ft bronc

LO fricking L! I was picking 'em out of my forearm on the way home! Real nice facilities though.

I've got to believe that budgetary constraints play some role in NKY teams not traveling downstate more often?

Final JV score was actually 11-10. Kenny Ball pitched the first 5 effectively, keeping the Scott hitters off balance with his usual repertoire of off-speed pitches mixed in with well located fast balls. Joseph Martin pitched the 6th, giving up no runs if memory serves correctly, and the score was 11-4 entering the bottom of the seventh. That's where things got a little dicey. Martin struggled hitting the mitt, and a few runs scored. Luke Hennigan eventually took the mound for, I believe, the first time in his HS career, pitched pretty well, and eventually got the 3rd out, but not until the score had reached 11-10. Weird ending to a game the JV Birds had really dominated. The JV Birds continue to hit the ball well, with nice shots by too many kids to mention. Keep it up against Holmes tonight!

Sorry if I totally missed this, but is Cov Cath adding lights to their baseball field? Are they already in place & I've been smoking crack?

The JV Birds have been impressive lately also, winning 5 of their last 6 with the loss coming against Cinti St. X - a game the Birds lead for the majority of the time & could have won with one or two fewer walks. JV Birds are playing with some swag, and are a fun team to watch. Put the current varsity sophs & frosh down on JV and you really have a solid club.

Last Friday I was also surprised how dry & hard the Dixie field was. Facility sure is nice, but playing surface could stand a little TLC.

Quite a few kids have moved back & forth to varsity, and a few back & forth to frosh, but in no particular order, here are kids I'm aware of who have played jv this year: Vennenman, Gesenhues, Noe, Martin, Buten, Murray, Blesser, Tippenhauer, Ruehl, Ramey, Mills, Ball, Jones, Whitford, Hennigan (predominately varsity), Vermeil & Hergott. Sorry to any I've missed.

JV Birds jumped up early & never looked back. Vermeil pitched all five effectively, working ahead in the counts and bringing the hook for strikes, giving up 1 run on (I believe) 1 hit, 2 walks & a decent quantity of KO's (disclaimer - family connection). The boys continue to hit the ball well both early & late in the counts - Venneman (among others) with a couple nice shots - and were pretty solid in the field, with Blesser making a couple nice grabs getting the start at short. JV Birds will get some good tests the rest of this week, going to SK today, and hosting NCC & Cov Cath Thurs & Fri. Keep it up boys!

I noticed that Cov Cath has 5 pitchers in the area top 50. Is their staff really that good, or is it partially due to data collection (maybe not all area schools reporting stats, etc.)?

I can't speak to the Frosh game, but the JV game was very good. Martin pitched the first 5 or so innings very effectively, and the Birds were on top for the majority of that time. The JV Birds hit the ball very well all night long, including in the bottom of the 8th after X had gone up by a few in the top of the frame. Unfortunately, just couldn't get enough across & left the bases loaded to end the game. It was my first time at a JV game this season, and I was very impressed with the team overall. As a group the kids hit the ball very well, play good defense, and seem to have a little swagger going. They were not intimidated by the physically much larger X squad, and kept fighting right up to the end. Keep it up boys! :thumb:

TOG - You're exactly right. ABC2 gets it also, whether he admits it or not.

If he does play QB at NCC, it will be interesting to see how his success compares to AZ. I lived a handful of miles from Gilbert HS for three years, and the level of play out there is not what it is here, IMO. There's some good schools out there (Chandler Hamilton, Scottsdale Chaparral), but generally what I saw was not on the level of the better NKY or Cinti schools. Funny factoid: at Gilbert HS, most likely he played Highland HS (also of Gilbert).

It was actually a nice night at the plate for a lot of the Birds. A real good team win. Unfortunately, the Birds lost soph 2nd baseman and pitcher Evan Allen for a couple weeks with a fractured growth plate in his right ankle. Real tough timing for Evan as the team leaves for Myrtle Beach & the Cal Ripken Experience on Monday. Heal up well young man. The team will need you down the stretch!

Jake Bauman's a nice player. Will he see any time behind the dish?

TOG - Sorry for potential hijacking, but can you give an update on Isler at UC? Hard to tell much from just the stats line.

Don't know that they've actually been labeled as such, but it's probably a good guess.

A couple impressions: 1) A movement of hitter's spray charts away from their pull side towards their opposite side. The ball doesn't appear to spend as much time on the bat as before, so it seems to be harder for the kids to pull the ball. 2) A definite reduction in HR's by average size & strength players. The only HR's I've seen so far have been by physically very large players. I've seen a couple instances where average size kids put very good swings right on the screws that would have easily been out last year, but fell 10 yards short this year. Kids of average size and strength will have/are having a much more difficult time hitting it out IMO.

I'd be interested in hearing which brand and models these were. BBCOR does not mandate a common construction method, so there should be no reason all BBCOR rated bats are breaking. Logically speaking, it should be a design, manufacturing or durability related issue with one or more manufacturer or model, and not something directly attributable to the BBCOR rating itself.

Amen brudder! It will be stocked and running, assuming the thunder showers hold off of course.

This post so exaggerates my position, I'm not sure where to start. Did I say this? I simply stated that HS kids should not be CUT in favor of MS kids. If a HS kid is cut in favor of a more deserving HS kid, I have absolutely no problem with that. Such is life. He is good enough to deserve it. He's better than enough kids from HIS school to make the team. Unfortunately for him, kids from OTHER schools are better & have been brought in to supersede him. Please show me where from my post I said anything even remotely related to this. And the "typical" 8th grader is not ready to play HS sports either. Some are - they are untypical. There are plenty of untypical academic MS types who are more than capable of taking certain HS AP courses, and if they do, great for them. If the HS "cuts" a HS kid from an AP course in favor of a MS kid, shame on them. The MS kid will have his chance to take that class in a few years. The HS kid may never have another chance. "Whatever it needed"? Are you sure? Would the district "cut" a HS kid from that class to make room for the MS student? I have never heard of such a thing, but if it happened to my kid I would scream bloody murder to the Principal and the school board. Add the MS kid to the class, I think that's great. Cut a HS kid to make room for him, no way. Duh. Look, my son played Frosh baseball as an 8th grader. The school did not have enough HS kids to fill the roster, and I had, and still have, no problem with him playing. Had the school had enough HS kids, however, it would have been a different matter, for me at least.

Look at it this way, most high school AP classes have limited space. Do we ever bring extremely smart middle schoolers into those classrooms in lieu of high school kids who would have otherwise been selected? NEVER. Why not? Because we'd be robbing those high school kids of the opportunity to learn the things taught in that class. The middle school kid will have the opportunity to learn those things when he/she gets to the high school. Why should sports be any different? Be careful. High school sports do not exist to prepare athletes for college athletics. Nor do they exist as a source of entertainment for the community. They exist to provide additional educational opportunities for those students at the school.

What about the Soph with the game winning hit tonight, or the soph that laid down the two strike sac bunt to put the runner in position to score? Or the two of the handful of Jrs who combined for 8 innings, 14 SO's and 1 run? This team is better than a lot of people give them credit for. They're young. They will take some lumps. But they will also surprise some teams who overlook them.

Keep your pants on. Plenty of baseball to come.

Personally, I see interracial marriage as sort of the last frontier of race relations in this country. There's no greater acceptance than to take another human being into your family, and the frequency with which families are now taking people of other races into their families bodes well for our society. 20 years ago when you talked interracial marriage, generally you meant a black man and a white woman. Why? Because women tend to be more open minded & less racist. But now days, I see more and more marriages of white men and black women, of all economic levels. There will always be racism, coming from all sides, going in all directions. It's important that we continue to work against it, but it's also important that we understand it will always exist. Why is it important to recognize that racism will always exist? Three reasons IMO: 1) so that we don't let the existence of it keep ourselves from appreciating the progress we've made, 2) we don't overreact to what will always exist no matter how much we fight against it, and 3) to remind us of the base tendencies we as humans can fall back on if we don't pay attention to our thoughts and actions.

Heck pitched the first inning, and Lester the second. Heck showed a nice increase in velocity from last season.