Barracudas 8, Challengers 2

Farid Bekkali and the Barracudas dominated the Challengers in Game 1 of Saturday's doubleheader and stopped the Challenger's nine-game winning streak with an 8-2 win.

Farid Bekkali dominated his former teammates with a complete-game eight-hitter.

Bekkali, last year's MVP in the Swiss Finals, scattered eight hits over seven innings, giving up two earned runs and three walks while striking out six. The only two extra-base hits he gave up were Anubis Benitez' and Makoto Fukamachi's RBI-doubles in the first and sixth inning.

Challengers starter Thomas Landis (5-1) tried to match Bekkali's performance, but the six runs given up in the first two innings were too much for his offense to overcome.

Six of the eight runs scored by the Barracudas came on home runs. Marc Riva, Dave Sekac and Holgi Schmidt all hit solo homers and former Challenger Adris Linares added a three-run shot in the first inning.

Adris Linares watches his three-run homer in the first inning.

The Barracudas quickly went ahead by scoring four times in the first inning. Ueli Von Burg reached on a single and François Riva on an error by Landis. Linares and Marc Riva followed with back-to-back homers to put the Barracudas up 4-0.

The Challenegrs managed just one run in their half of the first on Benitez' RBI-double that scored Gary Kochlefl from second base.

The Barracudas added two more in the second inning on Schmidt's solo shot and François Riva's RBI-single. Riva then was picked off first base, the first out of a total three runners to do so.

Then a pitching duel evolved from the third through the sixth frame, before player-manager Sekac added another homer to extend the Barracudas' lead to 7-1 in the middle of the sixth inning.

The Challengers didn't give up yet and put the first three runners on base in the bottom half of the sixth. Armin Blickenstorfer">Armin Blickenstorfer scored on Fukamachi's ground-rule double over the fence, but the next three batters went down in order.

Thomas Landis got his first loss of the season by giving up eight runs on 12 hits and two walks.

In the seventh inning, the Barracudas manufactured one more run, this time on an ordinary RBI-single by Linares, who picked up his game-high fourth RBI.

Trailing 8-2, the Challengers tried one more comeback in the bottom of the seventh. The first two runners, Landis and Benitez, reached on consecutive singles, but the next three batters went down in order again.

Benitez and Landis combined for five of the Challengers' total eight hits and Blickenstorfer had the only steal for the Challengers.

Landis raised his ERA from 3.86 to 4.59 and the first loss of this season was just his 20th of his NLA-career, compared to 42 wins.