NOTEBOOK \ Scrappers vs. Spikes

He’s back: After spending parts of the last two seasons with the Scrappers, Dustin Realini is back with the club, at least for a while. Realini was hitting .285 in the midst of a solid season with Lake County, but then the injury bug hit him. What that meant to Realini was a few weeks off and then rehabbing himself back into shape. “I have been in Lake County all year and I had a pretty good year going until my injury,” said Realini. “Starting in mid-May I was able to get in there and play every day. I was playing first base and batting cleanup for them and I just had an accident off the field. When that happened, I have been on the shelf for the past five or six weeks and I am anxious to get back in there. I am here [with the Scrappers] on a kind of ‘return to play’ program and hopefully I’ll soon get back up there with the club.” Realini, along with many of the other Scrappers from the past two years have the Captains doing well. “We [Lake County] won the first half,” he said. “We are anxious to head into the playoffs and see what we can do.” Realini feels it won’t be long before his return to the Captains lineup. “I have been real healthy for the last week and right now, it is just a matter of me getting my timing back,” he said. “Right now I have to get back into playing baseball shape and am looking forward to getting back into that [batter’s] box. I was watching the guys taking swings and right now, I am getting the itch to get in there and get going.”

My three sons: Scrappers manager Travis Fryman’s family was in State College and will be with him in Jamestown this week. “They are up [from Molino, Fla.) for the whole summer,” said Fryman. “This is the first time all of them came on a trip.” Branden Fryman has a USSSA tournament in Orlando, Fla., next week. Having the accessibility of his family to him is one of the bright spots of Fryman managing at the short-season Class A level. “That was one of the attractive things about managing, coaching and working at this level,” noted Fryman. “Everybody needs to identify with some priorities and for me, certainly my relationship with my wife and and my kids is one of the highest priorities in my life. To be able to work and have them with me is the best of both worlds.”

Bill Albright