Playoff Plot Thickens

Round Two of the State American Legion playoffs start Monday night in Rocky Mount as Coleman Pitt Post 58 will host Pitt County Post 39 at 7PM at Gryphon Stadium.  The first round the Southern Division won three of the four match ups as only Rocky Mount is left standing representing the Northern Division.

Pit County finished second in the Southern Division and they split two games with P58 during the regular season.  This series is also a two out of three  and barring any weather issues Monday and Wednesday are the scheduled days for games in Rocky Mount.  Tuesday's  game two would be in Greenville.  The winner of this series will play the Wayne County-Kinston winner for the Area One East/West Finals.  This series is a three out of five.  The winner of that series earns a spot in the upcoming state tournament in Lenoir in late July and early August.

Even though the winner earns a spot in the state tournament there is still one more series to play as the finals of Area one would be against the teams from the Triangle area.  Both of those teams would already have earned spots in the state tournament so that series is back to a two of three.

To say the   least this was a very long weekend for the Junior Legion team from Post 58 after losing the opening game of the tournament Saturday morning in extra innings and falling into that dreaded losers bracket.   They were able to fight off elimination Saturday night with a ten inning win and this afternoon at Doak Field at N C State won their first game of the day beating a team from Cary called the Cary Colts 7-3.

They made out a new lineup card and stayed right on the field and in this game took on the Cary Bulls a Junior Legion team who this is was 27-0 and in the three games for them so far in this tournament had not had a team to stay as close as 13 runs in any game.  Post 58 took this game to extra innings as it was 3-3 after seven.  The Bulls were the visiting team and put seven runs on the board in the top of the eighth and P58 could not cut into the seven runs and lost 10-3.

Post 58 fails to qualify for the State Tournament but it is obvious that they gave this Bulls team a run for their money and it would have been very interesting to see if we had another shot against them what kind of result would have happened in another game.  Junior Legion games are seven innings but since three of their four games went  extra innings  P 58 played what amounted to five games in thirty two hours.  That will test any bodies pitching staff.