BRADENTON -- When it came to sports, Brad Myers’ heart once belonged to basketball and football.
Last summer, however, he discovered the Bradenton Marauders. Suddenly, he was a baseball fan.
He spent the spring at Pirate City, checking on the progress of Marauders past. He bought Marauders season tickets.
And on Friday night, the 26-year-old Bradenton resident and his family sat alongside the third base line at McKechnie Field, awaiting the Marauders’ second home opener against the Charlotte Stone Crabs.
“It sparked something somewhere,” Myers said while wearing a black Marauders T-shirt less than an hour before first pitch.
The Pittsburgh Pirates high Single-A affiliate played the game under clear skies and amid a mild breeze.
And for the second straight year, they engineered a blowout, peppering the Stone Crabs 13-0 in front of 2,644 fans.
“I was impressed,” said Marauders second baseman Jarek Cunningham, who spent all of last season with Pirates’ low Single-A team in West Virginia. “It was loud. ... It was a lot of fun to play out here.”
And with good reason. Chris Snyder, the Pirates catcher who is working his way back from a sore back, smashed a two-run home run to left in the first inning. He finished with six RBIs.
Fan favorite Robbie Grossman, a Marauder last summer, drove in three runs and scored two. And after another rehabbing major-league, Joe Biemel, opened the game with a perfect first inning, three more pitchers teamed for a six-hit shutout.
Matt McSwain, who allowed three hits in five innings, earned the win.
Meanwhile, a black-and-yellow flag, awarded to the Marauders for winning the Florida South League’s South Division during the second half last year, flapped in the breeze in center field.
That the rout came one night after the Stone Crabs scored twice in the ninth inning to beat the Marauders on Thursday made Friday’s final score even sweeter.
“They had momentum coming in,” said Cunningham, who drove in two runs and scored two runs. “To go up early on them, it kind of kills whatever they had going for them. So it’s good for us.”
When it comes to home openers, Marauders fans may be getting a bit spoiled. Bradenton defeated Fort Myers 18-3 in last year’s lid-lifter at McKechnie, which was also the first game in team history.
“During the fourth or fifth inning, I was out there on second,” Cunningham said. “I was thinking, if we keep playing like this, this crowd will keep coming. And it will be a fun season.”
The fans will have their chances -- the Marauders and Stone Crabs head back to Charlotte Sports Park for tonight’s game at 6:30 and wrap the series Sunday back at McKechnie.
That game kicks off a seven-game homestand for the Marauders that will include three-game series against the Jupiter Hammerheads and Fort Myers Miracle.
