He wasn't going to replace Smith, who had just issued his third free pass of the inning. He just wanted to talk.

Smith walked in two more runs after the visit and the Bombers went on to lose Thursday's game at Spinelli Field by the score of 7-0.

After the game, Barfelz said he had little choice but to leave the struggling Smith on the mound.

"I basically had two position players left that could throw," Barfelz said, remarking that his staff is still behind from this past weekend's quadruple-header with Watertown. "And the game was out of reach."

You wouldn't catch most coaches dubbing a 5-0 game "out of reach," but to Barfelz' credit, he's a realist. Through eight innings, the Bombers were nowhere near breaking through on Golden Eagles starting pitcher Brian Moran and the Bennington manager knew it.

The 6-foot-3 lefty from North Carolina cruised through nine scoreless innings, scattering three hits and striking out five.

Bennington's Adam Donato accounted for Bennington's sole offensive highlight, blasting a two-out double in the fourth that hit the left center field fence on the fly. But Moran quickly recovered, getting Ken Jacobi on a foul pop by third base to end the inning.

Through five innings, Bombers starting pitcher Scott Van Es seemed every bit the match for Moran, as the Golden Eagles often looked lost in the batter's box. An inning-ending strikeout of Daniel Cooke in the fourth put an exclamation point on Van Es's performance as Cooke swung and missed on three straight pitches, the last of which saw Cooke's bat flying wildly against the backstop after he lunged at a breaking ball.

Moran worked through a scoreless fifth, but couldn't hold back Glens Falls in the sixth. Jake Shaffer led off the inning with a double to left center and moved to third on a Ken Gregory groundout. Kevin Mahoney then hit a sac fly to left to bring in Shaffer and make it 1-0 Glens Falls.

Rick Seltzer beat out a chopper off the plate to keep the inning alive. Seltzer then stole second and Cooke got his revenge, lining a single to right that drove in Seltzer for a 2-0 lead.

The Bombers went down in order in the bottom half of the frame and Glens Falls got right back to work in the seventh as catcher Joe Mercurio reached on an error and Dan DeGeorge legged out a chopper to third.

The game was then suspended for 20 minutes due to lightning and when play resumed, Barfelz replaced Van Es with Smith. Smith inherited a two-strike count on Jake Owens, and struck out the junior from Northwestern on his first pitch. But Shaffer was up next and delivered again, this time smashing a two-run triple to the gap in left center for a 4-0 Glens Falls lead. Smith recovered to work out of the inning and pitch a scoreless eighth, but walked in three runs in the ninth after he had clearly thrown a few too many pitches.

"If we had an extra pitcher, I would have took Scotty out after the fifth," said Barfelz, who recently recruited Southern Vermont College's Dan Bosley to work relief for the Bombers. Bosley, a knuckle-baller, tossed four innings for Bennington in Wednesday's game against Saratoga and Barfelz said the senior is thus far making a smooth transition to the NYCBL.

The Bombers are back in action today when they travel to Little Falls, N.Y. for a 7 p.m. game at Veterans Memorial Park.