Australian League: Game of January 31

Sydney takes a wild game to go ahead 1-0 in the preliminary final.

SYDNEY 18, CANBERRA 11 IN SYDNEY

Canberra:  Jon Berti (Toronto) was 4-for-5 with a walk, scoring twice and driving in one.  Casey Frawley was 2-for-6 with a double, scoring once and driving in three.  Ben Warner was 3-for-6 with two RBIs.

Sydney:  Trent Oeltjen was 3-for-5 with a home run, scoring three times and driving in six.  Jacob May was 5-for-7 (White Sox), scoring four times and driving in two.  Aaron Sookee (Angels) pitched three shutout innings, allowing one hit and one walk with one strikeout.

The game:  Sydney scored one in the first to go up 1-0.  Oeltjen hit a three-run homer in a five-run second that put Sydney ahead 6-0.  In the third Frawley doubled in two of the three Canberra runs that cut the lead to 6-3, but in the bottom of the third a single, a double, two more singles, and a sacrifice fly got all three runs back for Syndey and made the score 9-3.  Canberra got one in the top of the fourth, but a Mitch Dening two-run single highlighted a four-run bottom of the fourth that put Syndey up 13-4.  It looked pretty much over at that point, but in the top of the fifth Canberra got a walk, an error, a hit batsman, and six singles to score six times and get back into the game at 13-10.  They still had the bases loaded with one out in the inning, but a strikeout and a popup ended the threat.  It was as close as Canberra would come.  Sydney came back to score four in the bottom of the fifth, three on a Keon Broxton (Arizona) homer, to go ahead 17-10.  Canberra got one more in the sixth and Syndey's last run came in the seventh.

PLAYOFF SERIES

Sydney leads Canberra in the best-of-three series one game to none.