It was supposed to be a beautiful Labor Day at the ol' ball park. The game was switched from a night game to a day game. But mother nature had other plans.
The Gwinnett Braves came into Monday's finale at home just one game out of the playoffs. And needing a Syracuse victory over Lehigh Valley to force a one-game playoff game with the Iron Pigs, Gwinnett had to wait almost two hours before finding out Lehigh had defeated Syracuse 4-1 in a rain shortened game knocking the Braves out of the playoffs.
It wasn't official until the bottom of the first inning after Lehigh and Syracuse waited 45 minutes. Then the Braves had their own rain problems and after a 1-hour and 59-minutes delay, and the Braves trailing 2-1 got hit by another rain fall and this time the staff called the game after an 18 minute delay making the rain delay a total of 2 hours and 17 minutes.
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The Gwinnett Braves didn't want to disappoint the fans after the first delay. They were waiting to see the final game of the year. Eric Cordier started the game for the G-Braves and got out of the first inning after yielding two waks.
Gwinnett got on the scoreboard first in the bottom of the second inning. After two outs, Matt Young's short fly ball was dropped by Charlotte's left fielder Justin Greene letting Jeff Fiorentino score. Fiorentino walked and went to third on a single by catcher Wil Nieves.
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Charlotte took the lead in the top of the third when Dallas McPherson hit his 21st homerun, a 2-run blast off Gwinnett starter Eric Cordier. However, none of the stats count due to the rain out.
Gwinnett finished the season 78-65 finishing 1 1/2 games out of the wild card and finished 3 games out of first place behind Durham.
