Jay Bruce, where were you?

One year after Bruce delivered a walk-off double to give fans at AT&T Field an early Independence Day treat, the Chattanooga Lookouts faltered in the bottom of the ninth inning Thursday night and fell 7-6 to West Tenn. Danny Dorn, whose grand slam Tuesday was upstaged in a one-run loss to the Diamond Jaxx, lined to second baseman Jeffrey Dominguez, who quickly flipped the ball to shortstop Mark Kiger for a game-ending double play.

“That’s just the way it goes,” Dorn said. “I hit it pretty good, but they were right there and doubled us up.”

Thursday’s game was played before a crowd of 6,392, the first sellout at AT&T this season. The game sold out at 3:30, nearly three hours before the first pitch.

Chattanooga dropped to 7-9 after splitting the four-game series against the 6-10 Diamond Jaxx. After winning the first-half title, West Tenn has struggled this half and has a 6.17 team ERA, so it’s no surprise the Lookouts had hoped to fare better this week.

“We think we should win every series,” Lookouts third baseman Eric Eymann said, “but if a couple of a things go our way in this one, we could have won all four. There are games you win and lose for odd reasons.”

West Tenn collected its offensive output from Johan Limonta’s three-run homer to right field in the first inning, Jon Nelson’s two-run homer to left in the sixth and Greg Halman’s two-run shot to center in the seventh.

Eymann had a solo homer in the third inning and a two-run triple in the fifth that gave the Lookouts their first lead at 4-3, and he singled and scored in the seventh to make it 7-6. He led off the ninth needing a double for the cycle, but he broke his bat on a single to left to cap a 4-for-5 night.

Yes, it was a maple bat.

“There is no doubt I’ve seen more broken bats this year than ever before, and it’s not the fact they’re breaking but how far the barrel heads are flying,” Lookouts manager Mike Goff said. “That’s what has everybody concerned, whether it be a fan in the stands or a player getting hurt. I don’t know what Major League Baseball is going to do about it, but it’s going to be a fight with the players, because they love them.”

Said Eymann: “It was a slider that I caught on the end, and it just blew up.”

Eymann advanced to second base on a sacrifice by Drew Anderson, who scored the winning run last year when Bruce, now with the Cincinnati Reds, delivered his shot off the left-field wall. Once Dorn hit it, however, Eymann had veered too far toward third.

“If you’re the baserunner, the one thing that can’t happen right there is that you can’t get doubled up,” Goff said. “I know Eymann is thinking that if it’s a base hit that he’s got to score, but that’s not how you play the game. You can’t get doubled up to end a ballgame like that.”

Travis Wood (1-4, 6.00 ERA) is scheduled to start for the Lookouts in tonight’s series opener at Mississippi.

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