This weekend the Eagles began their Spring 2008 season with the Battle Of The Bats USSSA baseball tournament in Monroe, GA at Criswell Park. They played in the AAA division and swept the tournament winning all four of their games to become tournament champions.
The Eagles were paired up with last year’s 10U Major East Dekalb Orioles (now playing as 11U AAA) in their first pool play game. The Eagles quickly found themselves hitless and down 4-0 after two and a half innings. Then in the bottom of the third inning Brad Weaver broke up the Orioles no-hitter with a single down the left field line. Christopher Schwarzer immediately followed this up with a monstrous double to the left center fence to score Brad and open the flood gates. Many of the Eagles followed suit including a towering two run homer by Robert Rose not to be outdone by Mitch McCain who hit his two run homer smack on top of the outfield fence. Once the inning was over the Eagles had sent 14 batters to the plate and scored 10 runs on 8 hits. This was too much for the Orioles to overcome and they failed to score another run after that. The Eagles went on to win 11-4.
The second pool play game paired the Eagles up with the AA Jack City Dodgers who had beaten the AAA Georgia Doggs earlier that day. This game turned out to be a pitching clinic. Robert Rose and Austin Gonzalez teamed up to throw the Eagles’ first no-hitter of the season. The Dodgers could only send 4 more than the minimum number of batters to the plate and lost the game 11-3.
The two pool play wins earned the Eagles the #1 seed for bracket play meaning they would face the winner of the #4 and #5 seed game (Orioles and Criswell Black Sox respectively). The Black Sox were victorious in their first bracket play game which earned them the right to face the #1 seeded Eagles.
This game began as expected with the Eagles jumping out to a 11-4 lead after three innings. Dane Conner pitched 3 strong innings to hold the large Black Sox team to only 4 runs on 5 hits. Then in the top of the fourth inning with a new Eagles' pitcher on the mound the Black Sox capitalized on some Eagles’ pitching and defensive miscues sending 12 batters to the plate to score 8 runs on 3 hits. This made the score 12-11 in favor of the Black Sox. In the bottom of the fourth the Eagles could only tie the game (12-12) with a single run scored by a catcher error overthrowing the third baseman in an attempted pickoff. Jared Meeks pitched the fifth inning and held the Black Sox to a single run on two hits. The Eagles started their half of the fifth with a fly out to the short stop. Things were not looking good. The Eagles were down 13-12 with 1 out and game time expired (meaning the fifth would be the last inning). Then Jared Meeks came up and got things started. He smacked a rocket to the right center field fence for a standup double. This was followed by a Robert Rose walk and an Austin Stanley single to load the bases. With pressure mounting, Mitch McCain stepped up to the plate and belted a single to right field to tie the game. This caused the Black Sox to make a pitching change to a pitcher who threw his one and only pitch down main street to Brad Weaver who promptly smacked the ball over the left fielder for a walk off game winning single. This 14-13 final placed the Eagles in the championship game against the Georgia Doggs who defeated the Dodgers in their bracket play game earlier that day.
Blake Randall started the championship game as pitcher throwing 4 straight shutout innings while the offense gave him 3 runs of support. The Doggs managed to score a run in the top half of the fifth on two hits. However, the Eagles responded with two more runs of their own in the bottom of the fifth. Dane Conner closed the game coming in the fifth inning with 2 outs. He shut the Doggs down by pitching to the absolute minimum recording 4 straight outs (of which two were strikeouts) on 4 straight batters to complete the fifth and sixth innings. The Eagles prevailed in the championship game by the score of 5-1 to win their first tournament of the season.
