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Legion baseball feast continues this week
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- Published on 19 June 2012
- Written by Andy McCallister
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The Crete Legion baseball organization will be hosting their second tournament in as many weeks starting Thursday at Stallard Field with nine Juniors teams from across the state in action.
Last week, Crete played host to the Thom Stallard Blue River Classic, which featured seven Seniors teams. With no Seniors team this year, Crete was not represented in that tournament. (At one point it was thought that the Crete Juniors team might play, but the number of games on the schedule in June and this week’s tourney brought those plans to a halt). Not even a drenching rain on Thursday night could halt the proceedings.
In consideration of the difficulties of setting up a pool play/bracket type of baseball tournament with nine teams, it was decided that the Juniors tourney this week would consist of four days with each team getting a four-game guarantee.
The winner of the tourney will be determined based tourney records. If there’s a tie, it will be broken first by record against common opponents, then runs scored minus runs allowed and finally by a coin flip.
Joining the Crete Juniors in the tourney field are Fairbury, Lincoln Lutheran, Cozad, Lexington, Pleasant Dale, Gretna, Lincoln High and Ralston. (Sounds like our local eateries might want to put out the welcome mat and brace themselves for some hungry ballplayers this week).
Action gets under way Thursday at 12:30 p.m. when Crete takes on Fairbury. Fairbury stays to play Lincoln High at 3, followed by Lincoln High and Lincoln Lutheran at 5:30.
Both Friday and Saturday will feature five games. Ralston and Gretna start us on Friday at 10 a.m., followed by Gretna-Cozad, Ralston-Cozad, Lexington-Pleasant Dale and then Crete-Lexington at 8 that evening.
Cozad and Lexington will begin Saturday’s schedule at 10 a.m., followed by Lincoln Lutheran-Cozad, Lexington-Fairbury and Fairbury-Ralston before Crete takes on Ralston at 8.
The Sunday schedule is back to four games with Crete and Pleasant Dale starting the action at 12:30. Pleasant Dale and Lincoln High follow before Lincoln High-Gretna and Crete-Gretna finish out the tourney.
This week marks the sternest test for the Crete Juniors to date, with games on six consecutive days beginning with Tuesday’s trip to Gretna. The team hosts Hickman today (Wednesday) before tournament action begins Thursday.
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Here’s another fairly recent item from the baseball file: Jake Diekman, a Wymore left-hander who pitched for Doane in 2006, won a game for the Phillies last month in his major league debut.
Diekman entered Philadelphia’s May 15 game against Houston with two out in the top of the ninth, retired the side with a strikeout of Marwin Gonzales and then struck out two more Astros in the 10th to earn the win.
Diekman, who transferred from Doane to Cloud County (Kan.) Community College in 2006, was drafted by the Phillies in the 30th round of the 2007 amateur draft.
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And here’s an in-case-you-were-wondering note, on the heels of the June 6 column dealing with the issue of the hopefully-temporary disbanding of the Crete Legion Seniors baseball team.
The Crete Diamonds girls’ softball organization did not field a 16- nor 18-and under team (nor a 14-and-under one, for that matter) this summer. Some of Crete’s high school-age girls are playing on “select” teams in the area, but there was not enough interest or numbers to form “Crete-only” teams in any of those age groups.
There are still Crete Diamonds girls’ teams for the 10- and 12-and under groups.
More thoughts on this issue to come.