I hope everyone had a relaxing Labor Day Weekend. I had a chance to spend a beautiful weekend in Coronado with friends and watching the South Coast Warriors play some exciting baseball in a 16U Travel Ball tournament. Now, now, I know you're jealous, as I'm sure you wish you could spend your holiday weekends sitting in 95 degree heat in Chula Vista, Ca watching a bunch of 15/16 year old boys play baseball.
A little background - The South Coast Warriors are a 15U travel team comprised mostly of the Frosh/Soph team from last year at El Toro High School. For this tournament they added a couple incoming Freshman and decided to play in a San Diego 16U tournament.
Here's what happened:
Saturday - Shane Jones took the mound in the opening game versus the Valley Warriors. After a rough first inning, he settled down and limited the Valley Warriors to 2 runs. SC Warriors keep plugging away and by the end had done enough to come away with a 5-2 victory.
In the second game, the South Coast Warriors took on the traditionally strong program of the ABD Mustangs. Timely hitting, pitching and a Mitchell Tolman 2 run walk off double ended the mercy after 5. Nick Villar wowed the crowd with a tape measure home run to left.
2 and 0 after day 1, all's good!
Sunday - 8am game against Baseball Ballers White. Ballers had put together two teams for this tournament which watered down their talent. They hung around the Warriors for a couple innings, but when the Warrior bats came alive, they couldn't match the fire power. Nick Villar with another home run and doubles by Jayson Yano, Nick Paglialonga, Byron Manzo, Dan James and Daniel Conmy supplied the runs. Final, 12-0 Warriors.
Game 2 - A back and forth affair with the Chula Vista Green Sox. With the Chula Vista Little Leaguers winning the Little League World Series last week, many jokes were tossed around about possibly seeing some of them in the game. At one point we thought we saw Luke Ramirez drive up in a Cherry Red Gremlin, but it turned to be a 35 year old Hispanic man with a pony tail........... Oh well. As I said, this one went back and forth. Warriors took an early lead but Chula Vista came back and took the lead in the 5th. In the 6th, after holding the Green Sox in the top half of the inning, the Warriors came up looking to tie. Two quick outs and it looked like the Warriors would need to do something in the 7th. However Tyler Brashears worked a walk and the tieing run was aboard. At this point a lot of clock watching started as time was running out. These games have a 2 hour, no new inning rule in effect (written in the tournament rules). Being home team, the Warriors would be assured to bat again, as long as the 6th ended in less than 2 hours. To make a long story short, the batter following Brashears also got on, then a passed ball brought the tieing run to third. The next batter unfortunately grounded out to SS ending the inning. At that point, everyone looked to the home plate umpire for time. It was 1:58 he announced. Warriors went to take the field to play the last inning, when out of no where the home plate umpire calls out "game over"! He decided it was close enough on time, so that was that. The Green Sox jumped into their Gremlins and sped off, while the Warriors stayed on the field until the Tournament Director could give a ruling. Of course he wasn't there and had to be called. 20 minutes later, he finally hears the story and agrees the game shouldn't have ended, but it is what it is and rules the Green Sox won 5-4.
Day 2 ends on a down note, however the Warriors have done enough to get the 4th seed for the Monday playoffs.
Monday - 8am game against the 5th seeded Spring Valley Stingers. Well not much "stinging" went on as Jordan Wirth threw 5 innings of shut out ball, Villar "jacked" another and the Warriors moved into the semi's against the number 1 seeded Bonita Legends. Final 8-0.
1pm start time, so the Warriors had some free time between games and got a chance to see some of the San Diego lifestyle. With so many options, what did they do? Went to the mall! Shaky's Pizza offered air conditioning and arcade games, just what every 15 year old boy wants... The hit game was "Deal or No Deal". Played just like the tv show except instead of winning money, you could win tickets. The big prize was 200 tickets, which at a $1 to play, was a good return on your investment if you played smart. Did the boys play smart? As Whitney Houston would say, "hell to the no"! No one ever excepted the Bankers offers and instead just kept pushing the "no deal" button and taking it to the end. Most ended up with less than 10 tickets won. However Andrew Kincade won big, as his suitcase did hold the 200 ticket maximum, so next time I buy a lotto ticket, I'm bringing AK47......
Game 5 - Semi's, Warriors vs. Legends. Legends were the number 1 seed and big... Most were Juniors in high school and held a large size advantage over the smaller Warriors. Brashears took the mound and stepped up to the challenge. Thru 3, Brashears shut them down with an assortment of mid 80's fastballs, cutters and curves. The Warriors played their game, drawing some walks and hitting a couple doubles and took a 5-0 lead. In the 4th, following a couple Warrior errors and a walk, some big "Legend" launched a granny over the right field fence and we had a ball game. In the 5th, the Legends pushed 2 runs across and took a 6-5 lead. Neither team scored in the 6th so we went to the 7th with the Warriors needing a run to stay alive. The bats came alive and big hits from Portanova and Paglialonga gave the Warriors an 8-6 lead to hold. Brashears had run out of gas and when "Hells Bells" started playing, Shane Jones entered. Ah la Trevor Hoffman, Shane threw a mixture of off speed stuff which kept the Legends off balance and held them to 1 meaningless run. Off to the finals!
3rd Game of the Day - Warriors versus the San Diego Gamers. Another large team for the Warriors to face. It was evident from the beginning, all the games and the high heat index had taken it's toll on the Warriors and they came out flat. Shane started but the Gamers were "game" and were looking for the off speed pitches. He went three innings and held his own, but it wasn't mean't to be. Jake Tredwell came on and limited the Gamers the rest of the way. The Gamers put up 5 runs and strong pitching held the Warriors to 2, giving the Gamers the win and tournament title.
It was a great weekend for the Warriors. They played up in age and showed they could hold their own against some very high level San Diego teams. The weather was beautiful, they got in 7 games over 3 days, placed second (and getting Rings.... yippee.....), played "Deal or No Deal" and thought they had multiple Luke and Kiko sightings.
All and all, I'd say it was a success!
Bill
No comments:
Post a Comment