Traverse City Beach Bums open Frontier League Championship with Win

Traverse City, MI - The Traverse City Beach Bums opened the 2015 Frontier League Championship series with a 6-0 victory over the River City Rascals last night at Wuerfel Park in Traverse City.  The best of five championship will see the first two games at Wuerfel Park and then travel to the St. Louis suburb to play River City in games 3 and 4.    The if necessary game #5 would be back at Wuerful Park on Monday September 21st.   

The Beach Bums have picked a great time of the season to go on a hot streak at the plate and with some timely pitching doesn't hurt its chances either.   The Bums now in their 10th year of play in the Independent League of professional baseball.   A good sized crowd (2,064)  attended the game last night in perfect weather.   The Beach Bums will play game #2 tonight at 7:05 p.m. before hitting the road.   

Starting pitcher Kramer Champlin pitched a whale of a game in limiting the the Rascals to no runs in his 7 innings of work to go along with 7 strikeouts.   The two relief pitchers kept the shutout in tack by pitching two scoreless innings.   Traverse City jumped out to a quick 4-0 lead and never looked back.   They would keep tacking on runs to make the final score 6-0.   The hitting stars on the night for the Bums were Yazy Arbelo and Brandon Jacobs who both would finish with two hits along with solo home runs. 

River City starting pitcher Tim Koons who entered the game with a perfect 11-0 record would last five innings and take his first loss of the season.    The Beach Bums would put together 9 hits on the night to win the game without any real scoring threats from the Rascals.    Wuerful Park is completely an artificial turf baseball diamond and looks in great shape with true bounces through out.   The Beach Bums promotional staff kept the 2,000 plus fans entertained through out the night with promotions between every inning.   The Bums are looking to win their first Frontier League title in their 10 year history.   They did reach the finals once before in 2010 only to lose to these same River City Rascals.