Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse for Sunshine Eagles in the Baseball Victoria summer league division 1, their fortunes sank to a new low.
The Eagles fell to their 17th loss in 18 games with a 10-0 mercy rule drubbing from western suburbs rivals Newport Rams at Barclay Reserve on Saturday.
Further compounding the home defeat came a season-ending injury to promising young shortstop and lead-off hitter Alister Lovelock.
Eagles coach Earl Byrne struggled to find positives on a bleak day for the club.
“Since I took over, this was probably our worst day, even though we got beaten up pretty badly by Essendon early in the season,” he told the Weekly.
“Today it was just errors, mental errors. We were so bad we really helped them along.”
The Eagles have an ageing team in need of new blood. Lovelock, 18, has answered the call, stepping into important roles at the top of the batting line-up and in the busy infield.
“He’s been growing with the game each week and he has a lot of responsibility at shortstop and leading off,” Byrne said.
“He has a future in the game and it’s a matter of how far he wants to take it and how hard he wants to work.”
Lovelock will miss the rest of the season after breaking his collarbone, although it took two plays for him to realise the seriousness of the injury.
“There was a ball hit really hard to him on the full and he sort of missed it and it hit him in the collarbone,” Byrne said. “I walked out to see how he was and he said ‘I’ll be right’.
“On the next play he threw the ball to first base and it just tore his collarbone.”
