After some video production work in the morning, Pennie and I spent most of the day Saturday at Oak Ridge High School at a baseball tournament. Pennie worked the concession stand and her son, Josh plays on the varsity team. When I got there, there was really nothing happening. The tournament had been going on for a couple days and I think it was the consolation bracket that was being played there at Oak Ridge while the championship bracket was being held at the Woodlands. After a very long delay waiting for umpires to arrive, the first game got underway. It was a barn-burner as Austin Bowie came from way behind, not once but twice before winning the game in extra innings 13-12 over New Caney. In the next game, it was Josh's Oak Ridge War Eagles taking on Dripping Springs. Oak Ridge fell behind early behind some sporadic pitching. Josh's friend, Michael Whitehead came in the game in relief and stopped the bleeding as the War Eagles swooped back into the contest. Whitehead got rocked pretty hard before being pulled and once again Oak Ridge found themselves behind and running out of time. There was some very crazy and suspect calls by the umps back to back which seemed to fire up Oak Ridge. After back-to-back ripoffs by the men in blue (a clear interference at second base that was ignored and an outrageous blown call that prompted the umps to call Oak Ridge back on the the field to complete an already completed innning,) time was called and it was left to Oak Ridge to come back in their final three outs or be knocked out of the tournament.



Lance Nobile (far right) with a strong wind at his back and his team's back against the wall, cranked one out for his second walkoff homerun in two games. Oak Ridge went on to play Austin Bowie and I am sorry to say that I left before it was over (the game was still tied at 0-0.) Turns out I missed another win by the War Eagles including a late inning hit by Josh. Oak Ridge took the Consolation Championship.


- posted by Chris @ 5:41 PM