September 19, 2026 | Springfield, IL: Tonight, two teams took the field \u2013 one on the brink of hoisting a historic Championship trophy \u2013 the other \u2013 fighting to stay alive another day.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Firebells\u2019 dominant offense resurfaced right out of the gate, scoring seven runs in the first two innings to send a clear message to the Queens: \u201cNo sweep today.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Queens starter Michelle Roche got rocked for three frames, and Isabella Villarreal in relief kept it within reach, but LA couldn\u2019t capitalize on prime scoring opportunities that SF served up on a silver platter \u2013 squandering back-to-back bases-loaded situations late in the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Manager Matt Williams pushed all the right buttons with two of his lefty pitchers \u2013 starter Niki Eckert tossed four innings of two-run ball on five hits and her southpaw pal, Liz Gilder, yielded a trio of runs, fanning three.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kelsie Whitmore and Skylar Kaplan made up for lost time \u2013 a combined 5 for 8, crossing the plate with four of SF\u2019s 10 runs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
LA\u2019s Jamie Mackay launched a two-run blast to put the Queens on the board in the third, but the Firebells answered back with the bases full after Mo\u2019ne Davis lost a fly ball in the blinding stadium lights.\u00a0<\/p>\n
SF\u2019s bottom of the order delivered big time as Samantha Gutierrez, Jua Park, and Joely Leguizamon all put together matching 2-for-4 days with an RBI apiece. Leguizamon \u2013 looking like a prize fighter \u2013 sporting a black eye from a Game 1 injury \u2013 jacked her first home run of the season with a leadoff solo shot to spark a four-run second inning.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To cap off the night, the star shortstop gushed about her love of baseball to sideline reporter AJ Andrews while taking home Player of the Game honors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"September 19, 2026 | Springfield, IL: Tonight, two teams took the field \u2013 one on the brink of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-351530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}