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 first weekly report on our team:
On Thursday, June 3, we had an EBYA League scrimmage. The EBYA is a wood bat league, and we played a mature-looking “16U” team. Looking over at some of the kids on the other bench who drove to the game, they looked older than our assistant coach! One of the kids on the other team graduated from Malvern Prep the day before. Anyway, despite their obvious age advantage, we upset them and won the game. I’m not sure of the final score, but they scored once off of a wild pitch and we scored multiple times in the first few innings. The coach of the other team was definitely giving their pitchers a bigger strike zone and Keith Falcone, our coach, was squeezing our strike zone. I know when I was pitching, I felt that a few of my pitches could have been called strikes, but that is in the past now.
Even though we played better and beat a team of high school students, we do not always act like mature people. During the middle innings of the scrimmage, several of our guys on the bench (Anthony, Sean and I) decided to have some fun and have a catch using our opposite hands. I think Coach Whitman was laughing so hard that he was crying when Anthony tried to do a crow hop. He looked like a newborn horse trying to walk!
All in all, we had a solid scrimmage. All we need to do now is swing the bats a little bit better and be more aggressive at strikes instead of letting them go by, especially first pitch fastballs down the middle. My teammates do it in practice, but in a game they act like Keith never mentioned it, and I am guilty of it, too. I think this will finally be a good, solid team.
Baseball tip of the week: "See the ball, hit the ball" ~ Pete Rose.
Look for more of my Blog reports on our 14U ASBA Summer League season in the coming weeks.
--Pierce Greenleaf
