Hey everyone, my name is Pierce Greenleaf. I play for the 14U All Star Baseball Academy team. I have been playing for ASBA, summer and fall, since I was 11, but we were called the Blue Claws then. I was given the chance to write about our ASBA Downingtown summer team and report about both the serious and funny events of our season.
Here is my sixth weekly report on our summer ASBA team:
Last week, we had 5 games, with contests on Monday, Wednesday, two on Friday, and then a final game on Saturday. Monday and Wednesday we played the EBYA Black team and came through with 2 WINS.
On Monday, the opposing team’s pitcher was struggling and we were able to score 5 runs, but after that it was a pitching duel. The final score was 5-0 and this ended up as one of our few wins in this league. We only played 5 innings though because right before the game started, a thunderstorm came through, so the first pitch was at 6:45.
On Wednesday against the EBYA Black team, we jumped out to an early lead by scoring 6 runs in the first 2 innings, and then never put any real pressure back on. We basically just went through the rest of the game on cruise control. We had one of those trouble-filled innings, but the Black squad didn’t score any runs. The final score was 8-6.
Our tournament at Diamond Nation in NJ started on Friday and our first game was at 1:30, how convenient! We played the Jersey Boyz and they proved to be top-notch competition. Every player on their team was league age 14, but they were definitely all 15. The game wasn’t pretty and they just blew right past us by winning 10-1.
Our second game at 3:30 was against the Full Count Baseball Club. The game was very close the entire time, as we would score a run and then they would. The score was 3-3 entering the bottom of the seventh and everyone could tell we were just tired (did I mention the temperature on the field was 101?), so when they bunted with a runner on second we all looked like chickens with our heads cut off and the throw to first base went sailing into right field and we lost 4-3.
On Saturday, at 8:00a.m., we played the New Jersey Super Team 13u. I think Keith (Coach Falcone) would have killed us if we didn’t win this game! We put the pressure on early and kept it on them the entire game. The finally score was 8-3. The reason we didn’t score that many runs is we had a lot of base running blunders.
