From the near Big Time to the very Small Time

Baseball 2009, Game 73: Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees 5, Charlotte Knights 0

Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Sloppiness: 3
Charlotte Sloppiness: 7
Most batters in one inning: 8
Hitter of the Game: Kevin Russo, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre (rating: 27)
Pitcher of the Game: Casey Fossum, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre (rating: 114)
Time of Game: 2:24
Mid-game temperature: 82 degrees
Attendance: 4,169 (Level III sporting event)

Baseball 2009, Game 74: Sumter P-15's 18, Dalzell Jets 2

Sumter Sloppiness: 6
Dalzell Sloppiness: 21
Most batters in one inning: 11
Hitter of the Game: Michael Blackmon, Sumter (rating: 71)
Pitcher of the Game: Patrick Gordon, Sumter (rating: 88)
Time of Game: 3 hours
Mid-game temperature: 74 degrees
Attendance: 250 (estimated, Level V sporting eveent)

With Friday night most people bent sent home without much baseball, I came to get my 2nd game of the weekend at Knights Castle using my ticket from Friday. The Knights' opponent Sunday was the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees. The former Scranton/Wilkes-Barre agreement was with the Phillies and the team was called the Red Barons, but with a new affiliation beginning a year ago Scranton/Wilkes-Barre management felt the need to emphasize their association with the team that has made Big Time Sports often unwatchable. The Yankees hope to reach out to a potential northeastern Pennsylvania viewing area, but their AAA farm team has little connection with the big boys. While some SWB Yankees have had shots at going to the Bronx (top slugger Shelley Duncan spent some time in NY last season while the Yankees were desperate for outfield help, third baseman Cody Ransom is likely going to a bench player again once he recovers from an injury), for the most part the Steinbrenner family will look to free agents for help. The minor leaguers are likely destined for trade bait if they do will. Kevin Russo and Austin Jackson are good prospects and played well yesterday, but backing up A-Rod and Jeter means that they have to be traded if they want to play big league ball.

Yet the Yankee name still brings Scranton/Wilkes-Barre some draw. Yankees player advisor and Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson occasionally shows up and briefly was seen in the SWB dugout yesterday. Scranton/Wilkes-Barre's attendance shot up last year before falling back to earth this year so far. About a quarter of the 4K fans at Knights Castle appeared to have come in mind with watching Yankee reserves play. The fact that the actual New York Yankees aren't going to need their minor leaguers does create stability at Scranton, and the team has played well on the field the past couple years. SWB won the IL last year and is a contender again this year. Without one of their aces ready today, the Knights had little to counter against former Devil Rays pitcher Casey Fossum. Fossum could potentially still play for a bad MLB team, but not with the overpaid millionaires. If you want to see the worst of Big Time Sports influence Small Time Sports, go see a Yankee farm team play.

Or you could also watch American Legion Baseball, much further removed from Big Time Sports than AAA. After returning to Sumter last night, I stopped to see the Dalzell Jets play. The Jets have had a history of losing. They made the 8-team state tournament two years ago, but proceeded to lose many players to a new team a county north in Bishopville. They rarely win any game, and usually lose by large margins to top Legion teams.

Among these top Legion teams is the Sumter P-15's, which have a strong winning tradition. Drawing from Sumter and Lakewood High Schools and the private Wilson Hall, Sumter has won 13 state titles and has finished in the top four in the nation two of the last three years. While most Legion teams average 100 to 200 fans, Sumter averages by estimate over 500 fans per game at home. Sumter is a fairly large city for its' primary sports entertainment to be high school summer league ball. I have never liked living here because of that, but the P-15's usually send several players to college teams every year and occasionally the minor leagues. Teams like the Jets only produce maybe a college player or two per year.

The Jets' like much of Small Time Sports have an identity problem. Historically, they played at Hillcrest High School in Dalzell, a small unincorportaed town 10 miles northwest of Sumter. But when Hillcrest became a middle school and the field fell into disrepair, the Jets took off from Dalzell and landed in the P-15's home Riley Park in Sumter. To field competitive teams the Jets often used Sumter High players rejected by the P-15's. This and the desire for the P-15's to have a developmental junior program led to Dalzell being kicked out of Riley Park and back to Dalzell where they played at Thomas Sumter Academy. But with a shrinking player base due to a new team in Bishopville, Dalzell has moved to Lakewood High School, 5 miles south of Sumter and 15 miles southeast of Dalzell's base, the actual town of Dalzell. Dalzell now has Lakewood players not good enough to be P-15 regulars on their roster, which some P-15 supporters do not like. An interesting twist is that Josh Hayden of Sumter has a brother Keith who plays for Dalzell. Last night Keith had the priviledge of throwing his brother out.


In the past 20 years, Dalzell has only one win over Sumter, a 10-9 win over the P-15's two years ago in Dalzell. Last night 250 fans, mostly from Sumter, came to watch this mismatch unfold on the Lakewood diamond. Most fans sat on lawn chairs or stood around the field's perimeter as Lakewood only has enough bleacher seating for 100 people. In the bottom of the first, the upstart Jets went ahead on Michael Waddell's RBI single. But after that the talent disparity began to show, and even with the P-15's saving their best pitchers Dalzell gave up three runs the following inning and Sumter would midway through pull away. Legion ball does have a 10-run rule for ending blowouts after the 7th or 8th inning, but good baserunning by John Kruger allowed him to score on an errant thrown by Sumter and Presbyterian College catcher Tony Mickon and made it 11-2 after 8 innings. But the 9th inning saw Dalzell make 5 sloppy plays to finish with a Sloppiness of 21, tied for the highest game total in the 269 games I have seen in the past two years. Michael Blackmon's e-run homer topped off a 7 run inning and Sumter would win 18-2. A typical mismatch in Legion ball, things should get harder for Sumter this week with local rivals Bishopville and Manning and NC powerhouse Shelby up next.