The Bainbridge varsity baseball team hit the field for a grudge match game against Garfield High last week, and an early lead left them poised for payback.

The Spartans elevated their overall season record to 2-1 following the decisive 3-1 win over the visitors at home Friday.

The victory was cloaked in an element of retribution, coming as it did on the heels of the 3-2 defeat of the Bainbridge team by Garfield on the road just the day before.

BHS scored all three of their game-winning runs in the first inning, an early lead which proved to be all the difference. Garfield managed their sole run in the seventh. The remainder of the game was held to a stalemate, with neither team able to gain any ground.

Team officials agreed it was a much-improved outing for the team, but admitted to still be working out some early season kinks in the Spartan armor.

“We had a tough one [Thursday], for sure,” said Spartan Head Coach Simon Pollack after the team’s first outing against Garfield. “I think that was a learning experience for all of us.

“I think from a coaching standpoint I certainly learned some things,” he added. “I could have done some things different to help us generate some runs, but it’s good to learn those things early in the season.”

The second matchup was a much better performance in several ways, Pollack said.

Chief among those, he explained, were the Spartan performances from the mound.

“I think one thing that certainly set the tone was pitching,” he said.

On the other side of the ball, too, Pollack said, the team had been looking better Friday.

“Overall, we had more base runners [Friday], which was good, but again, getting base runners on and getting them around and generating the hits with runners on base is tough,” he said.

Solid pitchers and strategic batting are the heart of the game of the baseball, of course, and at this early point in the season there were undoubtedly areas in need of improvement in both, the coaching staff agreed.

Pollack said that overall the Spartans were “a little ahead of the baseball” when at bat, and that the players were not making enough adjustments at the plate based on the previous decisions made by any particular opponent’s pitcher.

“We’re having to kind of fight our way through our own kind of early season inexperience,” he said.