This morning the Ironpigs took the field in Buffalo with a 12:05pm start for their only game broadcast on the MLB Network this season. Not sure how those games are selected but it appears it will miss the Lehigh Valley’s diamond for this season.
Nate Bump held on to a pretty decent start up allowing only a solo HR until the 5th when the Bison rallied for 4 additional runs.
The Pig bats were held in check by Bison pitcher Dylan Owen who went 6 innings, scattering 3 hits and striking out 6.
Being able to watch the game on TV, there was a lot of great defensive plays on both sides of the innings and many “shoulda been” hits taken away by star worthy plays.
The top of the ninth was the Pig’s inning. Leading off was Kevin Frandsen with a single. Young struck out for the first out but Jeff Larish and Cory Sullivan both walked to load the bases. Left fielder Matt Miller came on with a 2 run single further shaking Bison reliever Manny Acosta who kept “complaining” about the mound conditions. Erik Kratz and Rob Hudson walked to bring in another run. The Bison went to the bullpen with 1 out and the bases loaded, the Pigs were staging for a great comeback and the tarp was rolled out. How pathetic a move that is! It had been a slight rain for several innings and when the Pigs made a sincere effort to win this game and the groundscrew pulls out the tarp. Here I thought Buffalo was a classy organization. I am going out there and saying that this is something that the team should be ashamed of. If anyone from the Buffalo organization decides to read what I am writing.. please respond in the comment section. I would LOVE to hear what the rationale for this call was.
The game was eventually called and the Pigs lost. This game should have been suspended. Very sad grounds crew and umpiring decision.
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Tomorrow the Pigs come home to what I expect will be a large crowd. Tomorrow will be the debut of the Ryne Sandberg bobblehead giveaway to the first 3,000 fans 18 and over.
Not too bad. Again, if you REALLY have to have one of these.. Gates open at 5:45pm (expect them to open earlier if the crowd exceeds 5,000 people and becomes a safety issue) and I almost guarantee that people will show up as early as 2:00 or 3:00pm. Get there early! If you don’t get one.. don’t get angry. Be sad inside, but noone wants to hear an adult whine about not receiving a toy. Besides, you get to see a ballgame.
OinK!
noisenation.mlblogs.com 
What do you expect from Buffalo? The only thing good that ever came from there are Wings, and they probably copied that idea as well.
I was reading the Twitter account of Buffalo sports writer Dave Ricci, and even he thought it was a bush-league move, and ripped into the grounds crew for not staying on top of the conditions. You can check out some juicy stuff at twitter.com/DaveARicci
The game report from the Buffs’ website…
http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20110425&content_id=18238510&vkey=news_t422&fext=.jsp&sid=t422
stated in part:
“By International League rules, an umpire may call a game finished after a weather delay as long as the visiting team did not tie the score or take the lead. If the IronPigs had tied the game, the game would’ve been suspended as the home team must be given the same amount of outs to win the game.”
The big-league rules, from which all those of the minors spring, are no different.
Stay classy, Buffalo.
Too bad they got Ryne Sandberg’s birthday wrong. He was born in September NOT July. I suppose they do not get a prototype of the packaging or the item beforehand. Otherwise, it was a nice gift and quite popular, I did run up there to get mine.