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Entries in Baseball (44)
Portland ME Apr 11
PORTLAND, Maine -- I may be the last living American to have seen live baseball this year, but it's good to be back in the park...back in Hadlock Field. I'm not the only one to make his first showing on Park Ave. (Portland style). The Portland Sea Dogs finally made their 2008 Hadlock Field debut, too. Too bad for them that their bats didn’t come along with them.
Dan Hickling
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Sept. 8 On movin' on
PORTLAND -- Trenton finally moves into its first ever Eastern Lg championship series...having unseated the defending crown holders, the Portland Sea Dogs....3 gms to 1 in the Northern Division final.
Trenton won tonight's Gm 4, 4-0, thanx in large part to catcher P. J. Pilittere's two run double in the third.
Asked Trenton skipper Tony Franklin what he likes about his club, these days...
"The same thing I liked about them all year long," he said. "Their resolve. They come out and prepare well. On a daily basis. I think I've been in the game long enough to know that preparation is the key to everything."
Lord Baden-Powell (not Boog) would agree.
Sept. 4 Portland ME ... On rounding out the EL playoffs
PORTLAND, Maine -- So much for backing into the playoffs. The Portland Sea Dogs took the front door in. Last year, the Sea Dogs took until the final day of the regular season, before clinching an Eastern League playoff spot, then rolling to their first ever EL championship. This year, the Dogs went one day longer before securing a chance to defend that crown, but were nonetheless successful, pushing past the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, 7-4, in a one-game play in game, before 4,042 at Hadlock Field. Portland will hit the road for an overnight bus trip to Trenton, where they'll commence their best of five Northern Division playoff series wit the Thunder. This will be the third straight year those teams have met in the first round, with Portland having taken the past two. "This is the loosest I felt all year," said Portland third baseman Andrew Pinckney, who clobbered two home runs to help the cause. "But (it was like) if we win, we win. If we don't, we go home. We got it done. I'm happy about that."
Aug. 30 Portland ME EL Playoff Picture
PORTLAND, Maine -- Watching the Eastern League playoff picture take shape....Portland did itself a big favor tonight by taking a dramatic 7-6 win over Trenton...Jay Johnson singling in Jeff Natale with the winning run in the bottom of the ninth...Sea Dogs have a game and a half lead over New Hampshire, which lost big (8-1) to Connecticut, of all teams....
Trenton and Erie have both clinched playoff spots...Trenton the Northern Div kings, and Erie close to nailing down the Southern....Akron, despite some doom and gloom from my friend Steph Storm (superb baseball writer for the Akron Beacon Journal), looks like they're in for the second spot in the South...
Asked Trenton Mgr Tony Franklin to assess the race between NH and Portland...diplomatically danced through the answer...knowing that he'll be playing one or the other again in the first round...."Right now it's anybody's to win. It just comes down to who's going to get the breaks, as it always does. They both throw good pitchers, and they both hit well. You can't give an edge to either one."
A few weeks ago, I stood in the home clubhouse at Scranton's PNC Field, talking with pitching phenom Ian Kennedy. Happened to notice a Trenton Thunder cap in his locker, so I said, "I don't mean to be nosy, but what's with the Trenton hat." He said that he gives his dad a cap from each place that he's pitched. Now he's going to make his big league debut with the Bronx Bombers on Saturday.....Guess he'll have to come up with another hat for the old man.....
Aug. 14 OTTAWA On Change
OTTAWA -- I remember a single from the 60's by a British band, a no-hit wonder called the Glass Menagerie, whose gimmick was to put songs about suicide on both sides of the single. The "A" side was a cover of the Harry Nilsson song, "I Said Goodbye to Me". One of the lines in that tune goes like this..."ending the game is like changing the name of your favorite song".... Change....which can go down hard.... Like the impending (so it would seem) change in the International League structure, which has Ottawa departing and Allentown coming in. No slight to Allentown, but Ottawa is by far my favorite city in the IL. So I will miss coming here during the summer (thankfully, I do get to come back during hockey season).