Double Digit Baseball

February 12 -- Hobbs, NM. New Mexico Junior College’s baseball team is on fire this year. They extended their winning start to eight games (8-0), as they swept Eastern Arizona College Sunday and Monday.

The Thunderbirds put on a big batting display for two days, reaching double digits in all four games. The two-day slugfest resulted in 12-7 and 11-7 victories on Sunday, in addition to 10-9 and 18-6 wins on Monday.

After sweeping Sunday's doubleheader with relative ease, the T-Birds had trouble taking Monday's opener in the early innings. First, Eastern Arizona had an eight-run second inning, but NMJC kept whittling away at the lead, until finally taking it in the fifth inning on a bases loaded single by Luis Rodriguez.

The T-Birds comeback was possible due to the talents of right-handed reliever Kevin Smith. He shut Eastern Arizona down for 5 1/3 innings, allowing only a solo homer in the seventh.

Rodriguez came through with another key hit, by slapping a double into the left-field corner to score two and give NMJC the lead. After that, there was no looking back for the Thunderbirds.

The T-Birds made a reasonably close contest a thrashing with nine runs in the fifth, thus completing the sweep and giving Jackson his second win.

“We lost out top five pitchers to start the season, and the players got kinda’ sad for a few days. So they decided they could either pout or fix it; they decided to fix it. By golly they’re eight and zero now and that’s a tribute to those young men. Hopefully we can keep it up and carry this all the way into the playoffs,” said head coach Ray Birmingham.

NMJC opens a four-game series with Western Texas College Friday at noon at Thunderbird Field. Both doubleheaders will include seven-inning games.