Michigan Militia

Gameday 20: Ducks at Pour House

2013 South Oakland Ducks Baseball

South Oakland Ducks (7-12)

at

Pour House Pirates (7-10)

9:30AM

Hershel Park

The last time we played the Pirates we were pulling guys off the street to play, and we still put up 10 runs before an epic collapse in the top of the seventh in which Pour House scored nine unanswered and went on to beat us 14-10.

It would be nice if West End got nine together on Friday to at least force Pour House to use up some pitching. They play three games in four days and are one game ahead of us in the standings. This weekend is huge for playoff implications as we get down to the wire. We have almost all our starters available Saturday morning, so we don’t have any excuses if we can’t hold them under 14 runs.

Jesse Ferko is playing third.

Bad News for the Pirates

Ducks Sweep Bulldogs: 7-5, 10-1

2013 South Oakland Ducks Baseball, Ducks win, South Oakland Ducks Baseball

Ducks Pitcher, Mark Guthrie, earned his first victory of the season Saturday going five and a third strong innings, before giving way to James Fago to recorded the 1 and 2/3 inning save.

Matt Johnston had 4 hits to lead the resurgent Ducks’ offense. Stahl and Skovron both hit doubles and had multi-hit games, and there were a lot of singles and walks. Goering drove in a run. 8 Ducks starters recorded hits, and everyone in the lineup reached safely at least once. I wish I could offer more specifics, but i don’t have the book and I was half asleep during the game. We got out to an early lead and held on. The Bulldogs had the winning run at the plate in the bottom of the 7th.

James Fago pitched a complete game for the victory in game 2. South Oakland scored 2 in the top of the first. The Bulldogs answered with a run in the bottom half of the inning. The score remained 2-1 until the top of the fifth or sixth, when South Oakland scored six runs. Skovron and Fago walked, Gwin singled to load the bases and Matt Limbach doubled to make the score 4-1. Then Guthrie, Fetter and Goering singled in succession. Garret Moore drove in a run with an rbi ground out. Fago doubled in the top of the seventh and scored on an rbi ground out by Limbach.

The Bulldogs were 10-2 coming into the double header. With the victories, South Oakland raised it’s record to 6-11, and is a half game behind  Monroeville (5-9) and Carrick (6-10) who sit in 8th and 7th place respectively.

After a 1-9 start, the Ducks have won 5 of  7.

quack, quack.

Standings, Playoff Push, etc

2013 South Oakland Ducks Baseball

South Oakland has a tough 3-game stretch coming up in which we play the artists formerly known as Day Toyota, and then a double header against the Bulldogs at John Herb the following weekend.

Standings as of 6/3:

Screen Shot 2013-06-03 at 12.59.21 PM

Upcoming games:

Screen Shot 2013-06-03 at 1.04.48 PM

(click to enlarge or just go to the league site.)

There is some serious separation going on here between the haves and have-nots.

It’s going to be a shit show at the bottom of the bracket. Conceivably we could see the militia, Carrick and pour house drop a few games coming up.

right now, Elliot, Clinton, the Bulldogs and Ashley Shaffer are battling for position in the top four and then it’s everyone else.

Elliot is good.

Cranberry sucks.

that’s my expert analysis.

Unfortunately our team is constructed as such that we can lose 15-1 to teams that suck because we lack pitching depth and infield depth, and sometimes our players don’t show up.

The winable  games we dropped to Carrick, Pour House and Cranberry and the forfeit to the Militia really hurt right now, but at least we’re finally putting up runs and winning games.

We have to steal a couple against teams that are above us in the standings, which is almost everyone.

We might be able to jump in the standings before we play this sunday.

We need all hands on deck Sunday. Jefferson Davis Hills is good. If we have to throw out a patchwork lineup with random single A players we will get embarrassed.

We can give them a game if everyone shows up.

This is most likely the last season of the Ducks as a Double A team, we at least need to make the playoffs and give it one final run.

quack.

Look at all those Ducks!

2013 South Oakland Ducks Baseball

South Oakland looks to turn its season around with a stretch of four games in four days starting this Thursday night in Brookline.

Upcoming Schedule:

Thurs 9pm vs. Black Sox at Brookline
Sat 1pm Doubleheader at Cranberry
Sun 12:30pm vs. Militia at Woodland Hills HS

quack

Game Day 6: Ducks vs. Bulldogs

2013 South Oakland Ducks Baseball

South Oakland Ducks (1-4)

vs

Pittsburgh Bulldogs (4-0)

9pm

SpringView Field

South Oakland returns to the Duck Pond looking to end a 2-game losing streak against the first place Bulldogs.

The Bulldogs are coming off an 8-4 win against Cranberry, in which Jeff Trojan’s mustache was named player of the game after intimidating Cranberry’s coach into several questionable in-game decisions including an ill-advised double switch that left them without a left fielder for two innings.

The Ducks are still learning the names of all their teammates.

We have rostered players, still away at school, who haven’t taken the field for us yet. This makes it hard to get a good read on where we stand depth wise, but isn’t an excuse for a pretty poor start.

Plenty of teams are missing guys this time of year.

We need to string a few wins together. No better place to start than against a top-tier opponent.

Let’s turn it around tonight.

Rumor has it, Jesse Ferko will make an appearance for South Oakland.

Baconator’s on the hill.

Bad News for the Bulldogs.

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

Game Day 14: Ducks vs Elliot

2012 South Oakland Ducks Baseball

South Oakland Ducks of the North Side

vs

Elliot

9pm

SpringView Field

Elliot (9-2, 4-0) is separating itself from the rest of the Allegheny Division and has the best record in the league. The Ducks are looking to avenge an opening day 7-1 loss to Elliot.

This league has a very high percentage of teams not ending in ‘s.’ – elliot, militia, cranberry, black sox, cherokee. Five out of eight in the AA division. However, in the A division all of the teams do in fact end in ‘s.’ interesting. The Chris Wojton-led Devils won 24 to 9 over the weekend. That game couldn’t have been fun for anyone, certainly not the umpires. I can’t imagine how big the strike zone must have been in the fourth or fifth inning.

The Black Sox dropped three straight to Ken Cool’s brother’s team this weekend (with a ruling on a rain-shortened game pending).

It’s like someone died in Brookline.

I don’t think anyone would have  thought Cranberry and the Black Sox would be battling it out for a playoff spot.

There’s a lot of baseball left, but at 5-1 halfway through our divisional schedule the Ducks are in a good spot.

We’ve had different guys come up big in key situations, and the pitching has improved greatly.

We still haven’t played our best baseball yet.

South Oakland and Elliot both have division games coming up on Wed. We’ll see how this plays out tonight.

Bad News for Elliot

The Games Will Matter Soon….

2012 South Oakland Ducks Baseball

South Oakland of the North Side will open divisional play on the road against a much improved Cranberry team Sunday 5/13 somewhere in Cranberry,

followed by the Black Sox at home on the 16th.

Until then, we play the Bulldogs Wed at 9pm at home,  the Express Saturday night at 8PM and the Militia at home on the 9th.

That’s three games to get our shit together.

Mark your calendars….

Week 5 FTLL Sat 5/19/12 1:00 PM 3:30 PM AA30 CHE DUX
Week 5 FTLL Sat 5/19/12 3:30 PM 6:00 PM AA31 CHE DUX

Quack

Game Day 4/5: Ducks at Militia

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

South Oakland Ducks of the North Side

at

Monroeville Militia

Sunday, April 29th

10:00AM & 12:30PM

Woodland Hills High School

(Former Gray Bats mgr. Larry Z.)

The Militia are primarily a combination of two storied PGH NABA Franchises: The Gray Bats, and the Original Rebels – The Rebels formed when the Black Sox split in ’07.

A handful of Militia players also played for the old Knights/Orioles franchise, their Manager, PGH NABA Legend John Tremel played on the Warriors for a season, their best player of all time, Jeremy Barchie, was a Duck for half a season. They also have a Hurricane defector from last season, and a player from the old Phantoms.

Kenny Powers says fuck the Rebels.

  • Aside from the Kenny Power’s Black Sox, and Craig Boley’s Warriors none of those other teams exist anymore – the Gray Bats went out in a flutter after one season.
  • While the Sox and Warriors are two of the Original 3 teams still in existence, they existed in 2003 as the Stampeders and Piranhas – respectively. (The Ducks, Maulers and Arthropods also played in ’03. Yeah, we had a team called the Arthropods in our league, once.)
  • The South Oakland Ducks is the only franchise that’s been around since 2003 with the same name. We just won’t die.
  • We’ve absorbed players from the ’08, and ’09 Championship teams (OwlzZzzz, Hurricanes) and still have a core of hold overs from our Championship team of 2010 (when we beat the Militia to advance to the championship) , and our team that reached the 2011 Finals.
  • The  ’07, ’08 and ’09 Champions have all folded. That’s odd. You’d think winning a title would make a guys want to stay together and build on that success. Additionally the ’06 and ’07 runner ups (Colonials and Matadors) have folded.
  • Gone are the Oilers and Sharks.
  • Guthrie and Fago played on the old Knights at one point, so on Sunday we have multiple grudge matches of former teammates.
  • We should all be proud to wear Green this season (preferably green, but whatever color you have is fine since our uni’s aren’t in yet).
  • Pending weather, the Cherokee, and Black Sox open up today – it’ll be interesting to see how they fare.
  • If I had a choice to have Fago up with the bases loaded, down by 2 runs in the bottom of the seventh every game, I’d take it.
  • Ken Cool and several other Ducks will make their 2012 debut on Sunday
  • No idea how or why this blog post degenerated into this.

Our team is full of players who know how to win.We’re coming together, but we need to go on a run (one game at a time, obviously).

Let’s get two on Sunday and get some momentum going before we get into league play next weekend.

The Michigan Militia and other extremist groups operate under principles formed by the misinterpretation of pieces of our Constitution that have been taken out of context.  They think they know what’s best for our country.

But Captain America knows better, and he’s on our side.

Bad News for the Militia

Chris Wojton Sighting and REBELS Watch 2012!!! #2

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

Apparently, former duck standout chris wojton is on the devils in the A Division, and they also have an odd looking website for their team, which is available on the league page, and is not hyperlinked.

that team should have been forced to move up after winning the title last season, or, better yet, done so willingly…

Whatever, I  just want to make use of this photoshop  (hopefully it winds up on their team site)

***

The Shaler Rebels crushed the Senators 8-1 on Wed.

here are the Rebels Stats from the victory.

They have there shit together up there, roster on the league site and stats entered. Someone’s running a tight ship.

South Oakland will take on the Militia in a Sunday doubleheader at Woodland Hills High School starting at 10:00 AM

I expect a battle.

Before the last Ducks/Bulldogs game, fortunately with the advantage of the high ground above SpringView Field, I watched the Militia practice, and they appear to be in midseason form.

Here is an obligatory Militia youtube clip.

The Militia hope to compensate for the loss of Jeremy Barchie with a catcher who looks like he can throw, and not get tossed from games or make his teammates fear for their own lives and the lives of those around them.

They’ll be tough, but losing a talent like Barchie took the Ducks almost 3 season to overcome, and I expect the Militia to have some chemistry issues as a result.

Barchie still holds the Ducks single-game strikeout record with 17.

 Can’t wait to play two on the turf Sunday.

Quack.