06/11/2005 12:07 AM - Click here to view the box score.

It was just like last August 20, except both teams came in tied for first place. Then, it was seventeen innings before the T-Bones lost 8-7. Friday night turned into Saturday morning before the T-Bones defeated the Lincoln Saltdogs, 6-5, in sixteen innings at Haymarket Park in Lincoln.

Lincoln started the game off hammering two homers against T-Bones starter Caleb Balbuena, with Cory Harris and Bryan Warner doing the damage for the Saltdogs. In the bottom of the third, it was Chad Sosebee muscling up with a three-run longball to center to give the T-Bones the lead, 3-2.

Kansas City increased their lead to 5-2 with an Eddie Pearson sac fly in the fifth and a bases-loaded beaning of Pearson in the seventh, but Lincoln scored three runs on back-to-back doubles from Pichi Balet and Bryan Warner. The former came on the last batter Balbuena saw, while the latter came against reliever Joe Goodmann. In his longest appearance of the season, Goodmann hurled 3.1 innings of scoreless ball.

The T-Bones would leave 19 men on base in the game, with a golden opportunity squandered in the thirteenth when Chad Hill was thrown out trying to move from first to third on a Rick Prieto single to right-center.

In the top of the sixteenth, the T-Bones scored the go-ahead run when Sean Flynn singled in Chad Sosebee, who had singled and stolen second. J.C. Ortiz worked his fourth scoreless inning in the bottom of the frame to pick up his first win as a T-Bone.

Notes: Sosebee replaced Brandon Jones, who had to tend to a family emergency in Arkansas, at third base. Sosebee had only fielded two balls at third base prior to the bottom of the sixteenth in which he was involved in all three outs... KCK native Eric Vega had two hits in his first pro game, played in right field.