Capital City Bombers

bobp@herald-mail.com The Capital City Bombers went on a suicide mission on Monday and crashed. The Hagerstown Suns poured on a little of Fred Lewis' gas to make sure the Bombers burned, too. Lewis scored the winning run on Kevin Kelly's two-out single to shallow left field in the ninth inning as Hagerstown capitalized on Capital City's botched suicide squeeze play in the top of the inning for a 4-3 victory. The Suns (52-51, 17-19) scratched out their fourth straight win after losing nine in a row, despite squandering a two-run lead in the ninth.

Make no mistake about it, the Hagerstown Suns lost 9-5 to the Augusta GreenJackets Tuesday. And make no mistakes, the Suns lost in the oh-too-common manner ... they made too many mistakes. cont. from sports page Errors - those that were counted on the scoreboard and those that weren't - were Hagerstown's downfall as the Suns handed over four runs to Augusta in the 10th inning for a 9-5 loss in front of a Businessperson's Special crowd at Municipal Stadium. "Little errors have held us down the whole first half," Suns manager Rolando Pino said.

The Hagerstown Suns got an eviction notice and a pink slip in one fell swoop on Sunday. It was the day before Labor Day, but the Hagerstown Suns were out of work. The Suns were going home for the holiday in agonizing, uncharacteristic fashion. The Capital City Bombers put on a relentless display, cracking four home runs in the first five innings to knock the Suns out of the pitching penthouse and ending their season with a 9-1 defeat at Municipal Stadium. Clayton Andrews, who led the South Atlantic League with a 2.28 earned run average during the regular season, was victimized by Capital City's relentless attack, the hitting team in the league.

If John Sneed suffered from low self-esteem, he might have become paranoid on Monday. Every time he came to the Hagerstown Suns' dugout on Monday, teammates started giving him the silent treatment. Every place the 6-foot-5 pitcher sat, his closest friends moved as far away from him as possible, short of crawling into the stands at Charleston, W.Va.'s Watt Powell Park. Suddenly, Sneed was a loner. It's enough to shake one's confidence ... even a pitcher carrying a 13-2 record.