News

Leesburg, FL – Great pitching, lights out hitting and strong defense is just about all you can ask for in a baseball game, and the Leesburg Lightning (15-2) had it all in their dominant 10-0 win over the Winter Garden Squeeze (8-11).

“The kind of offense that we’re putting together, the pitching that we got tonight, the defense, just playing solid baseball,” Lightning head coach Rich Billings said when asked if an all-around win like tonight’s was what he wanted to epitomize “Lightning baseball”. “I definitely think that’s what I would like our fans to be able to know that they’re going to get when they show up here.”

The Lightning raced out to an early lead and never looked back, starting with six runs through the first two innings. Tanner May (North Florida), fresh off his walk-off home run last night against DeLand, drove in two runs in the bottom of the first with an RBI single after Walker McCleney (Alabama) and Luke Brown (Western Kentucky) both reached base without recording a hit, Brown on an error and McCleney on a hit-by-pitch.

Tanner May was far from done, however. With a 2-0 lead already in place in the bottom of the second, May stepped up to the plate with the bases loaded and didn’t miss a beat. One swing of the bat gave Leesburg a 6-0 lead as May launched a grand slam to almost the exact same spot in left-center field that he hit his walk-off shot just 24 hours earlier. The North Florida product, who came into the game tied with teammate Jay Prather (North Florida) for second in the league with 14 RBIs, had already accounted for six more through his first two at-bats of the night.

Lightning starting pitcher Robert Kwiatkowski (Spartanburg Methodist) did a great job of keeping the Winter Garden bats quiet while his offense gave him a big lead. Kwiatkowski left the game in favor of Aaron Simple (Flagler) in the sixth inning with 5 2/3 innings pitched, three walks, six strikeouts and no runs allowed on two hits.

Kwiatkowski would end up earning the win after Leesburg added one run in the fifth and three more in the sixth to secure a 10-0 lead. The game ended after seven innings due to league mercy rules (10+ run lead after 7 innings) after Aaron Simple shut down the Winter Garden offense in the top of the seventh.

Coach Billings emphasized the importance of not starting slow each night and said that that was a major part of his team leading the league in runs per game (8.9 runs per game coming into tonight).

“In the games where we put up a bunch of runs and we 10-run-rule somebody we put up crooked numbers in the first couple of innings,” Billings explained. “I think that’s probably the biggest difference (between high-scoring games and low-scoring games).”

Leesburg and Winter Garden will meet two more times this week, on June 29th and 30th, in Winter Garden where the Lightning are 1-0 on the season.

Matt Holzapfel (Elon University)