When it comes to the dog days of summer it is a near certainty that the players will be sluggish to some degree. We saw that this afternoon on a brutally hot afternoon at Mitchel Field in which the 15U Oil City Bandits and Diamond Spikes combined to make seven errors and commit three balks.
It was the Oil City Bandits who came out on top by the score of 6-1 behind an outstanding performance by John McCabe (Archobishop Molloy 2022), who was able to overcome sloppy infield play–including three errors in the sixth inning alone–to record the complete game victory with seven strikeouts.
The Bandits got on the board early in the top of the first inning on an RBI single and added to that in the second inning with an RBI single by leadoff man Chris Luna to score Jeremy Feder.
The score remained 2-0 until the fifth inning when they added another run on an E6, which scored Nick Fustanio, who was hit by a pitch and moved to second on a balk.
In the bottom of the fifth inning, the Diamond Spikes bats’ woke up and they scored a run on an RBI double by Hunter Scott to score Steve Kurrie. At that moment, they had the tying run at the plate with nobody out by McCabe was able to bear down and strike out the next three batters to end the inning.
Things got hairy for the Diamond Spikes in the top of the sixth as they allowed three runs to score which broke the game open with the big knock coming on a two-run double to right field by Billy Talkin. This essentially put the game away.
McCabe had to work around three infield errors in the sixth inning but he was able to do so and strand the bases loaded with a strikeout.
With one more victory, Oil City will be playing for the 15U Championship of the Brian Moore Memorial Tournament tournament.
