The ARBA World Series kicked off last night as FL champs the Santa Fe Gecko Lizards faced the CL's Shiner Blondes.

Game One: Tim Lincecum (21-5, 3.31) vs RA Dickey (16-5, 2.63)

Santa Fe took an early 2-0 lead, scraping together one run and getting the second on a mammoth Papi homer.  Lincecum got into some trouble early which led to SFE following the Official 2011 Postseason Managerial Trend of pulling him early in favor of their deep bullpen, which got out of the jam.  Shiner would quickly tie it up, however, when Pujols obliterated a flat slider from Zumaya for a 2-run bomb.

The Geckos would fail to capitalize on a leadoff double in the top of the 7th and then the wheels came off in the bottom of the inning, when Pujols mashed a second 2-run shot off Carlos Marmol and the Blondes would add two more to make it 6-2.  Santa Fe made things interesting in the 9th, loading the bases with one out, but they could only manage a sac fly to fall to Shiner 6-3 in the opener.

"Hey, them's the breaks." said SFE manager Jack McKeon after the game.  "A great player like Pujols beats you, you have to tip your cap to 'im, and move on to the next game.  Sure would've helped if we could've gone more than 1-4 on ballpark homer chances though."

Game Two: Roy Halladay (16-11, 3.77) vs Ted Lilly (18-6, 3.08)

As you might expect, this one was a one-sided dominating pitching performance.....as scrub Halladay raised his postseason ERA over 9 while Lilly held the Geckos to 2 runs in a complete game.  Pujols homered again and Halladay allowed 8 runs in 5 innings of work.

So Shiner wins their 2 at home very convincingly before the series moves to Santa Fe for a must-win game 3 for the Geckos and their ace Adam Wainwright.  The series is scheduled to resume tonight!