Gameday

Gameday [21] Ducks at Black Sox

Gameday, pittsburgh NABA, South Oakland Ducks Baseball

South Oakland Ducks (15-5, 5-1)

vs.

Brookline Black Sox (14-5, 5-2)

9pm

Moore Park

That’s the mindset you got to be in if you want to be a champion.

First, Ducks News:

Anthony DeFilippo has signed a 20 year extension with South Oakland, making him a Duck for life.

Ken “The Windmill” Cool has been promoted to co-manager.

The All Star Game will be held Aug 8th at a location to be determined, hopefully not Spring Hill.

There are many Ducks deserving consideration.

I feel like league-wide numbers are bloated this season due to some lopsided games vs. A teams.

Despite their prowess with explosives, the A-team is not very good at baseball.

Tomorrow’s game vs. the Knights will be replaced with a game against the Militia, that game may be moved to Monday or Wednsday. (I know; there’s a lot up in the air right now as we try to get the season finished before the playoffs.)

The Knights game will be rescheduled.

A Ducks win tonight keeps South Oakland in first place and alive for the division title.

If the Black Sox win, the Ducks have to hope Brookline looses to the Eagles and South Oakland sweeps the Militia whenever those games are rescheduled.

Tonight will be a defining moment in the history of the Ducks franchise, I write that without hyperbole or melodrama.

The road to the Wales Conference title goes through Brookline and we wouldn’t want it any other way.

The Ducks can shrug off the weight of seven years of loosing to the Black Sox with a win tonight.

Tish and Fago are gonna tag team this one.

Bad News for the Black Sox

quack

Gameday 20: Ducks vs Eagles

Gameday, pittsburgh NABA, South Oakland Ducks Baseball

South Oakland Ducks of the North Side (14-5, 4-1)

vs.

South Side Eagles (4-12, 0-6)

9pm

Springview Field

Just when it looked like the league was finally beyond the point where teams wouldn’t be able to put nine on the field, we find ourselves facing an opponent who has forfeited two division games, and generally doesn’t seem to give a shit.

If NABA legend Playmaker were still around, the Eagles would not struggle to put nine on the field.

The Eagles should be disbanded, or forced to carry more than six guys. Merge them with the Knights, or the Titans.

I do give their coahc credit for not wanting to play in the A division, unlike Big Oil, who will switch divisions with South Side next season if I understand how this new system works.

The Ducks, winners of ten straight, have outscored the Eagles 24-5 in two games this season.

The Bulldogs lost 4-3 to the Canes, setting up a rubber match for the title sometime in the near future.

We play the Knights on the 17th.

We will probably play the Black Sox Thursday, July 22nd and the double header against the Militia on the 24th.

Big weekend  potentially.

Another round of power rankings

  1. Hurricanes
  2. Bulldogs
  3. Black Sox
  4. Militia
  5. Matadors
  6. Maulers
  7. Oilers
  8. Warriors
  9. Knights
  10. Eagles
  11. Titans

Bad News for the Eagles.

gameday nineteen: ducks vs. bulldogs

Bulldogs, Gameday, pittsburgh NABA, South Oakland Ducks Baseball

Game 19:

South Oakland Ducks of the North Side(13-5)

vs.

Pittsburgh Bulldogs (14-3)

9pm

Spring View Field

Aside from RBI (9 for 28+ Dogs, to 4 for Ducks) I have better numbers for the Ducks than the over 28 Bulldogs in six more plate appearances. I don’t know what that means, you’d think with the tougher pitching, etc..So it goes.

Don’t forget to change your signs for the game tonight, BJ.

…and bring me my duck, you sons of bitches.

The Bulldogs lost to the Militia Saturday, I can’t imagine they put out the same lineup that beat the HURRICANES! the week before.

I’ve got inside info on the Bulldogs new fight song.

kind of depressing, but you can’t argue with a winner.

A South Oakland victory will put our franchise at 80-80-2 all time.

It would also be our ninth straight on-field W, as the Titans win was a forfeit.

the Ducks’ #9 is retired worn by Rob Swanger who, in three seasons, never played on a winning Ducks team.

Let’s get back to .500, and keep rolling into the battle of Monroeville this weekend.

A win also gets us recap rights on the Bulldogs site. Their blog actually gets read, so that’s huge.

Bad News for the Bulldogs

Quack.

Gameday 17: Ducks vs. Matadors

Gameday, pittsburgh NABA, South Oakland Ducks Baseball

South Oakland Ducks of the North Side(11-5, 4-1)

vs.

Etna Matadors (9-8)

6:15pm

Etna Field

The Ducks beat the Matadors 4-3 in extra innings, when Ken Cool drove in the winning run in the bottom of the 8th.

the last time we were supposed to play the ‘Dors, God tried to wipe Etna off the face of the earth with repeated dispersion of lightning  bolts and torrential rain, leading to a cancellation and subsequent rescheduling for today.

All of the sudden we have a shit load of games in the next two weeks.

Let’s make it eight straight W’s.

Bad News for the Matadors

Gameday Sixteen: Ducks vs. Black Socks.

Gameday, pittsburgh NABA, South Oakland Ducks Baseball

South Oakland Ducks(10-5, 3-1)

vs.

Brookline Black Sox (9-4, 4-1)

9pm

SpringView Field

I updated our about page,(there’s a nice synopsis of our team history there now) and while i thought about the significance of the Ducks, the Black Sox appeared at every run-on sentence. They’ve beaten us every way imaginable.

Last year’s playoff loss to the Sox was probably the best pure baseball game in Ducks history – ten innings, blah blah, Slavonic’s game winning hit etc.

They beat us when I coached, they beat us when Jones coached,  we’ve never won the division (even when we won our lone title when Ken Cool was only ten years old) and we’ve never taken a playoff series from Brookline.

This is the year that changes.

Brookline beat us by 8 or something in May, a game we played without Duffy, Casale, Scioscia,  Berdine, Ken Cool, Defilippo, Tessyier, Fago,  Lipp, Alex Harsh and…

Rob Cool Jr.

(pictured above with 2008 PGH NABA Championship Belt )

Subplots rip through seasons like scars, there’s a story behind each one. Adam Smith left for the Eagles, but no one really cares because the Eagles are still stuck in the cellar, despite the myriad of chart-topping hits they put out in the 70’s, Joe Walsh’s solid but inconsistent solo work, and the odd obsession with Don Henley among  several generations of adults with otherwise normal taste in music.

Smith and TC are best friends compared to Kenny and Rob.

I’ve taken anonymous comment heat for bringing in 4 players from the team that went 22-1 last season, and also  filling spots vacated by Spagnola and Adam Smith with Tessyier and Fago.

Our roster is big, but ask the Eagles how they like playing with eight guys and forfeiting every third game.

They only had four show up vs. the Militia, a division game and they can’t put a lineup out there. They should add Depo and Bob Faust.

What a joke. There are guys who want to get in the league and still, teams forfeit.

[Congrats to the Bulldogs for beating the Canes.

Vinnt Gala is the best first baseman in the league by a mile.]

Winning turns question marks into exclamation points, hyphens and other fun punctuation marks which can be made into faces and things, and the .079 hitting, ex-Ducks fourth string first baseman who was the most vocal in his closed-mindedness and unwillingness to take a back seat and welcome new teammates in order to win more games, is no longer a Duck.

The cancer is gone.  It’s ironic given that the way we’ve been blowing out teams, that the nameless douche bag would have played a decent amount of ball had he stuck around, but boy did he show me what a dick I am by not playing ball this summer, despite my attempts to get him on another team.

Transition.

***

V-neck City next year.

It is if some smart ass blog spent two years fucking with the best team in the league creating odd conspiracy theories about bird worship in an attempt to rally an undermanned squad against a superior opponent, and some retard took it seriously.

I shouldn’t say retarded.

Anyway, last year  Sox upset the most talented team in the league in the Wales Finals, swept them 2-0. No one expected it.

Imperial disbanded, and those players who didn’t flee to the fed league and parts unknown, joined either the Ducks or the Black Sox.

Warren, Sloan, and that other pitcher went to Brookline.  Ken and Rob Cool, Scioscia and Defilippo are Ducks.

The rivalry will reach new heights at 9pm tonight

This game is the culmination of eight years of South Oakland Ducks Baseball and seven years of futility against the Sox. This is the best shot we’ve ever had at a title and it hinges on winning tonight at the Duck Pond, and beating the Sox again whenever we reschedule that rain-out.

Ducks ace James Tessyier brings his perfect record and 0.37 era to the hill against Sox ace Peter “Pan” Chalfin who we beat once last year, and twice lost to by one run.

The Ducks have won six straight. The Sox won 20-1 or something today and beat the Eagles 6-1 over the weekend they have won four in a row.

Bring the Hate.

It’s time for a new order in the Wales Conference.

Bad News for the Black Sox.

Gameday [15] Ducks vs. Knights

Gameday, pittsburgh NABA, South Oakland Ducks Baseball

Let’s get this going again. It’s time.

South Oakland Ducks (9-5, 3-1)

vs.

Allegheny Knights (1-13)

9pm

SpringView Field

Back in the day, the Knights were stacked, but could never get over the hump: Barchie, Fago, Guthrie, Cool, Sorosky, Tremel, a bunch of kids from the Rakers, they were solid and constantly took the last playoff spot from the Ducks.  They played in a historic two-site playoff game involving rain delays and power outages in what amounted to a three day loss to the eventual league champion, Confederacy. They were the Orioles for a season, causing my dyslexic brain to hemorrhage whenever i had to differentiate between them and the Oilers (Phantoms, Pythons was also a toughie).

The Knights are one of 16 teams that has folded (in this case they’ve re-manifested as an expansion team ) changed names, or merged with another team since 2003.

The original Knights lineage since ’05:

Knights-Orioles-Knights-Rakers and _wlz-Gray Bats-Militia.

It’s not easy to keep a team going for eight seasons.

We should all take some pride in playing on the only team that’s been around since the league’s inception.

(Ducks all-time record now stands at 75-80-2, but are in the process of recording a third straight winning season.)

The 2010 Knights’ lone win is against 18A Division leader, Big Oil.

Since James Fago and James Tessyier have joined South Oakland prior to the Oilers game, the Ducks have won five straight.

Bad News for the Knights.

Gameday 14: Ducks at Titans

Gameday, pittsburgh NABA, South Oakland Ducks Baseball

South Oakland Ducks of the North Side

at

North Shore Titans

5:30 pm

Bellevue Field

Ducks: We will wear our yellow, weekend day game away jerseys.

Titans footage:

I have no idea what to make of that.

Tessyier is on the hill.

Guth and Jones are reportedly in Vegas.

Godspeed.

Happy Father’s Day.

Bad News for the Titans.