By Gaylen Duskey
realfang@citlink.net
The happenings Saturday should have been a clue for the bizarre opening weekend that was going to unfold for the newly formed Calhoun Reds of the Mid Ohio Valley Baseball League (MOVBL),
Saturday was scheduled to be a fund raiser for the team which is trying to come up with money to pay for its uniforms and to handle umpiring fees for the season.
A car wash and bake sale/hot dog sale was scheduled to be held in front of the Grantsville Foodland starting at 11 a.m.
After setting up the cooking and sales are for the food and getting the car wash area ready people started pouring out of the Foodland and the Calhoun Reds and their boosters were told to move away from the building.
Why?
It was on fire.
Ouch.
Members of the Grantsville Volunteer Fire Department arrived and went inside the building to see what was going on. The found smoke but no fire and after a thorough investigation and inspection determined the building was safe to use.
The Reds and their boosters brought the food, cooking utensils and car washing equipment back to where they were supposed to hold the fund raiser and started again - about 20 minutes late.
The fund raiser went well although it did run about two hours longer than expected which knocked out a planned afternoon batting practice session.
Which, it turns out, they could have used.
Sunday the team traveled to Clarksburg to play its first game of the season.
The opposition turned out to be the Harrison County All-Stars which drew students from 3-5 middle schools including Mountaineer Middle School, Washington-Irving Middle School, South Harrison Middle School and maybe Lumberport Middle School and Notre Dame Middle School.
Members of the team had played in the Pony League until this year and many of the players were physically huge, towering over the Calhoun players. On top of that the Harrison All-Stars had cut 17 players from the original squad - one more player that the Reds have.
The results were about as expected as Clarksburg no-hit the Reds in the opening game while taking a 17-0 victory while allowing only one hit in winning the second game 20-1.
The scores prompted Reds coach John Persinger to say the team was going to work on basics, especially fielding, in the next few practices as Persinger thought the Reds had 16 errors in the two games.
Calhoun's only hit came in the first inning of the second game when Seth Moore legged out an infield grounder which scored Allen Matheny, who had walked, advanced to second on a passed ball and stolen third.
The lead did not last long as Clarksburg rang up nine runs in the first inning and went into cruise control the rest of the way.
The Reds are scheduled to play Bridgeport at home Wednesday night at 6 p.m.
First Game
Calhoun 000 - 0-0-9
Clarksburg (12)5x 17-10-0
WP - Wetzel
LP - Moore
Second Game
Calhoun 100 - 1-1-9
Clarksburg 9(11)x - 20-13-0
WP - Ritter
LP - Wilson
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