08/14/2024
Well, it was an unusual end to the season, to say the least. For the first time in the 15 years I've been involved in the league, we were unable to field a full playoff schedule of 4 teams.
Ice Cold Pitchers ran into some last minute scheduling issues and couldn't field a team. They knew for certain around noon on Sunday, which prompted a frantic series of calls, texts and emails by me to the Zander manager, Frank Acker. After 3 hours of trying, Frank gave up on getting his team together and so we had a most unusual situation.
Based upon their #1 seed, Kurniki's got a walkover to the championship game (marked as a forfeit in the playoff schedule, with Kurniki's "winning" 7-0 over ICP). The first game was the HPC Hawks hosting LaGrotta Wine Bar, with Hawks prevailing a close one, 11-10 by scoring 4 runs in the 7th inning to advance to the championship game.
The championship game wasn't close, with the Hawks prevailing 14-1. It was definitely not how Ben and I envisioned the playoff schedule, as we had planned to have the #1 seed play the second semifinal game and be warm, while the winner of the #2- #3 game would sit for an hour. Instead Kurniki's had to play cold and Hawks prevailed. To be fair, both teams started out slow, as the score was 1-0 going into the 3rd inning. Pictures of the championship and runner-up teams with their trophies are attached - thank you Terry Riss.
We also had 2 full rainouts so we only played 8 games instead of 10.
The season was better in one respect, in that the ball we switched to this year was a better fit for our league and diamond. We'll try to stick with the same ball next year. I've cleaned out our stuff, and will notify the Town next. We still have 2 full bags of Diamond Dry in the shed which we can use next year as needed.
Thanks to Terry and Dave for doing a bangup job in blue, and thanks to all the managers who were almost always very responsive to our emails and texts. The Town did a great job with the field so kudos to Scott Ballweg and your crew.
We'll try to schedule the managers meeting a bit earlier if we can, although that may fall to Ben as the high school I coach basketball at made it all the way to the championship game at the Kohl Center this past year, which meant I was VERY tied up until mid-March. Have a great offseason, find some sports to keep your hamstrings and arms in shape, and we'll be talking to you all late winter 2025.
