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ARLINGTON LOOKING GOOD
State Board Meets
The State Board of Directors will meet on Saturday June 13 at the Holiday Inn in St. Cloud. Meeting time has been moved up to 10:00 A.M. The meeting is open to all interested baseball people. If you want to get on the agenda call Bob Zellmann at 952-467-2741. If you can't make it to the meeting, I'll have some highlights for you next week and Bob's minutes will also be posted.
Arlington Looking Good
I was at Arlington during their tournament and I liked what I saw. They have been working hard to get ready for the 2009 State Tournament and it shows. The infield was redone and all of the lips removed. The grass was healthy and the mound and homeplate areas were excellent. The Arlington Board is working on expanding an already good sized pressbox into an even bigger one, adding eight feet on each side. It was very impressive. They say they have some painting to do, but it looked to me like they could host the tournament next week if they had to. You will like the Arlington ballpark.
Note on St. Francis
Tom Heifort told me that he didn't play amateur baseball, however, he did play baseball through high school. Either way, he knows a little something about running a successful program.
Elko Tearing Up Section 5
Elko (13-4) is already 7-0 in the Section 5 seeding games. They had a little scare on June 9th when they played the Rosemount Black Sox (7-4) in Elko. Ben Lemke started for the Black Sox and threw a nine inning no-hitter. The 2008 Rosemount grad allowed only three Elko base runners, two on errors and one walk. He struck out 13. Unfortunately for the Black Sox, Brian Muell, last year's MVP of the Class "C" State Tournament, was pitching for Elko. He allowed no runs through nine and the game went to the 10th inning. In the 10th Justin Wallace replaced Lemke and Elko promptly loaded the bases on two errors and a walk. Elko executed a suicide squeeze with no outs and won the game 1-0 with the squeeze bunt being their only hit. Muell finished the ten innings with 17 strikeouts, five hits and no walks.
Goldsmith has a Big Day
On the last day of May, Mike Goldsmith had a day that any hitter would love to have. His team, St. Patrick, was playing Lonsdale, one of the traditional D-R-S powerhouses. Mike hit a grand slam home run in the seventh inning and then came up with the bases juiced again in the eighth inning and hit another grand slam to end the game with St. Patrick winning 14-2. Goldsmith finished the day 3-6 with nine RBI. What a day!
Now-Then
I haven't played at Now-Then since I played with Dick's Place from Columbia Heights in 1974. Back then we had a powerhouse of a team and until we went to the State Tournament Now-Then was the only Minnesota team we had lost to. Of course we ended up playing them in the State Tournament that year. We were lucky enough to win that game, but I always liked their team and especially liked the little field they played on up in the middle of what I thought was nowhere. Now there is some controversy brewing and this is the story that was in the StarTribune on June 12th. I hope they get things worked out. http://www.startribune.com/local/north/47884277.html |
