down and down i go, round and round i go

You might expect a lovely Sunday afternoon game to be fairly leisurely.
You might, but you would have been soooo wrong today!
If ever a baseball game was a rollercoaster, this one was it! A theme park could have sold tickets for it as a new ride!
Well... maybe not quite... but you know what I mean, right?
No, of course you don't.
This Sand Gnats' game was one for the history books!
Right from the very start, we all knew something was up.
Our pitcher was loading the bases with Rome Braves.
I kid you not.
Ricky Knapp must have missed the memo about this being a game, not a practice session. He hit the first and third men up, walked the one in-between, and then walked the fourth man, to give the Braves their first run of the day. They ended up with a score of five runs and a single hit.
That bears repeating: five runs and a single hit.
Incredible.
The Sand Gnats played great offensively. Of the 8 innings they batted, they scored runs in all but two.
They also played great defense.
But it's hard to mount any defense against runs that are walked in.
As they were in the first and ninth innings. Yep, Paul Paez was walking runs in, too.
Very sad.
I guess the good news is that the Braves' pitching crew had a bonehead, too. In the bottom of the fifth, one of the Gnats was hit and three were walked, with a few hits sprinkled around.

Then, with Patrick Biondi and Champ Stuart put on base by the pitcher,
and Dominic Smith on first on his single,
Matt Oberste sailed one over the left field wall for a Grand Slam!!!
How about that!?!?!

The Gnats finished the inning with a total of eight runs. That brought their score to an unheard-of 14 runs.
Wow!
And they kept the Braves from garnering more than their six runs until the top of the ninth, when Paez was given a turn at the pitcher's mound. He gave them another six runs, doubling their score.
Thank God the pitching coach finally pulled him before he had a chance to pitch for the 8th Brave that inning.
Yeah, that's what I said: the eighth Brave. With zero outs.
What a rollercoaster!!!
Down, down down, in the top of the first, then bottoming out, followed by rounding curves and straightaways. Then, up, up, up!!! Whee!!! Rounding a curve at the peak, catching a short straight stretch of track, then down, down, down again!!!
Whew!
Nice to ride once, but let's not do that again, okay?