Central Islip, NY. - As to most starts of baseball seasons, players have been dealing with the warm temperatures of Florida. With the Atlantic League, this is no exception. After an evening that felt more like July, the cool spring breezes returned to Citibank Park on Saturday night, as the Long Island Ducks relievers struggled with their control in the latter stages of the game, and fell to the Newark Bears 6-4. Both teams are now 1-1 to start the season

Long Island pitchers retired their opponents in order in five of the nine innings. In three of the other four, however, Newark got base hits and scored in each of these frames.

Newark opened the scoring in the first inning, by getting three bloop singles, with the last being a broken bat effort boy Corey Aldridge scoring two of Ducks starter Manny Ulloa.

Ducks catcher Jamie Pogue’s sharp single over shortstop put the Ducks on the board in the 2nd inning. Long Island took the lead in the next inning thanks in part to four singles off Bears starter Benito Baez.

In the fourth, Ulloa’s error allowed the inning to continue, and the Bears took advantage of the mistake by driving home a run on a sacrifice fly, then a single by Vic Guitierrez to right, putting Newark on top by a four to three score.

“The error he (Ulloa) seemed to lose his confidence”, said Ducks manager Dave LaPoint, who removed the starter after the fourth run scored.

Ducks newcomer Ryan Knippschild pitched brilliantly from the fourth through the sixth innings, to keep the Bears bats from doing any further damage, retiring ten straight batters.

“He threw the ball real well”, said LaPoint. “These guys (Knippschild and Jon Asahina) are guys that we really don’t know that well. We put them in and they threw strikes and got the job done.”

In the bottom of the seventh, Carl Everett smoked a fast ball by Newark reliever Cory Willey (1-0) deep to left center field to even the score at four. Everett has been tearing the cover off the ball in the first two games of the season, with five hits in his first eight trips to the plate.

In the eighth, after Ben Grezlovski (0-1) allowed a hit to Bobby Hill, who was then sacrificed to second, Tom Martin came in to pitch. After retiring Randall Simon for the second out, Martin faced Cory Aldridge. On a three and two count, Aldrige slapped a curveball to right field over P.J. Rose to give the Bears a 5-4 lead. After walking and hitting the next batter with a pitch, Asahina relieved Martin, and gave up an infield single to Jon Pachot, to increase the lead to 6-4.

For the Ducks, however, the bats went silent. Al Levine pitched a scoreless ninth inning to save the Bears first win of the season.

“It is early, and we are playing good baseball. Our pitcher made the only error, but we are playing well, as a team and it will only get better”, said LaPoint.

QUACKER NOTES: Third baseman Damian Rolls had three singles for the Ducks, who collected ten hits on the evening. Former major leaguer Randall Simon of the Bears was spotted in the dugout, as the Nathan’s Hot Dog Race was held down the third base line. Simon, playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates a few years back, tackled a bratwurst during a similar race in Milwaukee which caused national attention. Fortunately, no wieners suffered any injuries in this contest.