The promotion of the night at Carson Park Wednesday was Turn Back the Clock Night in honor of the Eau Claire Bears minor league team that occupied the stadium in the '40s and '50s.
The Eau Claire Express would probably love to turn the current clocks back about five hours to erase two pivotal losses that makes it an extremely daunting task to win the second half of the Northwoods League.
The Duluth Huskies swept the two seven-inning games by a score of 3-2 in game one followed by a lopsided 8-1 affair in game two.
The opportunities were there for the orange and black, which stranded 17 total runners in 14 innings of baseball. But as has been the case for many losses this season, the Express couldn't push across runs when it counted.
In game one, the Huskies took a quick 2-0 lead, but Eau Claire responded quickly.
Thanks to some aggressive baserunning from Brady Burzynski, the Express scored on a stolen base from the UW-Stout outfielder followed by a throwing error on the play. In the same at-bat, Jeff Hendrix singled in Peter Van Gansen to knot things up.
The Huskies scored on a sacrifice fly the next inning, but Eau Claire had a huge chance in the bottom of the seventh.
With Lane Milligan on second and two outs, Hendrix laced a hard-hit single to left field, too hard to score Milligan as he was held up at third.
Brian Mundell then took a called third strike right on the outside corner the end the game.
The Huskies carried over the momentum in game two and scored two quick runs again.
It looked as if Eau Claire would respond right away as Alex Call singled in Burzynski. But same song, different verse. After having guys on the corners with nobody out, the Express couldn't push another one across.
Duluth responded with a five run outburst in the fourth inning that put the game away.
Eau Claire will have to win out and hope for three Waterloo losses to win the second half.
The Express start a two-game series tomorrow night against Willmar. It is Back to School Night sponsored by Mega Co-Op as school supplies will be handed out at the gates. Cody Peterson gets his first start of the year for the Express. First pitch is at 6:35 p.m.