South Oakland is 1-1-1 at Pie Traynor Field this season.
Judging by the updated stats, found at Pittsburghnaba.com, we need to steal more bases and strikeout less.
We are batting under .200 as a team we need to create runs.
I am a brilliant baseball strategist.
There is a three way tie for the Bob Faust hit-by-pitch award: Guthrie, J. Smith, and Gwin (3).
The South Oakland Ducks (4-7-1) are 2 games out of a playoff spot with 12 games remaining. The Ducks will have to finish at least .500 to earn the team’s first trip to the post-season in three years. One game at a time. Starting with the Hurricane Carters (1-3-1) on Saturday.
Around the Pittsburgh NABA:
The Bulldogs beat the Rebels 6-1 on Wednesday.
The Ducks’ roster has been posted in its entirety. South Oakland leads the league in players with 22.
Injuries to Tom Pusateri, and Chris Roth have limited their availability. Brett Pusateri’s Series of Unfortunate Events has kept him out of the lineup since early May. Gregg Campbell has disappeared off the face of the earth, and Bill Francisco-Cabrera has been unavailable to tell us how to play since the disgrace that was the second Eagles’ game.
We haven’t seen the last of Brett, and hopefully Chris.
I hope Gregg has not been kidnapped, some things are more important than amateur baseball.
There are players on our team who, after twelve games, still have not met .
Apparently, a member of the OwlZ’s front office changed the spelling of their team name on the main NABA page to contain a “Z” instead of the traditional “S”.
Since the days of Shakespeare, the letter “s” has been used to denote the plurality of nouns, albeit in a less Xtreme and phonetically intimidating manner than the letter “z”.
The OwlZ lead the league in Playaz
I do own the Redman album “Dare Iz a Dark Side”, it is solid, and if the OwlZ are going with the “z” as an ode to Redman, I’m all for it. Whateva, Man.
Hip Hop videos used to be different.
In other news, We should seek a sponsorship from Subway.
We must assume the Hurricanes are a bunch of thugs.
The Hurricanes are cheaters, just like the Miami Hurricanes. They have seen fit to award themselves a 0-0 tie for a game against the Black Sox which never happened. The Hurricanes’ lone win was a 7-0 victory over the Owls, which was probably a forfeit.
We aren’t in position to take any team lightly. If we do we will lose.
If I were to name my team after a Dylan song, I’d have gone with the (Subterranean Homesick) “Blues”. Or, naturally the South Oakland “Eskimos”.
I was at this Phish show where they covered, Dylan’s “The Mighty Quinn”
The Ducks (4-7-1) have four days off before traveling to Pie Traynor field to play the Hurricanes (1-3). Naturally, following an entire week off, the Ducks play back to back games this weekend (sat. vs. Hurricanes, sun. vs. the Bulldogs (1-7). )
South Oakland is presented with a great chance to get back in the thick of the playoff race. Yesterday the Ducks learned they would be awarded a forfeit victory for an early season game against the Rebels, which was illegally canceled by the Confederacy. The retroactive win comes on the heels of a brutal three game losing streak.
With the W, South Oakland climbs out of the cellar and past the Rebels into fifth place, just two games behind the Eagles for the third and final playoff spot in the Monongahela Division.
The Ducks remaining schedule now consists of eight division games, and four games vs. the Allegheny Division, which consists of two teams with winning records and four teams with a combined three wins.
We should have seen this coming
Last season, the Monongahela division sent the sub-.500 Knights into the playoffs. This lead to an uproar from the Phantoms, who finished above .500, and in 4th place in the Allegheny Division, but did not qualify for the post-season. The current format has the top three teams in each division advancing, instead of an NHL-type format which would have the division winners seeded one and two, with the next four teams qualifying for the playoffs.
When the topic of playoff seeding was brought to the table in the off-season meetings, the vote was to keep the same format. Now, there are five teams in the Allegheny Division with one or fewer wins. Under the “division winners plus four” format, South Oakland would hold the sixth playoff spot. I doubt the Phantoms are whining about the seeding this season, as they sit 1/2 game out of third place, with a 0-3-2 record. There’s no reason for us to complain, we almost quacked into third place last year, despite being pretty bad.
In Regards to this weekend’s games, conspiracy theories, and bulletin board material.
The league expanded this season, the OwlZ, and their superfluous “z” were added to the Monongahela Division, and the Hurricanes were added to the Allegheny. The Owls, roster is full of NABA veterans, and small college players. The Hurricanes are struggling, I’m sure their roster lacks the “star power” of the Owls, who have Faygo, (a sick pitcher) and a bunch of kids from the RMU team who were league runners up, in 2006. Those guys have obviously played together before, they remind me of the Yankees from the Bad News Bears.
Bulldogs player, and league president Joe Graff, added the Hurricanes to the Bulldogs’ Division, and put the Owls in the Monongahela. Interesting…Of course this could be an attempt to even out the divisions, based on last years parity; add the better team to the softer division, and the team that’s weaker on paper to the division that was better top-to-bottom. What I would have done if I ran the league and had to deal with all the BS Joe does, put the worse team in my division. It also could have been an arbitrary decision.
Also, the League president and schedule maker, has pitted his team against the Ducks twice, when he could have chosen to play any of the other five Monongahela Division teams twice. Big mistake. Clearly he conspired with the Bulldogs front office and hand picked his team’s inter-division schedule, and the decided they wanted two games against South Oakland.
The Ducks were 1-1 against the Bulldogs last season.
The Bulldogs got jobbed in their game on Sunday. There was a terrible call that lead to the Black Sox scoring the go ahead run in the top of the seventh(made by the same guy who called Eric Lee out in our game), and (all other things remaining equal) the Bulldogs scored in the bottom half of the inning, they tied it up instead of winning, and went on to lose in extra innings.
The Ducks did not fare well against the Black Sox on opening day.
What’s really killing the Bulldogs is the pre-season injury to their best starting pitcher who was hit in the hand during batting practice, and lost for the season.
Brian Strom is a good ball player and a friend of mine, but he’d be the first one to tell you he’s no pitcher.
The table is set for the Ducks this weekend, we have to take advantage of a couple struggling teams and build some momentum. It’s great to be competing every game and to be playing exciting baseball, and we have to proud of that and optimistic that we can turn the corner. But if we can’t turn our improved play into victories, it will be nothing more than bittersweet consolation, when we look back on a season of near misses.
Quack, Quack.
In five of the teams losses, South Oakland (4-7-1) has had the tying run at the plate in the last inning, or has lost in the bottom of the seventh. Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory, time and time again. The improvement from ’07 to ’08 is only marginally represented in team’s wins and losses, the Ducks won nine games last year, but did not compete game in and game out, the way they have in ’08.
This weekend the Ducks play the Hurricanes at 3pm on Saturday, and the Bulldogs on Sunday. The two Allegheny Division teams have won three games between them.
It’s time for a victory montage to take us into late July, or we will be disbanded and moved to Florida.
South Oakland is 3-7-1, after a bitter defeat at the hands of the defending champion Monroeville Rebels. The Ducks were unable to take advantage of the short-handed Rebels who played the entire game without a right fielder. The Ducks lead 4-0 in the second and then Rebels’ starter, reigning MVP, Jesse Jones, settled down and held the Ducks scoreless for the rest of the game.
leading 4-3 in the top of the seventh, South Oakland had the bases loaded with two outs, and Ben Gwin, popped out to end the threat.
Nick Homa pitched five solid innings, allowing 2 earned runs, before turning it over to the bullpen. Relief pitcher Smith took the loss.
All of the Ducks hits were to the left side of the field, no extra bases were earned due to the huge gap in right field. the Rebels eight-man lineup allowed them to get the heart of their order quicker, but in the end it was their last batter who blooped the game-winning single into center field.
Kabby Everly had 4 RBI for the Rebels.
Jones didn’t seem to have the same speed on his fastball that he has in the past, but he is a tough competitor, and a smart pitcher, he recorded the complete game win for Monroeville.
I tip my hat, to him.
The loss drops the Ducks to last place in the Monongahela division
Still, hope lies within the remaining 13 games of the South Oakland season.
Ducks, We can still make the playoffs, if you don’t think so please hand in your jersey, I’ll come get it. For the second game in a row, someone has commented to me that this is the best the Ducks have looked in years. Despite all the errors, all the mistakes and all the close calls, we have in it unitl the last pitch in all but two games. There’s a lot of pride in this locker room.
Look at what the Rockies did last year, they won 24 straight. We can be the Rockies.
Our backs are really against the wall right now, but I wouldn’t want to be on any other team. We are lucky to be able to play ball all summer. We have a chance to be a part of something special here, and at 3-7 it’s all talk, but I can feel it and we are painfully close, we’ve been buying, Victory drinks all night only to see her go home with that douche bag frat boy at last call. From here on out we seal the deal, she’s ours.
The sun’s gonna shine on our back door some day.
Bullet points
The Ducks travel to Avonworth High School Field to play Rebels today, at 3:30 pm
On June 15th, 1988, the movie Bull Durham made its debut.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad. thanks for not being an insane Little League parent, who fought with umps and coaches and such.
A bit about my dad, He coached my Little League teams from ages 7-10, and then again from 13-15. We won a championship in 1991, but my dad says his best moment as a coach was when he put a nine year old with cerebral palsy at second base, late in a close game.
Union General Abner Doubleday
Check out the costume change. Note the Voodoo Child (slight return) tease.
“Without slavery, the rebellion could never have existed. Without slavery, it could not continue.”
Abraham Lincoln, December 1, 1862, Message to Congress.
IN 2007, They split from the Black Sox and decided to call themselves the “Rebels”.
Opposition to team names and logos such as the Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Indians is documented and understandable, both Native Americans and white people fall on either side of the issue. I don’t really care, but I’m not the one whose culture is being marketed, and sold as though it were a bottle of moonshine wrapped in Smallpox infested blanket.
Oddly, I can’t remember hearing about any protests against UNLV or Ole’ Miss for naming their teams “The Rebels”, at least not to the extent of the “tomahawk-chop” issue on which Sports Center or Outside the Lines inevitably does an annual filler piece during the slow months of the sports year. I’m not trying to be some kind of anti-free speech, PC douche bag, teams have every right to chose any name and logo they want, even one relating to the pro-slavery side of the American Civil War, it’s just not what I would do.
Anyway
It is a bit nationalist to view the term “Rebels” strictly in terms of the American Civil War. In many cases, throughout world history, rebel armies were the “good” guys. However, when your logo is this guy, 
and your predominant uniform color is gray, one can assume no one has gone to great lengths to avoid Confederate connotations. It is not as if there aren’t far superior options for a “Rebel” logo out there. Consider the following:
You can probably find his image on a t-shirt (most likely ironically weaved in sweatshop) worn by a hippie who spends more time taking bong hits and ranting nonsensically about “fascism” than actually doing anything. Just buy 16 of those shirts, slap numbers on the back and you’re good to go.
Not a fan of Che Guevara, go the Sandinista route:
looking for something less controversial and “leftist”? How about this:
Afraid no one knows that’s the Star Wars Rebel logo? how about something more overt:
Sure he was only in it for the money at first, but Solo was a huge, late-season addition to the Rebel cause. Incorporating him into the uniform would be tough, but clearly worth the trouble. I dare anyone to claim Han wouldn’t provide a more intimidating screen-printed presence than Yosemite Sam.
Only one conclusion can be drawn, these guys are a bunch of racists, or at the very least not very creative. They could be rocking Billy Idol jerseys and Star Wars hats, but instead they disgrace our national past time by going with a caricature of a confederate soldier.
To be fair I won’t discount entirely the outside possibility that Rebel management is operating on an elite level of triple-reverse-irony that is over my head, but I doubt it.
Go Ducks.
Our life is in our hands, Dude.
The Ducks’ (3-6-1) division record is 1-4.
0-1 vs the Black Sox (7-1)
0-1 vs. the Owls (6-2)
1-1 vs. the Eagles (6-4)
0-1 vs. the Rakers (3-3)
0-0 vs. the Rebels (1-4-1)**Pending a possible forfeit for the rain game, which lead to this lengthy, disgruntled post
We play each Division team three times. Ten more division games, another go at the Oilers, two vs. the Bulldogs, and a game against the Hurricane Carters’. Then the Playoffs.
I refuse to believe that our team peaked with the Matadors’ game.
There is something weird going on with all the games being moved from Pie Traynor and Etna, to Findlay. I’m not a big fan of that field.
Go Ducks
South Oakland Ducks Baseball 