The Nevada Bullets suffered through two horrific days on the baseball field. There are plenty of ways to deal with the adversity of three straight losses.
You can stew over it, forget about it and move forward, learn from it or make light of it. Bullets manager Jim Blueberg chose the latter.
"In this game sometimes you're the hammer and sometimes you're the nail," he said. "The last two days we've been the nail."
That is putting it mildly. The Atwater Aviators hammered the Bullets for the second straight day, winning the doubleheader 22-5 and 15-5, Wednesday afternoon at Western Nevada's John L. Harvey Field.
The Bullets fell to 10-7 and Atwater improved to 13-4.
"They are the best team we've seen so far in terms of swinging the bat," Blueberg said. "We had chances early, but we didn't stop any of their rallies. Our pitching staff is a little short right now."
WNC star Andrew Woeck has tendinitis and Jordan Lewis suffered an arm injury after pitching just 1.2 innings in the first game of the doubleheader. With Fontanetti coming in for a three-game weekend series that's not exactly great news.
"They are a good hitting team; best I've seen this year," pitcher Tyler Spencer said. "They really raked the ball."
Except against Spencer, who had good success in the second game.
Atwater scored nine first-inning runs off ex-Damonte star Kevin Schulewitch, all after he retired the first two batters of the game. Seven of the nine were unearned, as Zach Hendrix committed two errors. The two earned runs came on a hit batsman and a two-run homer by ex-Douglas star Ryan Laing, who also homered on Tuesday.
Spencer came in and struck out Andrew Bynum looking to end the first. He threw the next 4.1 innings, allowing a run on five hits, the run coming in the sixth.
"I think I threw well," said Spencer, who recently turned down a bonus of around $40,000 with the Orioles because he wanted to stay in school. "I tried to keep us in the game. I hadn't thrown that long in quite a while."
"He (Spencer) kept us in the game," Blueberg said. "He gave us a chance to win."
The Bullets had a brief bright spot in the fourth, scoring four runs to make it 9-4.
Rudy Strnad singled and scored on Zach Hendrix's double. After Brooks Klein flied to right, Beau Day unloaded a monster homer to left to make it 9-3. Craig Merideth singled and eventually scored on Ray Daniels' single which made it 9-4.
Laing's run-scoring double made it 10-4 in the top of the sixth, and the Bullets scored in the bottom of the sixth on Merideth's run-scoring single. Atwater scored five times in the top of the seventh to complete the scoring, four coming on Spencer Braniga's grandslam.
Merideth led the Bullets with two hits.
In the opener, Nevada scored four times in the bottom of the first, as Merideth unloaded a two-run homer and Ryan Eustice had a run-scoring double.
Atwater scored once in the second and third, and then took a big lead with an eight-run fifth inning. Just for good measure, Atwater scored 11 in the top of the seventh.
Colby Blueberg went 3-for-3 to lead the Bullets' offense in the opener, while Day and Klein each added two hits.
