2012 South Oakland Ducks Baseball

Ducks Swept by Elliot: 5-4, 12-5. Season Over and Team Awards.

2012 South Oakland Ducks Baseball

 Ken Cool singled in 2 runs in the top of the sixth to put the Ducks ahead 4-3 after six.

TJ Morgan led off the top of the seventh with a double and we left him stranded.

Elliot drove in the winning run on a two-out single in the bottom of the seventh.

***

Game Two got ugly in the fourth. We led 1-0 and then they started hitting home runs. It got to 10-2 at one point, then they added two more in the top of the seventh. South Oakland scored three in the bottom of the seventh.

**

What we accomplished this year was to re-lay the foundation of a winning team. We literally stared in late January with five guys after the exodus to Clinton claimed most of the roster, and we put together a team that was just a couple pieces away.

***

Team Awards

MVP: James Fago

Offensive player of the year: Bobby Swartwout

Defensive player of the year: Dave Houseman

We have a solid nucleus for next season.

We’ll probably get a fall ball team together so be ready for that.

quack.

 

 

Playoff Gameday [2]: Ducks at Elliot

2012 South Oakland Ducks Baseball

South Oakland Ducks

at

Elliot

6pm

Herschel Park

***

We’re 1-7 all time against Elliot. The only win coming in game 2 of last year’s finals before we lost the series in three games.

As far as I’m concerned we’re playing with house money at this point.

Given the injuries we’ve suffered this season and all the unnecessary drama that has gone down, we can go out and play like we have nothing to lose. No one expects us to get out of this round. A win this evening will put us in great position.

Bad News for Elliot.

Numbers: (Edit: Now with link to bulldogs blog, where they will soon have a glorious literary response to this post)

2012 South Oakland Ducks Baseball

We’ve rolled our way into the semis.

Clinton plays the Bulldogs this weekend and the Ducks play Elliot.

The Bulldogs just won their first playoff game in team history, which was their 100th franchise victory. A nice way to remember both of those events, but I think it’s kind of like having your birthday on Christmas.

 I was inspired by Lucky13’s blog post on the bulldog’s blog (not the picture so much as the number crunching) and updated our About Page to (somewhat) accurately reflect our team history and record.

Anyway, in a fit of math I figured our all time regular season record to be 114-96-4.

We likely own the all-time ties record.

Our playoff record is 17-7

That adds up to something like: 131-103-4

We’ve completed our tenth regular season.

Noteable ten year Pittsburgh NABA players: Craig Boley, Kenny Powers, me and Newman of the Warriors, but he may have taken a sabbatical one season.

I don’t think there are any other players who’ve been around since ’03, and since the Black Sox and Warriors started as the Piranhas and Stampeders, we are the only team that’s been around since the beginning.

Ten years ago, Ken Cool and Bob Swartwout, two of our best players this year, were 11 and 9-years-old respectively.

Since the Ducks formed in 2003, the Pirahhnas, Stampeders, Rangers, Insulright, Yankees, Owlz, Maulers, Knights, Matadors, Hurricanes, Orioles, Bombers, Colonials, Pythons, Phantoms, Arthropods, Rakers, Gray Bats, Sharks, Oilers and Rebels have come and gone.

That’s 20 teams and I may have forgotten a few.

Next season we could get a patch with an X on it if we wanted.

This season we have a chance to reach the finals for a third consecutive year, if we can get past Elliot.

Not that it wouldn’t have been tempting to put aside the team I’ve been a part of for 1/3 of my life to be the sixth outfielder and fourth-string first baseman for Clinton this summer.

quack.

Ducks Win.

2012 South Oakland Ducks Baseball

Anthony DeFilippo drove in the winning run in the bottom of the seventh and James Fago pitched a complete game for the victory. scattering 4 hits and one walk to lead South Oakland to the victory over the Monroeville Militia Sunday night.

The Militia led 1-0 when Dan Stell scored on an RBI triple by Lombardi in the top of the fourth.

The Ducks answered in the bottom half of the inning when Jesse Ferko reached after a strikeout and a dropped third strike, stole second, advanced to third on a past ball, and then stole home.

 it was technically a past ball, but that backstop is six inches behind the plate. Still a great hustle play.

The Ducks pushed the lead to 3-1 in the bottom of the sixth: Bob Swartwout hustled out a ground ball to deep short and reached on an error by the first baseman, Fago singled, and after both runners advanced on a past ball, TJ Morgan delivered a 2-run single.

The Militia tied the game at 3 in the top of the seventh on a two-run, two out double by Banner.

In the bottom of the seventh Gwin led off with a bunt single, advanced to second on a past ball, and scored the winning run on DeFilippo’s single to center.

The Militia’s starting pitcher Joe Stupka left South Oakland earlier in the season due to scheduling conflicts, and struck out 15 Ducks in the loss.

What a game.

This recap in no way does justice to how tense and well played the game was.

South Oakland will play Elliot in a best of three series in the league semifinals starting this weekend.

Quack.

 

Fago

Playoffs, All Stars and More!

2012 South Oakland Ducks Baseball, pittsburgh NABA, who names their team the Rebels?

South Oakland opens the 2012 postseason against the Monroeville Militia Sunday July 22nd, 8:30pm at Moore Park.

The All-Star starters are up on the league home page.

Interesting how last-place Cranberry has 4 starters compared to the Ducks and Black Sox who have one apiece.

From our team I nominated Fago, Ken Cool, Morgan and Swartwout. Who will represent us at the all-star game in August if they choose.

Cases could be made for Houseman and me based on the numbers and Houseman being sick at fielding. But i’m not about to vote for myself, certainly not to start over whatever low-A prospect Clinton has in left field, and for some reason I thought Elliot was in our division and Wes White was a more deserving starter at SS. Sorry, House, for not knowing what teams are in our division.

I think we need a return to the mid-season all-star game next year so people actually show up. That was a lot of fun a couple years back, despite coach Kenny Powers not getting me an at-bat.

Apparently the Rebels and Warriors game last week ended in a fight with police called.

I forget the details. Hopefully they meet in the A championship and it’s really intense.

***

The Ducks Elliot game will not be rescheduled. We tried, but the weather and field availability worked against us. I would’ve liked to get some at bats before sunday.

Anyway…

After a brutal off-season and losing pitchers upon pitchers for a variety of reasons, the Ducks finished the regular season 11-10-2 and 8-4 in the division.

Good for fourth overall and second in the Monongahela.

We will be the home team on Sunday.

If I had known the 2-seeds were going to switch brackets, it would have been a lot tougher to release Stupka to the Militia. Ethically I made the right decision.

If both teams have everyone show up on Sunday night, it’s going to be a great game.

More tomorrow.

quack.

 

 

Ducks Lose. Mound Destroyed.

2012 South Oakland Ducks Baseball

Playing without team MVP, and number one starting pitcher James Fago (and three other regulars) South Oakland dropped its most important game of the season 13-11 to the Clinton Cherokee Wednesday night. We fought hard and came up just short. Clinton led 4-0, after one, 7-1 after two and we brought it to i think 9-8 in the third.  Then they scored three in the fourth, and one in the fifth before we put up three in the bottom of the sixth. I could go get the book out of my car to make sure, but I won’t.

I’m not one for moral victories. We had a chance to win the division and we didn’t. Maybe we still allow 13 runs if we have a couple guys in on defense, but we only made a few errors, a pop-up and two grounders. Everyone who showed up played hard. Guthrie and Strom played especially well, and maybe those two don’t get in if everyone’s there, so who knows. Clinton ran on us all day, if we have another infielder we can maybe make defensive moves to address that. It’s frustrating.

They also hit like fifteen home runs.

We split the season series with Clinton and aside from our first matchup we’ve played them tough every time. I don’t think they expected that.

One positive I take from the loss is that we battled, and we were patient at the plate against that kid who threw at least 120mph and let him walk us.

We had the winning run at the plate in the bottom of the sixth.

The game was called due to time limit. I definitely managed the pitching as if we were playing seven, and that’s my fault for not realizing we were going to come up against the time limit, which I should have figured out when it was 9-8 in the third.

We’ve got to retire the Duck Pond next year. That field is getting dangerous due to neglect by the city, and their reluctance to let us work on it or get us the keys to the equipment shed.

Tessyier removed the rubber in the fifth and both teams pitched without it.

We open the playoffs next Sunday July 22nd, agains the 3 seed in the other division, which will be either the Bulldogs or the Militia.

Commish says the cross-divisional playoff games are a means to not punish the stronger division, which makes sense, but I think it may cause issues in the second round if both two seeds advance there isn’t a way to properly re-seed, since all season we’ve been playing for best division record. No matter what Joe does someone will be unhappy. Playoff seeding won’t be what keeps us from playing for another championship, if we don’t get out of the semis it will be lack of pitching depth necessary to win a 3 game series.  We’ll figure something out.

The Ducks play the Black Sox Sunday night at 9pm at Moore Park.