Elkins Baseball Blog

CHICAGO — Manny Ramirez and Joe Torre brought their winning postseason ways to the Los Angeles Dodgers — and Wrigley Field.

James Loney hit a go-ahead grand slam off a wild Ryan Dempster, Ramirez and Russell Martin homered and the new-look Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs 7-2 in their NL playoff opener Wednesday night.

The Cubs entered the postseason with the best record in league, hoping for a fast start 100 years after their last World Series championship.

But Ramirez and Torre, winners of six World Series crowns in the AL, wound up on top in their first playoff game together. Ramirez’s homer was his 25th in the postseason, extending his own record.

“We get a sense of what he’s been doing all these years,” Loney said.

It was a good omen for the Dodgers. The last time they started a postseason series with a victory was 1988 — the Kirk Gibson game in the World Series.

The Cubs will try to get even in Game 2 on Thursday night when they send mercurial right-hander Carlos Zambrano against Chad Billingsley.

“Let’s hope we get better,” Cubs manager Lou Piniella said. “Let’s put this one behind us and go get them tomorrow.”

Torre made his 13th straight postseason managerial appearance — the previous 12 were with the Yankees — and extended his record for postseason wins to 77 in a matchup with Piniella, another veteran skipper.

The Cubs took a 2-0 lead on Mark DeRosa’s homer in the second inning off Derek Lowe, but the Dodgers rebounded against Dempster, who had trouble finding the strike zone all night.

Dempster walked the bases loaded in the fifth, and Loney delivered for the Dodgers.

After swinging and missing the first two pitches, he sent a 1-2 pitch over the wall in center for the grand slam that gave the Dodgers a 4-2 lead and silenced a Wrigley Field crowd that was cheering loudly for Dempster to get out of the jam he created.

“Invariably, when you keep putting people on, they’re going to score, and they scored there quickly with that grand slam,” Piniella said.

When Matt Kemp followed with a double, Piniella had seen enough and brought in Sean Marshall from the bullpen. Marshall gave up Ramirez’s solo shot in the seventh that made it 5-2.

The Dodgers padded the lead in the eighth when Blake DeWitt doubled and reached third on an error by Cubs’ center fielder Jim Edmonds, scoring on Casey Blake’s single off Jeff Samardzija. Martin homered off Jason Marquis in the top of the ninth.

On the first day of spring training, Dempster said he thought the Cubs would win the World Series this year. Now, they’re in a hole already.

Dempster (0-1), 14-3 at Wrigley during the regular season, threw 109 pitches in just 4 2-3 innings, giving up four hits and four runs while walking seven to tie a career high.

Lowe went 6-1 in his final 10 starts of the regular season as the Dodgers got past Arizona to win the AL West, with a huge boost from Ramirez’s 17 homers and 53 RBIs in 53 games after he was acquired from the Red Sox.

Lowe (1-0) worked six innings, allowing two runs and seven hits.

DeRosa, who played six positions this season while setting a career high with 21 homers, missed the final four games of the regular season with strained calf muscle.

After a single by Edmonds, DeRosa lifted a high fly down the right-field line, and the ball kept carrying, landing just over the fence and to the left of the pole to give the Cubs a 2-0 lead. It was his first postseason homer.

The wind at Wrigley Field, often a factor, was blowing from left to right across the field and announced at 6 mph to start the game.

Los Angeles also loaded the bases in the third on two walks and an infield single by Ramirez before Dempster struck out Andre Ethier to end it.

Dempster was helped in the inning by two nice defensive plays. Kosuke Fukudome, who got the start in right because of his defense not his slumping bat, snagged Blake’s foul fly as he tripped over the bullpen mound. And Alfonso Soriano raced to the warning track in deep left to flag down Russell Martin’s long drive.

Torre and Piniella met for the third time in the playoffs. Torre’s Yankees beat Piniella’s Seattle Mariners in the 2000 and 2001 AL championship series. The veteran managers came across each other at dinner Tuesday night.

“I felt pretty good about it. I said, ‘If you’re here, it must be a pretty good restaurant,’” Torre recalled telling Piniella.

The Cubs are out to end their 100-year championship drought and the Dodgers have been struggling in the postseason for the last two decades. Before winning Wednesday night, Los Angeles had been 1-12 in the playoffs since beating Oakland in the 1988 Series.

After all his successful years with the Yankees and the many eventful games, Torre was still well aware of his surroundings Wednesday night.

“I’ve been in the American League for 12 years, to come into Wrigley Field for a playoff game, this is pretty cool,” said Torre, who also has managed the Mets, Cardinals and Braves.

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Story posted by Associated Press

As I am sure most of you know, the field is currently undergoing a facelift.  The infield grass has already been torn out and the crew is currently leveling the clay and dirt to make for a perfectly level playing surface.  I went up to the field this evening and took some photos to post on here.  They may be a little large, but here they are.

After being dominated in every aspect of game 1, the Sterling Rangers turned to Brett Marshall to even the series.  He went out and did just that, leading Sterling to a 5-1 win over Varsity tonight.

Varsity starter Travis Crow pitched a whale of a game, but the offense just wasnt there to support him off of the Rice Owl commit Marshall.  Crow threw a complete game allowing just 6 hits (none after the third) and striking out 13 batters. 

Everybody be sure to make it out to Clear Lake tomorrow to cheer on the Knights.  In a Baytown Sun article their coach admitted that the crowd got in their player’s heads so get out there and BE LOUD!  Let’s get a repeat of Game 1 everybody.

Varsity entered Game 1 of their Region III Quarterfinal match-up against the Baytown Sterling Rangers with a daunting task ahead of them.  University of Texas signee Hunter Cervenka was projected to start on the hill for the Rangers and from all pregame accounts, looked to be the best pitcher Varsity had seen thus far in the 2008 season.  Fortunately for the Knights, the pregame hype never materialized as Varsity thumped the Rangers 12-3 at Cobb Field in Clear Lake.

Things didn’t look great to start the game as Sterling pushed three runs across in the top of the first courtesy of hits by Trevor Swint and John Sherry to put the Rangers on top early.

Cervenka struggled early and often on the hill, walking three Knights in the bottom of the first, although he did regroup to keep Varsity off of the scoreboard.  His luck would run out in the second as Elkins plated four runs (2 RBI double by Richard Arroyo, RBI FC by Travis Crow, RBI single Brandon Heasley).

One could go into greater detail about the remainder of the game, but in an effort to save time and not bring on an early bout of carpal tunnel syndrome, I will paraphrase innings 3-7.

• Myles DuVall pitched very well.
• Sterling pitches put 16 Knights on base via walks and hit batters.
• Varsity played great defense.
• Matt Macko and Richard Arroyo each had 3 RBI while Crow, Heasley, Hooks, and Langner added and RBI apiece.

Game 2 will be played tonight at Cobb Field in Clear Lake again at 7:30 PM.  Please, please, please come out to the game and cheer on Varsity.  The Elkins faithful were vastly outnumbered last night and we all need to get out there with our friends and neighbors and support the team.

Go Knights!

Just wanted to post some information about the summer baseball teams and leagues for everybody to start prepping for that.

We will be fielding 6 teams this summer in two different leagues. Varsity Blue and Varsity Gold will be playing in the West Houston Varsity League. JV Blue will be playing in the West Houston Junior Varsity League. Freshman Blue, Gold, and White will be playing in the Fort Bend Baseball League.

We are going to be splitting teams up as evenly as possible this summer in an effort to get players as many reps as we can. We are trying to keep rosters between 14-18 players per team so be ready to play.

Elkins Off-Season Structure

Elkins Varsity Blue & Gold (West Houston Baseball League)

• Returning Varsity
• Seniors from Junior Varsity
• Soph. or Freshman playing up

Elkins JV Blue (West Houston Baseball League)

• Juniors or Sophomores from Junior Varsity
• Soph. or Freshman playing up

Elkins Freshman Blue, Gold, White (Fort Bend Baseball League)

• Incoming Freshmen

Any player that played Spring baseball on the Varsity, JV, or Soph team will be placed on a team. Any player that was cut last year but wishes to play Summer ball will be placed on a team that best suits their skills, roster needs, and roster size.

We have already collect league fees from all incoming Freshman and a few returning players. If you are a returning Varsity, JV, or Soph player we will be sending an email out in the next few days in regards to registration.

Well the regular season has come and gone, and now it is time for the Knights to enter the “second season” with their sights set on that field in Round Rock.  It was a great year for Varsity, winning district with a 16-1 record even though many people (myself included) predicted a lower finish for the boys.  Many players have stepped up and filled some big shoes left by last years graduating class and that is a credit to the boys for their hard work and dedication to the program.  As I’m sure all of you know, it was a very competitive district race this year with Varsity facing solid competition game in and game out and that will do nothing but prepare them for the rigors of the playoffs which open this Friday.

Varsity will face the Pearland Oilers (14-14-1) in the Bi District round in a best of three series (schedule posted on main page).  This of course is a rematch of sorts from 2007 when Varisty defeated Pearland two games to one in the Region Quarterfinals.  I don’t have a ton of info on the Oilers yet, but they also played in a very tough district and faced some quality arms so don’t let that .500 record fool you.

While the location for game one has not been set as of this writing, we do know that games two and three will be at Manvel HS.  Manvel has a very nice facility and quite a bit of bleacher seating.  Lets be sure to travel a large crowd to all games to show our support for the team.

As I’m sure many of you can tell, I am having a difficult time getting game scores and information for the sub-varsity teams.  This site has been a one man job for six years and I’m always looking for some help.  Between teaching and coaching, the coaches are busy guys and sometimes cannot submit the info so usually some parents pitch in a bit.
Mr Goodspeed has volunteered to cover the Sophomore team for me and his updates will be on the site in the coming days.

If there is anybody out there that is willing to submit JV info, please contact me so we can arrange that.

Here is what I’d want submitted for the site:

• Game scores + highlights + box scores
• Photos (small video files if you are savvy in that)

Readers please remember that any info submitted by a parent volunteer to the site is not the offical position of the baseball coaching staff (especially for stats) and should be used basically for entertainment purposes only.  We try to make sure our information is as accurate as possible, but sometimes we keep books differently than the offical book that the coaches keep.

If anybody out there on the JV team is interested, please email me at kevinmax22@gmail.com

Well, where to begin.  Clements scores 7 in the first and 4 in the second then Varsity starts to scratch away at the lead by scoring 3 in the third and 5 in the fourth to make it a very close 11-8 game.  Unfortunately, right about then the wheels fell completely off the wagon.  Clements puts up 9 more in the top of the fifth before Varsity plates 2 more in the bottom of the frame.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough as the Rangers run rule the game and it ends via the mercy rule after five innings. 

Varsity was out-hit 12-9, two of those Ranger hits being grandslams and another was a 2-run shot.  If youre a fan of errors, there were plenty in this game (5 for the Rangers and 4 for the Knights).  Just an overall ugly game on both sides, but Clements took advantage of the Knight mistakes and put it on them.  Luckily the scoreboard still isnt working because I don’t believe there were enough bulbs on the board to illuminate all the runs, hits, and errors that would have been posted.

Clements 20-12-5
Elkins 10-9-4

WP-Correro
LP-Crow

HR-Thorwaldson, Dille, Curry

vs Brazoswood
I’m not going to be able to provide much information since I was not at the game, but Varsity won today 7-5 over the host Bucs.  Travis Crow earned the W on the mound and Tyler Langner hit his first homer of the year.

vs Bay City
Again, not at the game so I’m going on reports submitted.  Varsity fell to the Blackcats 8-6 tonight, dropping their overall record to 8-4 and 1-1 in the tournament.  Sloppy defense again undermines the efforts of the pitching staff, committing 4 errors which led to the ever despised un-earned runs.  Travis Crow and Kelly Hines each hit homeruns in the game but unfortunately, Varsity loses the game.

Games tomorrow are as follows:
10:00 AM vs Seven Lakes @ Brazoswood
3:00 PM vs NB Canyon @ Brazosport

Varsity broke out their new white home uniforms in style tonight, beating the visitors from Bush 12-2 in a 5 inning run rule win.

Starter Myles DuVall sat the Broncos down in order in the first before the fireworks started in the bottom half.  A walk to Matt Macko followed by Travis Crow reaching on a fielders choice set the scene for a Brandon Heasley 3 run homer.  The  Broncos scratched 2 runs across in the top of the second, but the Knights promptly answered back by scoring 5 in the bottom.

Varsity put 2 more up in the bottom of the third (RBI triple from Tyler Langner and RBI double from Drew Vest) and and 2 more in the bottom of the fifth to end the game via the run rule.  In the bottom of the fifth, Darren Hooks led off with a single, Tyler Langer drew a walk which brought Gevon Jackson to the plate.  Gevon hit what appeared to be a routine ground ball to the Bush third baseman, but he promptly threw the ball over first which allowed Hooks and Langner to both score.  Knights win 12-2.

Varsity travels to the Jim Phillips Gulf Coast Invitational this weekend and plays at Dulles Tuesday and will host Clements next Friday.