DÉJÀ EW
Connecticut Falls to 1-5 as Marlborough Sweeps; Offense Awful, Pitching Pounded
Marlborough, CT (AP)—Approximately one year ago the then West Hartford Cannons played their fifth and sixth games of the 2006 season on the road against the Marlborough Athletics. The Cannons were a ball club struggling to find their way in a difficult inaugural A Division campaign, scoring just thirteen runs through six contests. After two poorly played games the team sat alone in the CNMSBL basement with a disappointing 1-5 record and did not tally a victory until early August amid a twelve-game skid. Well, it’s déjà vu all over again Cannon Nation. The now Connecticut Cannons—the league’s popular pre-season pick in a plethora of publications—have started slow once again in 2007, plating a pathetic ten runs through six games after dropping a double dip against the A’s while managing an A Division-worst 1-5 record as the month of May comes to a close (the league is off for Memorial Day weekend and play will not resume until Sunday, June 3 at home against new kids on the block Winsted). “It’s hard to remain upbeat at the moment,” an obviously upset Manager Matt Celio said after the sweep. “I’ve spent quite a bit of time defending this team in the papers over the past two regular seasons but enough is enough. I’m tired of saying that we’re the best last-place team out there. There are only so many ‘let’s get ‘em next Sundays’ during a season. We try to put a quality product out there on the playing field and I’m confident we have a great group of guys that can not only compete at this level but are capable of winning the A Division Championship. Unfortunately I’m not Willy Wonka…I can’t sugarcoat how poorly we have played to this point of the season. Disregard the ‘when the weather warms up, we warm up’ discussions. Our offense is anemic and every mistake is magnified because we are pressing on both sides of the ball. Most troubling though is the fact that it is just not fun out there at the moment. People don’t seem to have that Cannons commitment early in the season and that’s leaving us in some sticky situations on Sundays.” Celio was not the only one soured by the sub-par performance as Assistant Manager Mike Weber added, “We got beat but it should not have been this bad. Ridiculous.” Finally, early-season standout Drew McDowell stated, “This has been tough on us as a team but has definitely been difficult on the decision makers [Celio and Weber]. Matt's and Mike's hands have been tied and they just haven’t been able to put and keep the best nine out on the diamond at all times. We need to do better here if we want to be better and it starts back home against the Rifles.”

Following his winning one hundred forty-seven-pitch performance on May 6, Brian Pinney was back on the bump for the Cannons in his third career CNMSBL start. The rocket-armed right-hander struggled some with his control in his first start of the season and that trend continued as Pinney trailed 1-0 after the first frame courtesy of a pair of singles and a passed ball. The A’s offense tacked on seven more runs over the next two innings and an eight-run deficit was all but insurmountable for a team averaging just two runs per game coming into the contest. Pinney (3 IP, 8 R, 7 ER, 9 H, 3 K, 2 BB, 2 HBP) was lifted after the third inning and eighty-four pitches amid speculation of an arm injury though the Cannons training staff remained tight-lipped when questioned on the subject, saying only that Pinney (1-1) is “day to day.” Mike Patenaude (4 IP, 1 ER, 6 H, 2 K, 0 BB), whom the A’s referred to as “the Tom Glavine of the CNMSBL,” pitched well in relief but the Cannons bats were quieted by Marlborough fireballer Fabio Moleti who scattered just five hits in spinning a complete game shutout (Connecticut put runners in scoring position in four of the seven frames but was unable to push any players across the plate marking the second time this season that the ball club has been held scoreless).

Mike Calabrese mounted the mound for his second start of the young season and the former Patenaude Pitching Award winner was touched for a trio of opening-inning runs on a blast by Moleti after a questionable call at first that would have gotten the Cannons out of the jam. Cal (5 IP, 8 R, 7 ER, 6 H, 1 K, 2 BB) settled down over the next two frames and the Cannons finally got on the board courtesy of a Leo Dionicio single and stolen base followed by a Mark Lynch RBI base hit. The A’s answered with a four-run bottom of the fourth to put them comfortably ahead as walks, errors and hard hits undid the Cannons. Connecticut added a run in the fifth as McGann singled, swiped a pair of bases and moved home on a Jason Maule sacrifice fly to centerfield but Marlborough would plate another run against Cal (0-2) who, as a batter, had been hit in the pitching hand in the fourth inning of the first game, the second time in as many outings that the pitcher had injured his paw. McDowell (.1 IP, 4 R, 4 ER, 0 H, 0 K 2 BB, 2 HBP), making his first CNMSBL A Division pitching appearance, and Markie (.1 IP, 1 H, 0 K, 0 BB) pitched into the sixth but the A’s took at ten-run lead and the Cannons fell victim to the mercy rule for the second time in as many Sundays.

Calabrese was famously quoted after his 2006 loss to the Athletics saying, “I got my t*** lit up today” and Connecticut once again was unable to match the firepower of a heavy hitting Marlborough line-up (the A’s out-hit the Cannons twenty-two to ten during Sunday’s sweep). At this early stage of the 2007 season the team finds themselves in a near must-win situation on Sunday, June 3 against first-year franchise Winsted (a reported 2-2 a press time). It is impossible to assume that a ball club can continually botch regular season opportunities only to find salvation in post-season success. Celio concluded, “Nobody on our roster—myself more than included on this list—is playing to their fullest potential at this point. We’ve got to get it together in a hurry if we want to have the type of season our fans, front office and players planned on. It’s getting extremely old but we are better than a 1-5 team. The time has come for us to play like it.”

Déjà vu describes the feeling that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously. It is usually accompanied by an overriding sense of familiarity and also a sensation of "eeriness," "strangeness," or "weirdness." The "previous" experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience "genuinely happened" in the past. Déjà vu has been described as "remembering the future." Strange, eerie and weird are words that certainly describe the start of the 2007 A Division campaign for Connecticut. If this is a dream then somebody please rouse the Cannons from their early-season slumbers. The talent that was tapped in the 2006 post-season is something that seems quite distant at the moment and Connecticut must remember and rediscover the things that made them such a formidable foe last August: potent pitching, an overpowering offense and a roster, top to bottom, that was ready to do anything and everything necessary to achieve the ultimate team goal: winning a CNMSBL title. Cannon Nation can only be truly happy when this has happened. Single-seat tickets are still available for the June 3 home games against the Rifles—and Cannons are always better than Rifles—at 1 800 CANNONS or at ctcannons.blogspot.com as the team looks to turn déjà ew into déjà new as Connecticut takes two.

Cannons News and Notes: Weber’s sixth inning infield single was the ninety-eighth of his illustrious career; with his Game One double, McDowell posted his first CNMSBL extra base hit; Dionicio leads the team with a .364 batting average; the Cannons are allowing 5.55 runs per game while averaging just 1.67 runs per contest…opponents are hitting a healthy .323 against Cannon pitching while Connecticut is batting just .207; Connecticut is 0-8 following holiday bye weekends since becoming a member of the A Division last season; Weber dubbed Calabrese “Socrates” before the first game when, as rain drenched the playing field, Cal determined that a wet track “could be a good thing or a bad thing” for the Cannons; Tom Luby dropped a pre-game deuce in an on-site Port-o-Let…when told that McDowell once stated in high school that needing to use the bathroom forces one to “play with a sense of urgency,” Lubes colorfully quipped, “There’s a big difference between ‘playing with a sense of urgency’ and s******* yourself”…truer words may never have been spoken; Celio solidified his status as “Slowest Man on the Planet,” beating out quadriplegic Stephen Hawking, post-accident Stephen King and 1,235-pound Manuel Uribe, the “World’s Heaviest Man,” another title the Manager has set his sights upon; Lynch graduated from UCONN on Sunday, May 6 ending his sixteen-year tenure at the Big East bastion of higher learning; the first annual Step Up to the Plate charity baseball event will be held at Beehive Field starting at 6:00 p.m. this Saturday evening with six Cannons representing the team (Chris Barsa, Celio, Dionicio, McGann, Patenaude and Weber); John Mancini, Craig Perrier and Ed Poland did not play for the Cannons this past weekend.