South Oakland of the North Side (9-2) came from behind twice Monday night to beat the West View Sharks ( 5-3) 4-3.
Rob Baumgartel allowed 1 earned run over five innings. Mike Cinefra earned the win in relief after the Sharks took a 3-2 lead off reliever Garrett Mack in the top of the sixth.
Nick Berdine drove in the winning run with a two-run double to right in the bottom of the sixth inning after James Fago was hit by a pitch and Rob Baumgartel singled to left.
South Oakland looks to extend their win streak to 10 when they face Big Oil Saturday at noon at Pie Traynor Field.
I have no clue about the West View expansion team. Hopefully they wear teal.
or multi-colored poly-cotton blend reminiscent of their name shake, the West Side Sharks, a Puerto Rican gang from the most famous musical adaptation of a Shakespeare play in history.
It takes balls to name your team after a tragedy about unrequited love.
Next year’s expansion team: The Murrysville Montagues.
I think there may be former Matadors on the squad.
The Matadors are famous for trying to bribe both, former Ducks Manager TC Jones and current Ducks center fielder Rob Cool into throwing an adult league baseball game because they were pissed at the Commissioner for something ridiculous.
The Sharks appear to be solid, judging by their record in the not-as-good-top-to-bottom Allegheny Division, and a couple wins over good teams.
South Oakland of the North Side takes an 8-game winning streak into tonights game, coming of back to back shutouts of the Black Sox and Bulldogs respectively.
We can’t take this one lightly.
Sharks are at the top of the food chain, but also can be hunted, skinned and made into wallets and sweet pants (see above).
Ken Cool and Tim Lipp drove in the game’s only runs as South Oakland (8-2, 4-1) shutout the Black Sox (6-4-2, 2-3-1) for the first time in team history, and extended their win-streak to 8.
The Ducks play the Sharks Wednsday night, 9pm at Springview Field
A rematch of last season’s championship series. and I’m 99% sure it will be Teyssier vs. Chalfin.
Tonight’s game will be the first time the Ducks come into More Park as the team who ended the Sox season the previous year.
Until South Oakland defeated the Black Sox in the Championship last year, the Ducks had never beaten the Sox in a post season series.
We still haven’t finished the regular season with a better record than the Sox, but you can ask the Bulldogs how much regular season success means (sorry guys).
This is the best rivalry in the brief history of our league.
Since the days when Randy coached third, occasionally umpired, and would yell, “I got it,” at the Ducks infielders going for pop-ups, no two teams have played more games against each other or played harder.
The rivalry intensified when we absorbed the Owlz players (and more Black SOx hate) last season and then again when Guthrie beat Chalfin in game two of the Championship.
We beat them when it counted, and absolved seven years of futility.
But they’ve been waiting for this chance since they watched us drench Guth in beer while Joe brought down our trophy.
***
A Ducks win will give the Sox something to think about till mid July when we finish the season with a two-game series against Brookline.
Moore Park is a tough place to play; tonight, it will be filled with crew cuts and beer cans and profanity.
But this season they have to knock off the Ducks to win the title.
We are the defending champs, and we will play like it tonight.
Unrelated zeppelin song. Now for a letdown of a recap:
South Oakland of the North Side (7-2) won their seventh straight behind phenomenal pitching and timely hitting from the bottom of the lineup.
Ducks lefty, Mike Cinefra pitched a complete game, 1-hit shutout, striking out 12.
Ken Cool drove in the winning run with two outs in the bottom of the 8th.
Both pitchers threw exceptionally well. The Bulldogs’ guy allowed only 5 hits and went 7 and 2/3 with 9 Ks
The Bulldogs threatened in the second when Rankin hit a leadoff double to right but was stranded on 3rd after a K a groundout and another K.
In the top of the 7th, Ducks catcher James Fago threw out a runner trying to take third on a past ball to end the inning.
This was the first Ducks Bulldogs game in which we held Vinny Gala hitless.
In the bottom of the 8th with two outs, Nick Berdine walked to lead off the inning. Gwin singled to right, and Ken Cool drove in the winning run with a single to center.
South Oakland’s 8-9-10 hitters came through with two outs to preserve the win in one of the best games I’ve played in for some time.
Anthony Defilippo, Rob Baumgartel, and Mike Cinefra also had hits for South Oakland.
South Oakland looks to overcome and early season defeat at the hands of the Bulldogs who couldn’t even do us the courtesy of beating the Black Sox last Saturday.
Thanks guys. Way to be even more hungover at 8:30 am on saturday morning than the Black Sox.
Ducks’ utility player and third base coach, Rick Whalen was hospitalized during the first matchup between the Ducks and Bulldogs, but figures to factor in to tonight’s game in some manner.
Coming in to tonight’s matchup, South Oakland is riding a six-game win streak while the Bulldogs have won nine of ten.
The biggest difference between these two teams over the past four seasons has been playoff success. Since TC took over and then relinquished the manager’s position for South Oakland, the Ducks have won a title and advanced to the conference semi’s for a 6-1-1 playoff record. The Bulldogs can’t make it out of the first round.
Maybe we’ll get our championship t-shirts tonight from the commish?
and where’s my trophy?
I wonder if Flip’s buddy still catches for them?
This blog has turned to crap. However, the Bulldogs blog has proven to be even more racially insensitive and hedonistic than Fred Phelps reading from a public high school history book in a battered women’s shelter, wearing a bathrobe made out of Hustler back issues.
(I’m going the clothes made out of magazines route, it’s getting bad over here. Go read the bulldogs blog.)
James Tessyier had a perfect game through 3. Following a leadoff walk in the bottom of the fourth, with the Ducks (6-2, 2-1) leading 12-0, South Oakland’s center fielder misplayed a fly ball that allowed a run to score, blowing both the no-hitter and the shutout.
The Ducks went on to win 12-1.
To their credit Monroeville came back strong in game 2, however the Ducks won 4-2.
James Fago pitched 5 strong innings allowing 2 runs before Garret Mack picked up a 2-inning save in his first official pitching appearance for the Ducks.
Mack also went 2 for 2 with a sac fly.
The game ended on a bases loaded fly out to Nick Berdine who made a phenomenal running catch on what would have been an extra base hit
Note: The Militia have only played Elliot once. For whatever reason i misread the league site and thought they’d lost to Elliot twice.
South Oakland is 6-1 in its last seven games against the Militia including last season’s semi-final victory.
South Oakland plays the Pittsburgh Bulldogs Wednesday night at 9pm.
South Oakland of the North Side (4-2, 1,1) beat Cranberry 13-6 in Springview last night in front of an offended crowd of 3.
The hilights of the game were Rick Whalen’s sweet double off the wall in left, and Duffy’s blistering single down the 3rd baseline.
Mike Fletcher recorded the win, allowing 1ER over 3 innings.
Fago was a double and a homerun short of the cycle.
Cinefra hit a triple, I don’t think I’ve seen 2 legit triples in the same game at Spring Hill ever.
DeFilippo had infinity RBI
More doubles were hit by Ken Cool, DeFilippo, Cinefra, and Gwin, marking the first time Whalen and Gwin recorded extra base hits in the same game for the Ducks since Ken Cool was in elementary school.
Rob Cool reached base four times.
The game ended on a fantastic catch by 1b Nick Berdine
Big double header against the Militiaon Sunday.
We can almost knock them out of the division race if we sweep, thanks to Monroeville losing twice to Elliot last week.
I don’t think Elliot has lost yet.
***
The blog has been garbage lately and we don’t even have our stats up, the latter is certainly uncharacteristic for us and management is on it.
I don’t have Fago’s pitching line, but i think he only allowed three hits and recorded at least 10 ks.
He also went 3 for 4 at the plate with 2 doubles.
Rob Cool went 1 for 1 with 3 walks.
Baumgartel and Lipp also doubled.
Every Duck reached base at least once.
A couple base running errors kept the game from becoming a complete laugher.
The Express didn’t advance a runner past second.
Ducks catcher, Brendan Scioscia threw out two runners
South Oakland of the North Side (3-2, 1-1) takes a 3-game winning streak into Wednsday’s game against Cranberry, before a big time double header against the Militia in Woodland Hills Sunday morning.
South Oakland Ducks Baseball 