with a 6-2 win on Saturday 5 September and an 11-2 win on Sunday at Farnham Park.
BIG INNING
In Sunday’s game, the Mets put together a huge seven-hit nine-run outburst in the top of the second inning off Southampton starter Francisco Gonzalez, capped by an inside-the-park home run to deep right field by Jamie Dix, and that was essentially that.
After Mets’ left fielder Derrick Cook led off the inning with a walk, other hits, all singles until the Jamie Dix home run, came from Dix himself on a bunt, designated hitter Grant Delzoppo, Dexter Bohn, Martin Tucker, Sam Morris and Derrick Cook. There was a key Southampton error – a dropped catch in right field – that could have ended the inning a little earlier, but this was really a case of the Mets’ offense suddenly teeing off against the Mustangs’ starter and taking the game out of reach almost before it got going.
There was a fine relief effort after that by Southampton’s Alberto Rodriguez. The soft-throwing right-hander kept the Mets off-balance and scoreless for the next 4.1 innings, and often had them flailing at his slow loopy curve balls, until he finally gave the London team another couple of fairly meaningless runs in the top of the seventh, with RBIs coming from Grant Delzoppo on a bloop single and Jonathon Cramman on a sacrifice fly.