After an opening weekend rainout to start the month of March, the SoCal ASA got their season started Saturday under sunny skies at De Muth Park in Palm Springs. The league has been revamped substantially, with a half dozen of the top “C” teams from 2005 bumped up to the “A/B” division.
Click here for Saturday’s Scoreboard from the Round Robin portion of the tournament.
With most of the pre-season talk focused on veteran ballplayers being added to roster or moving from one team to the other, it was youth that was served on Saturday, as the Young Bucks went 3-1 and grabbed the top seed and first round bye for Sunday’s single elimination bracket. Of course, it didn’t hurt the talented Santa Barbara squad to have a veteran Buck on the mound, in the form of manager Clyde Bennett’s son Mark Bennett, who pitched in 3 of the Bucks 4 games, enroute to a 3-1 record Saturday. The Santa Barbara Young Bucks, whch finished 2nd in last year’s 23 and under Nationals, was the only team to notch 3 wins in 4 round robin games Saturday. The Young Bucks top seed earned them a first round bye while the other 6 teams slug it out Sunday morning in single elimination bracket play.
Mark Bennett would be the first to concede that, having passed his 40th birthday, he no longer qualifies as a “young” buck. But with their regular ace, Anthony Martinez pitching for his regular season team, the Amigos, the Young Bucks were happy to have the dominant veteran starter in the circle. Mark is a member of the 2006 ISC level CR/Portland team, expected to play in Kitchener, Ontario Canada in August. He is no stranger to ISC World Tournament competition, having been the mainstay for the Santa Barbara Bucks, at a number of world tournaments, and was the face of the team to many So Cal fans. At 6’8″, he casts an imposing figure on the diamond, and showed Saturday that he can still dominate a game.
The Young Bucks dropped their nightcap (and starting at 11:30pm, I do mean nightcap), a 6-5 thriller to San Diego Primetime, in which the “kids” rallied to tie the game at 5 before Primetime scored the game winner in the 7th.
Five of the seven teams finished the day with 2-2, while the highest ranked team entering the day, the Savala Rounders fell to 1-3 with a late night loss to the Amigos. The Rounders were tabbed as the #6 team in California, but were without a number of starters, including two members of their new pitching staff, Russ Snow and Matt Barnes. Newcomer/veteran lefty ace Cary Weiler pitched well in his start, a 5-3 win over the Black Sox, and showed fans and players alike why he carries the moniker “the Hammer”, driving a triple to the deepest reaches of the ballpark and also singling as the DH in the nightcap. Weiler starred for the original Vista Bombers in the 1970’s, the Long Beach Nitehawks in the 1980’s, reprise of the Vista Bombers in the 1990’s, and teamed up with the late Peter Brown on a number of 45 and 50+ National champions. The Rounders dropped a couple of close ones, 3-2 to San Diego Primetime and 4-3 to the Young Bucks, before their 8-2 late night loss to the Amigos.
The other top 10 ranked team in the tournament, Rude Pac (#9) had mixed results as they unveiled their new look roster after a merger with RAW. They started the day withe a 3-2 win over the Amigos, followed by a 6-4 win over San Diego Primetime, but fell to the Young Bucks in a 9-7 slugfest, and falling to the Panteras 6-4 to close out the day.
The Long Beach Black Sox also won their first two games of the day, a 4-3 win over the Panteras, and a 10-0 rout of the Amigos, before dropping the next two, 5-3 to Cary Weiler and the Rounders, and a 4-0 shutout at the hands of Mark Bennett and the Young Bucks. Black Sox third baseman Todd Budke homered on the first pitch of his first at bat of the first game of the day, and later tripled off the top of the fence in a later game. The Sox new second baseman, young 25 year old Chris Martinez (brother of Sox shortstop Andy Martinez) turned heads with a series of outstanding plays throughout the day. The Martinez-to-Martinez tandem up the middle give the Sox one of the best doule-play combos in the league. The Black Sox grabbed the #2 seed under the tie-breaker formula, surrendering the fewest runs among the 5 teams with 2-2 records, behind starters Chuck Vranich and Randy Clay and reliever David Bell.
The revamped divisions made for very competitive play on Saturday, with 10 of the 14 games decided by 2 runs or less.
* Please note these results are unofficial- refer to the league results for the official results and schedule for Sunday *
The results and seeds for Sunday’s single elimination bracket play:
1. Young Bucks, 3-1
2. Black Sox, 2-2, 12 runs allowed
3. Panteras, 2-2, 15 runs allowed, 19 runs scored
4. San Diego Primetime, 2-2, 15 runs allowed, 14 runs scored
5. Amigos, 2-2, 16 runs allowed (6 over 3 games, 10 in one)
6. Rude Pac, 2-2, 21 runs allowed
7. Savala Painters, 1-3
Sunday schedule:
8am #4 San Diego v. #5 Amigos
9;45am, #2 Black Sox v. #7 Savala Rounders
11:30am #3 Panteras v. #6 Rude Pack
11:30am #1 Young Bucks vs. Winner of 4 v. 5 (San Diego or Amigos)
1:15pm winner of 2 v. (Black Sox or Rounders vs. winer of 3 v. 6, Primetime or Rude Pac
3pm CHAMPIONSHIP GAME
Call it a loan: Mark Bennett, of CR/Portland pitching for the Young Bucks; Ron Rupp of the LB Snakes, and Jesse Duncan of Team Rainey, pitching for the Panteras; Gerald Pyle of A-1 Tank, pitched and hit for San Diego Primetime. (Pyle homered over the right centerfield fence on diamond 6, no easy feat); Todd Budke of the Farm, playing for the Black Sox.
New uniforms for many, including Lou Enriquez, Gordy Marks, Scott Lecker, and Cary Weiler (to the Savala Rounders); David Bell (to the Black Sox); Dan Plesetz (to San Diego Primetime); RAW players (to Rude Pac) : Doug Rooney, Scott Pulsifer, Mark Barstead, and Jeremy Rooney; Johnny Rodriguez (to Panteras).