April 3-4

Monday morning lunch at the mall, in the afternoon I made my season debut on the mic for baseball at McCaskey. For several years the PA was done by various faculty members because it was a job I couldn't readily commit to but things are different these days, 2017 marks my second season on the beat. The ballclub had played one home game previously that I missed for hockey, on this day they hosted Hempfield in a divisional matchup. In recent seasons JPM has struggled and Hempfield has been one of the league's better programs, that was on display in full force in the form of a 19-4 Hempfield win. The game was halted by the mercy rule after five innings, Hempfield's score by innings was 2-1-6-4-6. The Red Tornado got on the board with two in the second inning, Michael Abrew's base hit scored Luis Civico and Chris Rosario touched home on a sac fly from Alexander Dominguez. The club scored twice more in the fifth, Mason Lee singled and scored on Dylan Esh's RBI groundout, Caleb McFarland was hit by the pitch and came home on a bases-loaded walk drawn by Cristian Viera. Noah Bergey started on the mound and took the loss, he was followed by Jon Metzler and Victor Bray with Dominguez, Abrew, Civico and Rosario working in relief as well. There are very stringent rules in high school baseball regarding pitch counts and overuse of pitching, every coach needs several men who are capable of taking the mound and JPM boss Tyler Horst is no exception. The ballclub is scheduled for home games on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning but the long-range weather forecast is not encouraging, we will see what we will see. On Tuesday Jenny was in town for the first time in several weeks, we had lunch together at the plaza. In the evening we had our organizational meeting for the Spring street hockey season at Reservoir Park. We plan to start on the 17th if all goes according to plan. Take care, thanks for reading.