May 21-22

Monday lunch at the mall, in the afternoon we were at McCaskey for district playoff baseball. The Red Tornado finished the regular season at 12-8 and qualified for the tournament for the first time since 2013. Ten teams qualify with the top six receiving byes into the quarterfinals, the #7 and #8 seeds host the prelim round. On this day Chambersburg (#9 seed) made the 80-mile trip east from Franklin County, they were 11-8 during the regular season so it figured to be a relatively even matchup. That was very much the case as the teams battled through seven innings of regulation play with no runs scored on either side. Somewhere along the way McCaskey home games requiring extra innings must have become the law of the land, this was the fifth home game in the last six to need overtime. In the JPM eighth Caleb McFarland drew a walk and stole second, after the next two batters were retired Alex Dominguez came to the plate and sent the first pitch he saw over the left-field fence. Alex made absolutely no mistake and he crushed it, as the expression goes "that ball would have left any park in the country including Yellowstone". The stunning 2-0 walkoff win puts the club into the quarterfinals against the #1 seed on their field, that game is on Thursday the 24th. Dominguez's heroics at the plate also made him the winning pitcher, he worked the eighth inning on the mound in relief of starter Dylan Esh. The program has come long way since a one-win season in 2016 and they lose only four seniors so the future looks good. The game was over around 6:45, I went straight to the rink where we had a full night going. The Draft Division played its two regularly-scheduled games, there were also two Club Division makeups from the 15th. Draft winners were Red over Gold via OT shootout and Green over White, the Club games saw the Misfits over the Pub Dawgs and the Riot over the Hammerheads. On Tuesday we had another round of morning/early afternoon rain, as the day progressed it moved on and the evening hours looked good so we went as scheduled at the rink. Red beat White in the Draft game, Club winners included the King over the Misfits in OT shootout, the Riot over the Pub Dawgs and the Hammerheads over the Owls. Take care, thanks for reading.