Note: the Ducks have won 21 games en-route to our appearance in the finals this season, which are some big words for a Ducks team that got it’s ass whupped early in the season by a team that has nothing to do this weekend.
Note again: The Black Sox were named the Stampeders in 2003 when the Ducks last won a title.
And once more: The last time the Ducks won the title, we were the sixth seed going into the playoffs, however there were only six teams in the league at the time. make of that what you will.
So it comes to this.
Thunderdome at Laroche.
Thankfully Ken Cool knows this field like the inside of a box of Cheerios and will provide intimate knowledge to the hops and bounces of its every grain of dirt and patch of grass.
The Black Sox got past Big Oil in the semis and South Oakland and James Fago did what the Hurricanes and Rafalski couldn’t: beat the Militia to advance in the playoffs.
Neither the Sox or Ducks have won a playoff game by less than 4 runs.
Quick recap of Ducks Militia:
South Oakland kicked the butterflies around for an inning and spotted 3 runs to the militia off the bat, thanks to an error on a double play ball that would have ended the first, but wound up as an rbi fielders choice and an unearned run for Tremel.
The field ump was busy admiring Jeremy Barchie and the militia’s guerilla tactics moved another unearned run across when Fago threw to a ghost-fielder at third base after Stell singled.
Jeremy Barchie in his Militia alternate uni after a tough outing and too much cough syrup
3-0 Militia after one and a half.
South Oakland scored four in the bottom of the second and didn’t look back.
Fago came into pitch and didn’t allow a runner past first.
The Ducks started hitting doubles. Using the wet, and dangerous SpringView terrain to their advantage, South Oakland scored two more in the third, two in the fifth and one in the sixth.
Scioscia went yard and they called it a double. The first call Traggard has ever missed.
Fago struckout eleven in five innings of relief to earn his second win in the post-season (two more than the whole Hurricane’s staff), and he also stole six bases and scored three runs.
Rob Baumgartel went 3-for-3 with five RBI and a double.
Jesse Smith was 2-for-3 with a walk and three runs scored.
Tessyier, DeFilippo and Captain America will be in uniform on Saturday.
Due to an untimely wedding, surgery, and vacation, the Ducks will be without three key starters which will give a few more tenured players the chance they(we)’vs been waiting for since TC took over in ’08.
To beat the Black Sox for the title.
The playoff format is admittedly geared towards the transition into next season, but the happy result of the tournament is that the best rivalry in this league’s brief history is represented in the finals.
The Ducks – Sox rivalry has included bench clearing brawls, Randy umpiring and harassing our third baseman, tragic losses, heroic wins, fights in the stands, heroic proportions of booze, and now the stakes are as high as they come.
floating
Then there is the added Sox disdain carried to South Oakland by many of our new Ducks.
Now a quick story:
Before the playoffs started, I returned Kenny’s home plate to him and bullshitted with him and Chalfin for a while.
The consensus among the two Socks was that the Ducks have more talent than we’ve ever had, better defensively etc…about as good as the team the Sox beat in the playoffs last season, save for Scott Dunn and Sinclair and that other kid who got drafted. However we were easier to play against. The dugout was quiet, they said.
We didn’t fight like we had in seasons past.
Maybe that’s my fault, but I don’t feel I should have to get adults fired up like it’s some kind of high school football game.
I surmise this is exactly what Kenny hoped for when the merger occurred in the off-season; that the Ducks would lose the heart that has defined the team since it’s inception with the addition of all the college talent and we’d just show up and expect to win.
We wouldn’t have the heart that makes guys catch with broken hands or pitch on two days rest, five beers deep for a summer league team that, essentially, just provides the quacktastic means to stay in shape for school ball, but is not the only meaningful baseball going for them like it is for some of us.
more terrible sentences to come…
sometimes the father is the responsible parent
The playoffs are different. Everything that was done to make this team better in the off-season had a purpose: to be ready for this Saturday and Sunday if necessary.
I wouldn’t want to face any other team, and I’m sure Kenny feels the same way.
If the Ducks play like we have to scrap for every run and every out we will win.
This is a blue collar team.
Ghosts of Ducks teams past still haunt this blog and to some extent the franchise- certainly my psyche, possessed like in some weird yet fascinatingly awesome made for tv horror movie, with that guy from one of the Law and Order™ spin-offs and that chick who keeps getting arrested for smack or shopliftng, and in this hypothetical film based off a bad best selling novel, the heroes have the chance to beat a gang of black-clad bullies who named themselves after a bunch of disgraced gamblers who threw the title, to win a championship of our own.{(this book/movie would be set in the woods behind moore park near the new home of the bat/book family. In the first scene, the family ponders burning themselves for warmth “who will be the first to go?’ asks the oldest child…and so on. Then a White Stripes song starts playing softly in the distance and Nick Berdine approaches and offers to help the family since he threw the bat in there, but they better hurry and hide in a tree full of friendly sparrows…actually that sounds like a sick movie: absurdist surrealism set near a swampy baseball field full of mosquitoes and empty Pabst cans that rattle and crawl like beheaded salamanders pulled by the spirit of Bill Franciscus and that guy who played third for us one year when we wore red that played in football cleats with a softball glove, and was on the team because one of my friends said he could pitch but he couldn’t, and I learned not to trust some people when they say they know a kid who is good at baseball. )- The only way the bat/book family can be freed and justice returned to the Pittsburgh NABA is if the Ducks defeat their hated rival Brookline Black Sox. followed by the time rift feature on what would have happened if Pitt had a club team when me and kenny and craig boley were all students there. We probably would have formed a team called the WallabeeZ and tore shit up, but then there would be no Ducks, no Warriors, and no Stampeders/Black Sox]. That would be a great story.
Still with me?
Believe it or not, I’m in grad school for writing, clearly the admissions standards have dropped drastically…so maybe you skipped that paragraph and maybe you are at work with nothing better to do and actually read it. I will resume after another non-sequitous picture.
you've got huge balls to use "non-sequitous" twice in an amateur baseball blog, hippie.
The captions are talking back to me.
Saturday afternoon, the Ducks bring Abe Lincoln, Jack White, Harold the Rubber Duck and our own dedicated fan base to a neutral sight which doesn’t permit alcoholic beverages or cough syrup, in fact, syrup of any kind has been banned from LaRoche College.
this song is unrelated, but it’s sick.
Tell your friends.
Bad News for the Black Sox
Quack.
