After participating in the Fourth of July parade earlier today, the Chatham Anglers (9-7-2) will be hosting another Independence Day tradition — a baseball game against the Orleans Firebirds (6-12-1).

Chatham comes into today’s game looking to continue it’s offensive fireworks from Tuesday’s 13-6 victory over the Harwich Mariners. The A’s notched 14 hits and drew seven walks as 14 different Chatham hitters reached base during the contest.

Michael Busch (North Carolina) drilled a two-run home run — his first hit for the Anglers — in the sixth inning to put the A’s up 6-5. Later on in the frame, Tristin English (Georgia Tech) blasted a grand slam over the wall in left at Whitehouse Field to blow the game open. English has now hit a homer in four of last six games.

“Feels really good [to hit a homer] in that situation in the game where we were hunting to get some runs,” English said. “Luckily some guys got on and they hung a breaking ball for me.”

John Rave (Illinois State) finished the game with a double, triple and two walks, while Blake Sabol (Southern California) was 3-for-3 and Jorge Arenas was 2-for-3 with two runs scored.

In Orleans last night, the Firebirds fell to the Falmouth Commodores, 6-1. JJ Bleday (Vanderbilt), Spencer Steer (Oregon) and Logan Wyatt (Louisville) led the Orleans offense, all three have batting averages over .300. In addition, two-way player Nick Osborne (Tennessee Tech) has a .500 batting average with two home runs in four games as a hitter.

Despite having the best run differential (+16) in the Eastern Division, Chatham is in second place behind the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox by four points while Orleans currently sits in fourth.  

Over the last 11 scheduled Fourth of July games between the Anglers and Firebirds, each team has five wins with an 11th game being postponed.

Anglers manager Tom Holliday played 20 different ballplayers in Tuesday’s game, including all 16 of his position players.

“If you're not in the lineup, that doesn't mean you got a night off,” Holliday said. “I'm going to play every guy that we got in order to win a ballgame.”