North East baseballers toil hard at champs

THE North East Baseball Association sent a representative team to the annual Victorian Country Baseball Championship held at Geelong on the weekend. In their first game they played Latrobe Valley. Neither side could get a runner across the plate for a run in their first two turns at bat. North East scored one run in their third, then added four more in their next bat. Latrobe Valley started to find the gaps in the field and got safe hits to the outfield bringing in seven runs to hold a two–run lead at the top of the sixth innings. North East added three more in their turn at bat but Latrobe Valley scored one more to even the score at eight runs each. North East had bases loaded in their last turn at bat but left them there when they lost their third out. With two down and all bases loaded, Latrobe Valley's next batter was hit by a pitched ball allowing him to walk to first base, forcing the runner on third to cross the home plate for the winning run. North East had nine safe hits to Latrobe Valley's 12 to go down by one run. Latrobe Valley nine, North East eight. In their second game, North East played Dandenong. Dandenong batted first, they lost their first two batters to fly ball catches, their third batter got on base safely and the fourth batter hit a fly ball catch to right field for side away and the North East pitcher had thrown only 13 pitches. North East got one run on the board in their turn at bat, safe hits were hard to come by for both teams, with Dandenong holding a one run lead going into the seventh innings. Both teams added another two runs in their last turn at bat and North East went down again by just one run. Dandenong won six runs to North East, five. On Sunday, North East played the hosts' Geelong on their number one diamond. This diamond is the best in country Victoria and the pressure was on from the start. North East batted first and after losing their first two batters without reaching first base, they started to hit safely and were able to bring in two runs before losing their third out. Geelong got off to a good start when they brought in three runs in their first innings then added another seven in their next three innings, while stopping North East from adding to their score to lead ten runs to two at the top of the fifth innings. North East started to hit to gaps and with some good running between the bases forcing Geelong fielders to make some errors they added six runs in this innings, but not to be out done, Geelong brought in six more runs themselves to run out better than North East winning 16 runs to eight. North East finished their carnival on Sunday when they played the City team. Having played three games already, most of their players were all played out. All their known pitchers had sore arms, but their part time pitchers tried their best. North East started off well when they scored one run in each of their first two turns at bat and had kept City from scoring in their two innings. City scored their first run in their third turn at bat and another four in their fifth. North East added three more runs to even the score on five runs all at the top of the sixth innings. City broke away bringing in four runs in the next innings, while North East could only add two to trail by two runs at the top of the last innings. North East stopped City from scoring when they had the three outs needed from the four batters that faced the pitcher and still had the chance to get their first win. North East's first batter got on base from a safe hit to centre field and was brought home before they lost their first out, but luck ran out when with bases loaded, they once again lost their next two batters and ended up one run short. City won nine runs to North East eight. Although they did not win any games, the North East squad can hold their heads up high and hope that more of their teammates are available to go next year.

North East baseballers toil hard at champs

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