May 21: Dunbar Hits Two Bombs, Goldeyes Give Up Five in the Ninth, Lose Home Opener to Lake County

Lesson 1: Don’t throw fat pitches to a 6-foot-4, 220-pound power hitter.

Lake County Fielders right fielder Jeff Dunbar hit a pair of long home runs to lead manager Fran Riordan’s expansion Fielders to a 7-5 win over the Winnipeg Goldeyes in the Northern League season opener for both teams.

As 6,311 looked on at Canwest Park, the Goldeyes took a 3-2 lead into the ninth inning, but Winnipeg reliever Andrew Barb gave up five runs on four hits and while Winnipeg came back with a pair of runs in the bottom of the ninth, it wasn’t enough.

The big blow in the ninth was Dunbar’s second homer of the game, a three-run bomb with Lake County leading 4-3. Dunbar also hit a two-run homer in the second as the big right fielder drove in five runs.

“The first pitch was a fastball right down the middle,” Dunbar told Shaw TV’s Jim Toth. “The second was a curveball that hung right up there. I got two pitches I could hit and handled them both.”

It was a shaky start for the Goldeyes who came back from an early 2-0 deficit to take a 3-2 lead in the seventh on an RBI single by Luis Alen. But after Philip Roy got the Fish out of a tight squeeze in the eighth, Barb couldn’t get the job done in the ninth.

“We didn’t play very well,” said Goldeyes manager Rick Forney on the post-game show. “We didn’t play well defensively and we didn’t get the hits we needed. We can be better than that.”
Forney hopes his team will be better tonight when Mark Holliman goes to the mound to face Lake County’s Garry Bakker in the second game of this season-opening four-game series.