Have the mighty fallen? The early part of the Burnside baseball season looked like a repeat of past years, but a recent shake-up in the standings has cast some doubt on that possibility.
For the past several seasons, Sameday and GMAC have battled both for top spot in the league and for the playoff championship. That’s exactly how this season started off as well, but just two weeks ago that all changed. After a string of defeats, Sameday has tumbled down from first place, which it held in the season’s early weeks, to currently sit in fourth.
GMAC sits on top now, a position it grabbed away from Sameday towards the end of the first month of play.
Perhaps the biggest beneficiary of Sameday’s slide is the Heavy Hitters. Just last issue I commented on the team’s quiet consistency as it easily held on to third place, a position it captured early in the year. Now it has moved into second overall, although it has a ways to go if it hopes to catch GMAC.
Budlight has also moved up in the standings to take third place. Not quite as consistent as the Heavy Hitters, nevertheless Budlight has usually managed to stay in the league’s top five.
While much of the upper half of the standings continues to fluctuate, the bottom half has settled into stability. The Dartmouth Old Guys (DOGs) rounds out the top five, with Bird Stairs, Wilson Auto, Canada Post, Joe Johnson and Source Atlantic filling out the rest of the standings.
One other note of interest: six of the league’s 10 teams are over .500 for the season to date, with a seventh team – Wilson Auto – within spitting distance of going the club. This speaks to a rising parity within the league, which in past seasons has seen the numbers almost reversed.
Featured Game of the Month
Speaking of Wilson Auto, the team came tantalizingly close to reaching over that .500 threshold in its most recent pair of games against GMAC. In the first game of the doubleheader, Wilson Auto started out strong, matching GMAC run for run to end the first inning in a 4-4 tie. However, the game quickly became more of a defensive struggle, with neither team able to score more than a single run in the subsequent four innings.
The turning point came in the sixth when GMAC was able to get lots of runners on the pads and drive the ball all the way to the fence in left to score three runs. Even though Wilson Auto was able to shut GMAC down again in the top of the seventh – coming up with a clutch throw to the plate to get the final out and prevent a run – the team’s bats were not as cooperative. It failed to find an answer for GMAC’s three-run sixth and fell 9-5.
The second game was even closer, with GMAC eking out a one-run 8-7 victory over Wilson Auto.
