Month: April 2019

Ducks Lose: Eagles 9, South Oakland 7

2019 South Oakland Ducks

South Oakland (0-1) dropped their opener 9-7 to the South Side Eagles (1-1) last night at Springview Field.

The Ducks allowed 5 unearned runs in the first three innings. The Ducks trailed 5-0 going into the fourth before scoring 4 on a bases loaded walk by Lombardi and a two-out three run triple by Clark.

South Oakland rallied and took a 7-6 on a John Zuzak single, and lead in the bottom of the seventh. But again the team committed costly errors, and there were also some walks. Our reliever almost worked out of a bases loaded no-out jam, but a double play ball with one out was misplayed that could have ended the game and then there was a viscous hop on a grounder to first that scored two runs, and hit our first baseman in the neck, I think.

  • Good fight after going down early
  • We looked like a team that took a lot of BP this winter
  • Pitching was good overall, especially Randy
  • We should rake the field I guess before our next home game
  • We made an incredible number of errors with two outs
  • Good to have the pressure of going undefeated off our backs
  • Don’t want to peak too early
  • Great base running tonight
  • We will get back at it Saturday in Shaler vs West View
  • Thanks to all the fans who came out. That was the most people we’ve had in attendance probably ever

 

Gameday 1: Ducks vs Eagles

2019 South Oakland Ducks, Gameday, NABA, pittsburgh NABA, South Oakland Ducks Baseball

South Oakland Ducks of the North Side (0-0)

vs

South Side Eagles (0-1)

9pm

Springview Field

South Oakland opens its the season tonight at the Duck Pond vs the winless South Side Eagles. I think there are six teams that have a legit chance to win the title this season, including the Eagles and Ducks. South Oakland will start last year’s workhorse, Randy Patton who earned the victory over the Eagles in the playoffs last year. The Eagles will have their full pitching staff at their disposal after a week off between their opening day loss to BIG OIL. It should be a good game.

It’s the tenth anniversary of the Ducks blog. I’m a novelist and professional writer, and I’ve been giving this content away for a decade. Thank you to the five of you who still read it. I’ll feature some greatest hits from the blog this season.

Historical notes

This will be the Ducks seventeenth season in the Pittsburgh NABA. The Eagles were an early expansion team, starting in 2005 when Whittaker and Jesse Jones starred for them. South Side used to beat us even though they had a lefty shortstop for a while there. South Oakland’s best lefty shortstop was Rob Swanger, who played the position for a few games in the pre-TC Jones era of 2005-06. I wish Rob would’ve been able to stick around for the revival. He wanted to win as much as anyone.

My favorite photoshop of all time. NBD, we just have grey uni’s and are called the Rebels

Above is Ray Finkle and the Rebels winning the ’07 title, lead by Jesse Jones, former Eagle. That Rebels team also had Matt Daulton, the first former minor leaguer in league history, I believe. They were an off-shoot of the Black Sox, one of several Black Sox splinter groups that formed over the years. Ex Sock, Dan Stell, who maybe hates me, played on that team. He left when they folded to join the Militia with Tremel. That Militia team featured a bunch of current Ducks.

Every off season, I look for pitching, and usually I just draft guys. This year we had a bunch of pitchers come our way, and how many of those guys pan out will likely dictate how our season goes. I think they are all high floor high ceiling guys, compared to the one kid who blew his arm out in his first outing in 2015, effectively ending that season and forcing Doc to pitch pretty much every game. That season the Eagles knocked us out of the playoffs. Never turn away pitching.

We also needed to get younger.

So we added a few arms that will hopefully hold up and a couple guys from the Express, another Black Sox off-shoot that folded last season. We will see how it all plays out.

 

Since the end of the first Fago era, I’ve tried to strike a balance between doing as much as I can to make the team better vs. fucking over guys who have been here for years. The best way to strike a balance was to bring back an old friend who played in South Oakland for years, and will make us better. Here’s to the second Fago era in South Oakland.

Bad News for the Eagles

Double A Schedule Released. Ducks Open at Home vs. Eagles on 4/24

2019 South Oakland Ducks, pittsburgh NABA, South Oakland Ducks Baseball

The schedule is up.

South Oakland plays next Wed night at Spring Hill and the following Saturday afternoon in Shaler vs. West View in a terrific field/team combo for game two.

All the Double A games have been rained out so far.

The defending champion Oilers play the Eagles tonight pending field conditions.

quack

 

 

2019 Pittsburgh NABA AA Season Preview

2019 South Oakland Ducks, NABA, pittsburgh NABA, South Oakland Ducks Baseball

Everyone register on the league site if you haven’t yet.

The league meetings have come and gone. We didn’t draft anyone for the first time in a while. Our roster is pretty set. As always, we will need a few pitchers to step up if we’re going to win a title. Hopefully that happens. Our lineup is solid. We should put up runs. Theoretically, we have the arms to win the division. It so often happens that the roster moves I try to make, are enough to win the year before but other teams do more, and then we have some bad luck and finish 3rd again. So who knows. I haven’t been this excited for a season since 2009.

We will split our home games between Spring Hill and West Field on Wednesday nights, except for 4th of July week which will probably be a Monday night home game. The first couple weeks of the schedule should be up in the next day or so, with the full schedule set to be released in a week.

AA has been the most competitive division top to bottom since the split, and I don’t see that changing. It’s fun. There are probably 6 teams with a legit shot this year.

I’ve ben thinking about how great it is that this league still has a few teams with shitty fans and angry non-player coaches, and how much more fun that makes the season. It’d get boring if we just played teams like Cranberry a bunch of times. The personalities make it fun. We need villains. The commissioner might not agree with me on this point.

  • The Devils are probably the early favorite
  • Cranberry is my sleeper pick. I bet they win 15 games this year.
  • The Oilers are still in AA, and might finish below .500 for the first time in a while. Classic letdown season after a title. That said, they’re probably flying in prospects as I write this.
  • Bandidos, Eagles, Grizzlies will all be tough
  • West View is going to field a team again after folding before last year’s playoffs. They should just merge with Sheraden.
  • The Warriors went back to Single A, and took their 6pm time slot with them.
  • RIP Express. Good luck in the DNL?
  • I’ll miss playing at Volunteer. We had a bunch of good games there, and I liked hitting in that park. Half that team were great guys.

Quack