Game 4: A Royal Pasting - Guelph Royals @ Toronto, May 15

The best way a ball club can respond to a harsh, brutal pasting - like the kind suffered by the Maple Leafs last Sunday - is to lay on a pasting of equal or greater value on the next team it plays.  Sorry Guelph Royals, it was nothing personal.

Whenever I grow tired of this infernal life and its miseries, I go to a ballpark.

Not to immerse myself in sugary-sweet nostalgia for a lost era; nor to wallow in the timeless movements of a 19th century game played without a clock.  Shitty rhapsodizing is best left to folks who want to emulate Bart Giamatti.

(Ooo, look at me all Christopher Hitchens like. Pathetic.)

I go to a ballpark to escape.  That's all it is.

I like the grass and trees, I like the ballplayers, I like the game.

(Ooo, look at me all Walt Whitman now.  Pathetic.)

Anyway, I'm not a sports reporter or photo journalist.  But I like to record things.  So in some dark hour of the winter it seemed it would be a great thing to follow the local nine of the Intercounty Baseball League over the course of their 42-game schedule.  Most home games, some away games, taking photos and notes, mashing them together and throwing the results up here.

I don't work for the Toronto Maple Leafs (does anyone?).  I don't know anyone related to the club, or any of the players, management or sponsors.  I observe silently, and report back here.

[Did a horrendously bad job of it last night, getting shooed away from behind the centerfield fence because my camera light was a distraction, and drawing the attention of the Royals bench, who wondered if I was a scout.  Horrendous.  I need to devise more inconspicuous methods.]

Recap:

For a game that would end in a pasting, this one started off quietly.  Outfielder Raul Borjas reached base on a fielder's choice, then was singled over to third by catcher Will Richards.  A passed ball allowed Borjas to slide home with the game's first run.  After that, however, Royals' starter Chris Nagorski pitched goose eggs until the fifth inning.

On the Maple Leafs' side, starter Brett Lawson was dominant, scattering 2 hits and 1 unearned run over the first five innings.

It was 1-1 going into the bottom of the 5th, when the pitchers' duel ended abruptly.

Nagorski loaded the bases, and through a sequence of hits and errors, 4 runs crossed the plate for Toronto.  Nagorski was done, it was 5-1 after 5, but the onslaught was just beginning.

The Leafs scored 3 more in the 6th, 3 more in the 7th, and 5 more in the 8th.  Third baseman Tyler Fata put an exclamation point on this 16-1 rout by blasting his first home run of the season with a man on.  Fata ended the night with 6 RBIs and the player of the game award.  Every Leafs starter got at least one hit, and almost everyone got an RBI.

Lawson pitched 6 innings for the win, and was relieved by Justin Cicatello and Drew Taylor, who combined for the "3-inning save".

It was a pasting, a royal pasting.  Some credit goes out to the Royals bench, which was lively all night, even at the top of the ninth when one player shouted: "C'mon boys, 15 to get!  Let's go!"  Good gallows humour at least.

The Leafs are now 3-1, 1 game behind the still-undefeated Brantford Red Sox.  Their next game is Thursday May 16 in Kitchener.