September 26-29

The middle of the new week was uneventful except for Tuesday lunch with Jenny, she and her mother had an appointment in Willow Street that morning. The big news was developing in the southeastern part of the country, specifically in North Carolina for baseball and Florida for weather. Game #1 of the Atlantic League Championship Series was on Tuesday night in High Point, the Barnstormers prevailed in extra innings 6-2. In game #2 on Wednesday the boys rallied from a 6-2 deficit with a seven-run seventh inning, two more in the eighth salted away an 11-6 win and a 2-0 series lead. The series continues on North Prince Street on Friday the 30th with the Stormers needing one win over the final three games for their first league title since 2014. How it all plays out may depend on the weather more than anything else, as the week began a strong storm system was approaching Florida and was expected to track in a northerly direction. They are saying that Friday may be OK but Saturday and Sunday are expected to be more questionable, I guess we'll find out when it arrives. As it stands I'd be absent from the game on Friday (at least at the outset), on Tuesday I had a call from the athletic director at Lancaster Catholic HS. They play at home on Friday and he asked if I'd be available to sub in on the mic. Many will remember that I did the PA there from 1996 to 2017 but over the years there were conflicts with McCaskey that took me away from LCHS. At the end of 2017 it was decided that my substitute (who teaches at LCHS) would take over fulltime since he was actually there more frequently than I was. It was logic that made perfect sense: if your substitute is working more often than the regular guy maybe your substitute should BE the regular guy. The parting was amicable with no hard feelings and I told them to reach out if they ever needed me. That never happened until now and in a way it will feel good to be back if only for one night. Take care, thanks for reading.

September 23-25

Friday night at McCaskey for week #5 of football season. League play began on the 16th and with seven teams in the division this was JPM's bye week, the club hosted Plymouth-Whitemarsh for a non-league game. "P-Dub" (as I was told they call themselves) is from Plymouth Meeting, a northwestern suburb of Philadelphia not far outside the city limits. This was Military Appreciation Night, the Red Tornado wore camouflage-inspired jerseys and a local veterans color guard presented The National Colors in the pregame. Regrettably from there it was all downhill in a big hurry, P-Dub led 24-0 after one quarter and 46-0 at halftime. The entire second half was played under the mercy rule, there was no further scoring because there really wasn't any need. After a 30-24 opening-week win JPM has lost four straight by a total score of 182-28 including two shutouts (both at home), overall they've been outscored by a game average of 41-12. It's frustrating all the way around because the coaches are doing their jobs and the player effort is there, it just seems that the club always makes the crucial mistakes at the most inopportune times and that will just about always spell L-O-S-S. The team plays its next two on the road, they come home on October 14. Saturday was a quiet day except for lunch with Jenny, on Sunday we planned on hockey in Rothsville but the weather had other ideas. There was rain forecast for later in the afternoon but Mother Nature decided to do a #1 in the morning forcing us to postpone for the second time in three weeks. The better news came in late afternoon in Waldorf, Maryland where the Barnstormers won the deciding game of the North Division Championship Series. After losing game #3 on Friday the Stormers rebounded in a big way with a 15-5 win on Saturday, in the Sunday decider they never trailed in a 10-2 series-clincher. The club meets the High Point Rockers (an upset winner over Gastonia in the South Championship) in the League Championship, the first two game are in North Carolina on Tuesday and Wednesday before coming north for the duration on the 30th. Take care, thanks for reading.

September 19-22

The new week started with an uneventful Monday but the next two days (or should I say EVENINGS) were anything but. Tuesday night at the ballpark was Game #1 of the playoff series with the Stormers hosting Southern Maryland. On this night the visiting Blue Crabs took a 1-0 lead in the fifth inning and added a back-breaking insurance run in the ninth. The Stormers got on the board with two out in the bottom half when Shawon Dunston walked and scored on Andretty Cordero's RBI double (which just barely missed being a game-tying home run) but the rally went no further as SM held on for the 2-1 win. Oscar De La Cruz worked into the sixth inning and suffered the tough-luck decision. It was a tightly-played tense ballgame that merely served as a prolog to what we witnessed in Game #2 on Wednesday night. The start was not promising, Southern Maryland scored four runs in the first inning and carried that advantage into the bottom of the seventh. Jacob Barfield's two-run home run made it a 4-2 game but the Crabs scored twice in the eighth to reestablish their four-run lead. In the bottom half Barfield came through again with an RBI hit making it 6-3 but SM got it back in the ninth, entering the bottom of the ninth the Stormers trailed by the same four-run margin they had been battling all night. Base hits by Anthony Peroni and Dunston put two men on base with one out, Cordero's RBI hit scored Peroni to bring the Stormers to within three. Ariel Sandoval batted next and nailed a three-run shot over the picnic tents in right field to tie the game at 7-7 and force extra innings. In the tenth the Crabs had men on first and second with one out, a base hit to center appeared to give them the lead but Sandoval's throw to home retired the lead runner for the second out, the trailing runner was caught between second and third and was tagged out to complete the inning-ending double play, In the home tenth Barfield batted first and flied out to left field, Jake Hoover (not known for the long ball) was next and he sent a drive deep to right and deep into the night for the walkoff game-winning home run. An uproarious celebration broke loose in the stands and at home plate when Hoover met his teammates, as the great MLB broadcaster Jon Miller once said it was "a late-evening middle-of-the-night miracle" (the game ended at 10:47). West Tunnell was the winning pitcher working the tenth inning, starter Brooks Hall went six innings for the no-decision. The 8-7 final squares the best-of-five series at 1-1, it continues in Waldorf on Friday the 23rd. By the time I got home it was almost 11:00, during the regular season there are times I might duck out early but the playoffs are another thing entirely. Take care, thanks for reading.

September 18

At it early on Sunday morning for the opening of the Fall street hockey season at Lions Park in Rothsville, the fourth season since it began in May of 2021. We had planned to start on the 11th but an all-day rain ended that idea before anyone ever left the house. We have the usual setup: four teams playing three games against each opponent. Thirty-five players participated including twenty-seven holdovers and eight new faces, on this day Ephrata beat Hillside and Warwick defeated Township. We started shortly after 10:30 (by popular demand so everybody can be home in time for football on TV at 1:00) and were done by 12:30. I headed back to town and directly to the ballpark, I was walking in just as the Barnstormers were taking the field. Although this wasn't technically The Last Game since the club qualified for playoffs I still made it a point to be there because it is "the last game" if only for the regular season. On this afternoon the Stormers completed the weekend sweep with a 6-1 win over Southern Maryland, consecutive run-scoring doubles by Joseph Carpenter and Jake Hoover plus a Trace Loehr RBI groundout erased an early deficit in the second inning. Team MVP Andretty Cordero went yard onto the berm in left field in the third, the final runs came in the sixth on another Hoover double and a Chris Proctor RBI single. Dominic DiSabatino worked the first four, Bret Clarke went the rest of the way for the decision. The Stomers finish at 73-58 overall (with one game canceled), over in York the Revs clocked out at 56-76. The ALPB North Division Championship Series begins on Tuesday the 20th and on the surface it's a difficult series to handicap. The Blue Crabs were ten games better than the Stormers in the regular season (83-48 overall) but fell off somewhat after a torrid first half. They won the first eleven games against the Stormers during the regular year and led 3-0 in the first inning on July 28 before the game was rained out and ultimately canceled, from that point the Stormers took five of the final six. If momentum means anything the Stormers would appear to have it all on their side but the playoffs are a completely different animal, we'll find out starting on Tuesday night. Take care, thanks for reading.

September 16-17

Back at the ballpark on Friday for the final series of the regular season, the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs were in for a pre-playoffs three-game set. It's always curious when upcoming playoff opponents meet especially when the games are essentially meaningless, the only real attraction is to see how the teams choose to utilize the time in preparation for what really matters later. On Friday the Barnstormers drew first blood with a 5-2 win. A three-run sixth erased a 1-0 deficit, the runs scoring on RBI hits by Jake Hoover and Melvin Mercedes plus an Andretty Cordero sac fly. In the eighth Cordero added a solo home run and a Jacob Barfield RBI single scored the last run, Brooks Hall pitched five innings of one-hit ball for the win. On Saturday the teams were scheduled to make up the July 28 rainout as part of a doubleheader, when the Stormers clinched the second-half pennant and made the playoff matchup official that rainout game was canceled since it wasn't needed. The advertised single game went on as scheduled, on this night it was all Stormers from the proverbial word Go. A five-run first inning started with a Shawon Dunston solo home run, Anderson Feliz's two-run double and a Barfield RBI hit made it 4-0 before Dunston drew a bases-loaded walk for the fifth run. From there the club added four more on solo home runs by Dunston in the fourth, Trayvon Robinson in the fifth, Andretty Cordero in the seventh and Joseph Carpenter (his first as a pro) in the eighth. Cameron Gann went five innings allowing just two base hits and picked the 9-0 win. The series ends on Sunday afternoon, one final tune-up before The Real Series starts on Tuesday.  Take care, thanks for reading.

September 14-15

In baseball there is a tradition called the "hangover game", it's a tendency for teams who clinch a championship to suffer a letdown and play very poorly in their next game. On Wednesday night we saw the Barnstormers' version as the Revolution squared the series with a 9-0 win. A five-run second inning broke it open early, an Elmer Reyes RBI double was followed by Jhon Nunez's two-run single and a J.C. Encarnacion two-run triple. Melky Mesa's RBI groundout in the sixth made it 6-0, three more scored in the ninth on a Reyes groundout and Nellie Rodriguez's two-run home run. The Stormers managed only three hits and never mounted any serious threat. Austin Mora started for the Revs and was the winning pitcher, Bret Clarke made the spot start for the Stormers and took the loss. On Thursday the Stormers turned the tables on the Revs and righted the ship with an 8-2 snapback win. On this night the Stormers put together a four-run first inning, Shawon Dunston started it with a solo home run and Anderson Feliz went yard with two men on. Josue Herrera's RBI double in the second got the Revs on the board but the Home Team got it back in the third on a Melvin Mercedes solo homer. Each team scored a single run in the fourth, Nellie Rodriguez's home run in the top half was equaled by a Chris Proctor sac fly RBI in the bottom half. The game's final two scores came in the bottom of the eighth, Joseph Carpenter's run-scoring double was followed by a Proctor RBI groundout. Nile Ball went six innings for the win, Deyvis Julian went five and took the loss. The season series ends 18-14 in the Stormers' favor and returns the Community Cup east of the river for the first time since 2018, in fifteen seasons each club has won the Cup seven times with one tie. Take care, thanks for reading.

September 12-13

Tuesday night on North Prince Street for the first time in eighteen days, the Barnstormers opened the season's final homestand with a visit from our old friends from York. The Stormers went 10-5 on a very difficult five-city road trip, on this night they found themselves needing one win to clinch the second-half division title. The mere fact that the club was even in this position is nothing short of remarkable. The Stormers' 29-37 first-half mark placed them well behind first-half champ Southern Maryland, just after the second half started both Kelly Dugan and LeDarious Clark were lost to long-term injuries. Colton Shaver and Brooks Hall were signed away to affiliated leagues (both have since returned) and early in August Shawon Dunston was placed on the injured list. Somehow or another the team came together and continued to win, on this night the perseverance was finally rewarded with a division-clinching 10-4 victory. Leading the way was the just-reactivated Shawon Dunston with a home run, two runs scored and three RBI, Andretty Cordero had two doubles, a triple and four RBI. Melvin Mercedes scored three runs and had an RBI, Jake Hoover touched home three times, Trace Loehr and Anderson Feliz each contributed a run-scoring double. The visiting Revolution got solo home runs from Jhon Nunez, Nellie Rodriguez and Melky Mesa, Elmer Reyes had an RBI on an infield groundout. The starting pitchers were of record, Oscar De La Cruz for the Stormers and Ben Herrick for the Revs. The division title is the Stormers' first since 2015 and it is the first postseason appearance since 2018 when they qualified as a wild card entry. The best-of-five division championship series is scheduled to start on Tuesday the 20th, the Stormers host Southern Maryland for the first two games before the scene switches to Waldorf for whatever is needed of the last three. Before that happens there remains the matter of finishing the regular season, the series with the Revolution continues on Wednesday and Thursday. Take care, thanks for reading. 

September 9-11

 Friday night at McCaskey for a second consecutive week, the Red Tornado hosted Cedar Cliff (not to be confused with Cedar Crest). Cedar Cliff is located in Camp Hill, on the west shore of the Susquehanna River about forty miles northwest of Lancaster. In the 1960s and early '70s JPM and CC were yearly opponents in the old Central Penn League, that ended when McCaskey joined the L-L League for football in 1974. The last time the schools met was for the district championship in 1988, JPM lost 20-12 to an undefeated CC squad that featured future pro player Kyle Brady. On this night at McCaskey there was precious little for the home fans to cheer about, JPM lost 44-0 in a game that reached mercy rule early in the third quarter. The club had three legitimate scoring chances, there were two missed field goal tries and a potential touchdown pass was dropped in the end zone in the fourth quarter. On the other side of the line Cedar Cliff did almost anything they wanted to do and the defense had no answers. Divisional play (or "league" play as the League calls it) starts on the 16th on the road, the next home game is on the 23rd. On Saturday we were up and at it early for the 48-mile drive into northeastern Berks County, the Golden Bears of Kutztown University opened their home season with a visit from California University Of Pennsylvania. California is located in the western end of the state about thirty-five miles south of Pittsburgh, on this day they gave the Bears all they could handle but KU rallied for a tough 24-19 win. As it stands I'll be back in Kutztown twice more in October on the 8th and 22nd. Rain moved into the area overnight into Sunday and stayed around all day. We had planned on starting the fall street hockey season in Rothsville but the weather gave us no choice but to postpone, we'll try it again on the 18th. Take care, thanks for reading. 

September 5-8

Rain moved into the area on Labor Day and forced postponement of the ballgame in York, the makeup was scheduled for Wednesday as part of a doubleheader. The rainy conditions stuck around on Tuesday and Wednesday, somehow they managed to get all the games played in spite of the weather. On Thursday the rain was gone and the sun was out, it was a much more pleasant evening for my final visit west in 2022. The Revolution was hosting the Long Island Ducks in the final game of the four-game set looking for a series split. The visitors took a 2-0 lead in the first, the Revolution tied it in the bottom half on a two-run single by Melky Mesa. In the second a base hit by Yefri Perez and two walks loaded the bases, Troy Stokes' sac fly scored Perez with the lead run. Long Island batted around in the third scoring six runs to go up 8-3. Solo home runs from Stokes and J.C. Encarnacion in the fourth brought the Revs to within three, Josue Herrera's two-run shot in the fifth made it an 8-7 game. In the seventh the Ducks batted around for the second time and added three to go up 11-7, the Revs got one one back in the eighth when Stokes doubled and came home on a Lenin Rodriguez sac fly. Two runs in the ninth for Long Island brought the final to 13-8, Josh Norwood started for the Revolution and took the decision. This was in all likelihood my last time in York for the season but we're not done with the Revs just yet, they come east for a series on North Prince Street starting on Tuesday the 14th. Take care, thanks for reading. 

September 1-4

Friday night, Labor Day weekend: at McCaskey for the start of my 35th year on the mic for JPM football. I couldn't help but be reminded how I once worked elsewhere for thirty-five years at a professional (albeit minor league) level before it was ruined by ego and arrogance. That was a seventy-game season in the summer as opposed to a five-game high school season but the difference is that at McCaskey my efforts have always been appreciated and never taken for granted. The Red Tornado began its season with a win on the road on August 27, on this night Elizabethtown visited for a non-league game (interesting terminology: games against divisional opponents are called "league" games, those against non-divisional opposition are "non-league" even if the team is actually a member of The League itself. The L-L League has thirty-seven teams for football, there are five divisions aligned by enrollment and E-Town is in what is creatively called "Section III"). Ben Thompson is back for his second year as head coach looking to improve on the team's 2-8 record in 2021 but this night showed that there is still a lot of work to do, E-Town led early 14-0 and was never seriously challenged enroute to a 50-21 decision. JPM scored twice on carries by Josh Monzon (three yards) and Andres Rivera (one yard), Quimeak Talton returned a kickoff for a 73-yard TD and placekicker Liam Cox went three-for-three in the extra-point department. Offensively there were some good signs but the defense struggled badly all night long, E-Town did just about anything they wanted. The club stays at home for week #3 and a date with Cedar Cliff, a true "non-league" opponent from the Harrisburg-area. Take care, thanks for reading.