Ducks

Game Day 13: Ducks at Cranberry

2012 South Oakland Ducks Baseball

South Oakland Ducks of the North Side (4 -1, 5-5-2)

at 

Cranberry (1-2, 4-7)

2pm

North Boundary Park

As of 9:42 we’re playing, I imagine the field up there has dried out, and will be playable at 2pm.

I’m sure the infield will be quick…

After a season and a half Cranberry still doesn’t have a mascot, I think that could be holding them back.

We can put some pressure on the rest of the division today with a win. To the amazement of others around the league, our team is in first place going into our sixth division game, and competing for a first round bye.

Despite our 2 – 0 record against Cranberry, they’re a tough team that has definitely improved from last year. The lineup they put on the field wed was almost entirely different from the first game we played this season, so we’ll see how it plays out.

We can’t look past this game.

It’ll be interesting to see how the Sox/Cherokee marathon doubleheader goes today, how Clinton handles their staff with 3 division games in 4 days.

Patton and Captain America will see give us some innings today.

Bad News for Cranberry.


Ducks Win:

2012 South Oakland Ducks Baseball, Ducks win, South Oakland Ducks Baseball

South Oakland 6, Cranberry 1

Bobby Swartwout (sp) drove in three runs, going 3-for-3 with two doubles and a single off the wall to lead South Oakland (4-1, 5-5-2) past Cranberry Wednesday night. Ducks pitcher James Fago allowed one unearned run over six innings, holding Cranberry to 3 hits and recording an estimated 9 Ks. I have now gone from spelling out numbers to writing them as numerals.

Cranberry scored their run early on a walk, a hit batter, a past ball and an error in some order.

The Ducks tied the game in the third when Ken Cool doubled and scored from second on an infield hit by Gwin who reached third on a double by our new utility infielder. Fago walked and scored on Swartwout’s bases clearing double.

South Oakland added another run on a sac fly by centerfielder TJ Morgan.

I don’t know where we’d be without Morgan this season, and I’m at a complete loss as to how we scored our other run. I think a groundout.

Robert Patton pitched a perfect seventh to preserve the victory.

There are still players on our team who haven’t met each other. There are at least four guys whose names i don’t know, and may never know, but after a brutal start that included a 17 – 1 loss to the Bulldogs, we’re playing better baseball.

We have another important division game against Cranberry Saturday 2pm, at North Boundary Park.

Quack.

Happy Memorial Day: Practice Tuesday, 6:30 at SpringView Field

2012 South Oakland Ducks Baseball

It looks like the league this year is incredibly balanced. That, combined with the meaninglessness of the non-division games, has lead to a lot of decent but not spectacular records.

Cranberry beat the Black Sox last weekend making our division race much tighter, and the games this week even more important.

The Cherokee play the Black Sox in what looks like a home and home double header on Saturday 3:30 in the twilight zone and 9pm at Moore Park. Wild scheduling – Kenny Powers does not want to fall to 0 – 4 in divisional play, and Ken Cool’s brother definitely wants the Cherokee to bury Brookline. I guess it’s in our best interest to root for a split there. I don’t know.

There will be intense baseball down the stretch for sure.

Thank god we won’t have to go back to Findlay in the regular season. The field is fine, but the lack of shade makes me dizzy thinking about it.

Two Big games this week vs Cranberry: Wed, 9pm at SpringView, and Saturday, 2pm at North Boundary Park. We’ve got a chance to get over .500 overall and go to 5 -1 in the division.

quack.

Game Day 10 and 11: Ducks at Cherokee

2012 South Oakland Ducks Baseball

South Oakland Ducks of the North Side (2-0, 3-4-3)

at

Clinton Cherokee (0-0, 5-2)

1pm and 3:30pm

Middle of Nowhere (seriously, according to this yahoo maps link, we’re playing in a parallel dimension)

In this alternate universe, all teams want pictures like this taken of their summer league teams.

They look like they mean business – and check out the sick piping!

This is probably just some art students’ school project, but whatever.

If Ken Cool’s brother had stuck around we might have Ducks pics like this: I’d want a silhouette  of Guth holding up that cigar on top of the Cool’s picnic table right before he blacked out and fell on the driveway after we won the championship, imposed in front of Dan Marino field in Oakland with a drug deal taking place in the background and some little kids playing with a broken 40 bottle.

Sadly, me and Fago’s inability to provide our team with posters of ourselves led to the loss of some quality players.

Our pitching situation is gonna be touch and go, but we should have most of our lineup.

Bad News for the Cherokee.

GameDay 9: Ducks vs Black Sox

2012 South Oakland Ducks Baseball

Ducks vs Black Sox

9pm

SpringView Field

 

Trying to write any more about this rivalry makes me want to puke. It’s all redundant at this point. Brookline is always tough. Somehow, we always seem to absorb players from teams who have a history of fighting (whether in the stands on the field or whatever) during games against those guys. The Hurricanes beat the Sox to win the ’09 title, after the Sox beat the Owlz in the semis. We beat the Sox to win the ’10 championship. I think they’ve got some big time pitching this year. Our field is so slanted towards first base after all that rain, it’s  a joke. I wonder what the all time Sox-Ducks series is at. I think Kenny and I are the only two players who’ve been around for all those games.

We’ve got to keep our momentum going within the division. We’ve already allowed more runs than we did all of last season. We need to reverse this trend. Defense and pitching need to be more consistent. If so, we can play with anybody.

Bad News for the Black Sox

Ducks Win

2012 South Oakland Ducks Baseball, pittsburgh NABA

South Oakland 7, Cranberry 3

Paul Emig (1-o-1) earned his first win as a Duck since 2007, allowing 2 runs over 4 innings, to help South Oakland (1-0, 2-4-2) open divisional play with a  7 – 3 win over Cranberry (0-1, 2-5).

Trailing 2-0 in the top of the fifth, Fetter led off the inning with a double, followed by four singles by Roberts, Emig, Ken Cool, and Gwin to put South Oakland up 3-2. With two out in the inning, Swartwout doubled in Ken Cool to give the Ducks a 4-2 lead.

In the Sixth Fetter singled to lead off the inning, and advanced to third on a wild pitch and a fielder’s choice (not sure in which order, the book is a mess). Fetter would score on an overthrow back to the pitcher.

In the seventh, Ken Cool and Gwin hit back to back singles to start the inning,  Ken Cool scored on Swartwout’s second double of the game, Gwin scored on an rbi groundout by Houseman.

In the bottom of the 6th, TJ Morgan and Houseman teamed up to throw a guy out at third attempting to stretch a double into a triple.

Fetter may have picked up a three-inning save, allowing 1 unearned run in relief. Not sure if that’s possible.

We really needed this one.

South Oakland will face the Black Sox wed night, 9pm at SpringView Field.

Quack

Ducks and the Sopranos

2012 South Oakland Ducks Baseball

I started  watching the Sopranos from the beginning a while back, and i’m on the second to last episode.

The Ducks did so much to add sympathy initially to Tony’s character. Very well done.

South Oakland opens division play at Cranberry, Sunday, 2pm.

quack

Game Time Change

2012 South Oakland Ducks Baseball

Ducks at Express has been moved to 8pm Sunday.

How we respond in this game is going to dictate in a big way how the rest of our season goes. This is as important as a non-division game can be this early in the season.

The Express are tough this year. They played our friends in Imperial real close.

We’ve added some new players who will be there on Sunday night.

We’re either going to battle out of this, make the playoffs and have a run at the title, or we’re going to finish like 5 – 17-2, and most of us will never see each other again.

Quack.