Monday, May 14, 2007

Pitch/Hit/Run: A Great Afternoon

A couple of weeks ago (man, they are flying by!), SunCreek Little League hosted a local edition of the Pepsi/Major League Baseball PITCH/HIT & RUN at their own field of dreams, West Union School. We had over 50 boys and girls join us to pitch at a target, run from second base to home plate, and hit off a tee just for the fun of it! And every kid took home a smile and a BabyRuth candy bar.

Last fall, I was browsing the San Francisco Giants website scoping out options for the 2007 All-Star Weekend and happened upon a little ad for the Pitch/Hit/Run and signed up to organize a local competition that would send its winners to sectionals, regionals and possibly even the main event in July in San Francisco during the All-Star Game. Fast forward to April and they rain took a break so we could spend the afternoon hanging out with baseball games going on all around us and the kids enjoying a very relaxed opportunity to do baseball things without coaching and pressure.

While it might be too late to organize one for your area, I encourage you to think about it for next spring. It was a fun afternoon and thanks to the hard work of some volunteers (thanks, hubby!), it was really a low-key, easy-to-run event that the kids seemed to enjoy and kept them hanging out at the ballpark after their games.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Life After Williamsport

The local boys of the Murrayhill LL All-Star team lived a summer of dreams last year by qualifying for the Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA. But, is there life after Little League?

Here is a link to an article in the Portland Tribune regarding those players and their new teams and challenges on the bigger diamond. It's great to see that some of them are still playing Little League on a Junior Little League team. Might we seem them in the Junior BB Western Regional here in Beaverton in August?