The first March baseball game in Buffalo history was unkind to pitchers
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — Brandon Beane's hard slider missed the plate by a yard. It wasn't the first ball of the day, and might not have been the worst pitch.
It's often believed that cold conditions early in baseball's spring favor pitching. That wasn't the case on the earliest Opening Day in Buffalo's history, on a cloudy Good Friday with temperatures in the low 40s, a brisk breeze making it feel closer to freezing.
A dozen pitchers for the Buffalo Bisons and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders combined to allow 20 runs scored by 40 men on base over three-and-a-half hours in the downtown ballpark's first March engagement, but only one of the 10 coldest home openers in 36 years. The visitors won 12-8, with but a few hundred fans hanging around for Buffalo's last at-bats in the ninth inning.
The Bisons announced an attendance of 10,177, and there was a crowd of several thousand in the stands with the sun still lingering for the ceremonial first pitches thrown by South Buffalo councilman Chris Scanlon and Beane, the Bills general manager, who was proud to have down better than his All-Pro quarterback Josh Allen's bounced attempt.
It was an entertaining opening, led off by journeyman Greg Allen slugging the fourth pitch from Blue Jays' top prospect Ricky Tiedemann over the left field wall. Tiedemann was relieved after 65 pitches in the third inning, allowing three hits and two walks for one earned run with three strikeouts in the 21-year-old's second Triple-A start.
The Herd chased Yankees No. 2 pitching prospect Will Warren much quicker, as Spencer Horowitz homered during a five-run first inning. Addison Barger, a top 10 prospect for the Blue Jays, doubled off the wall to knock in two runs and give Buffalo a 7-4 lead in the fourth inning.
Then the RailRiders rallied for seven runs in the fifth, all off Bisons reliever Brandon Eisert, who took the loss to start the season with a 94.50 ERA.
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Jonah Bronstein joined the WIVB squad in 2022 as a digital sports reporter. The Buffalonian has covered the Bills, Sabres, Bandits, Bisons, colleges, high schools and other notable sporting events in Western New York since 2005, for publications including The Associated Press, The Buffalo News, and Niagara Gazette. Read more of his work here.