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Show Little League All-stars Win Division Playoff; Drop Two in Helper Sectional Tourney Outstanding players in the i newly organized Cedar City Little League got their first taste of inter-state competition in the national na-tional playoffs during the past week and while making an excellent ex-cellent showing, found that experience ex-perience is very, very important in the game of baseball. An all-star team of 14 players was selected from the four teams in the Cedar City Little League to compete in the play-offs, and i performing brilliantly walked off with a district play-off victory and a berth in the sectional tournament. tour-nament. Continuing to play well in the tourney the Cedar boys were defeated twice, with lack of experience contributing more to the defeats than lack of playing ability. In the first of the play-off games, the district play-off against Elko, Nov., played on the I Elks diamond in Cedar City, the Cedar all-stars came up with a thrilling 8 to 6 victory over a well balanced Nevada crew. Although Al-though everyone of both teams played very well, the game was featured by an outstanding pitching job by Gary Anderson, and two home runs, one by Duane Jones and one by Phil Yeigensen. The Cedar stars started out with a bang, pushing over four runs in the first inning. After the first batter was retired, Ralph Stokes drew a walk, and scored on a hit by Eric Gardner. Phil Yergensen then draw a walk, and with two on bases Duane Jones dumped a high fly over the out field fence to give Cedar a four to nothing lead. In the second inning the visitors started to move and pushed over one run on two hits and a walk, and scored two more in the third on two good hits, that brought the score up to 4 to 3, and brought the fans to the realization that the kids had a battle on their hands. Cedar increased the lead to 5 to 3 in the bottom half of the third on successive hits by Gardner and Ramon Prestwich. A single, a fielder's choice play that didn't work, a passed ball and an error gave Elko two runs and a 5-5 tie score in the fourth inning. In the fifth inning, a hit and a passed ball put Elko into the lead in spite of the fact that Gary struck out three batters in the inning. Then came Cedar's big fifth inning. in-ning. Richard Hirschi opened the inning with a walk. Gardner was safe on a bunt down the third base line, then Yergensen stepped step-ped up and poled out a home run that sailed not only over the fence but over the parked cars on the outside of the field, to score the runs that pushed Cedar Ce-dar into its 8 to 6 lead. After the home run, Jones got a single and Dave Randall walked, but the Elko pitcher got three outs by way of the strike out route be fore any more runs could score. Elko had one more chance to even things up but the Cedar kids would not have it. Yergen-sin Yergen-sin threw out the first hitter, the second struck out and the last batter of the game popped out to Randall at first. I Moving on to the sectional tournament at Helper to compete com-pete with teams from Utah, Idaho, Ida-ho, Montana and Wyoming, the Cedar all-stars drew Pocatello, ' the Idaho champions, for their fiist opponent and found that competition can get mighty tough and that experience is very important in a tough battle. bat-tle. The Cedar team lost by a score of 10 to 4, but looked good even in losing. They played well throughout, but ran into a pitcher pitch-er that they just couldn't hit. He was a big, husky kid, with a deceptive de-ceptive delivery and a ball with a real hop on it just a bit too much speed for the Cedar lads. Neil Gentry pitched the first three and a third inning, and was then relieved by Larry Smith, who finished out the game. The Idahoa.is collected only seven hits off the offerings of Gentry and Smith, but two of them were home runs, and this, added to a few errors in the field, gave the northerners their margin of victory. vic-tory. Both teams went scoreless in the first inning, but Pocatello pushed across two runs in the second inning while Cedar was bhiked again. In the top of the third Cedar tied it up with two runs, but in their half the Idaho players pushed over three runs to again take the lead 5 to 2. Cedar sol a run in the fourth but Idaho got two, and added three more in the fifth, while the best Cedar could do was one in then sixth. The Cedar crew was able1 to collect only four hits, which spelled defeat for them. Every player on the squad saw action, with Roger Higbee and Randall each getting a run. and Jones erasing the plate twice. Tuesday the Ceda rites came up against the powerful Salt Lake City champs, and took a shellacking shellack-ing in the first four innings. Proving that they had the stuff to come up off the floor and fight, howev?r, the Cedar Kids rallied in the last innings to outplay their opponents. The damage had been done, howevar, and the rallying all-, stars could not pull me game out of the fire. Salt Lake had taken a 11 to 0 lead in the first four innings, scoring three runs in the first inning and four each in the third and fourth innings. That was the last scoring they did while Cedar pushed over three in the fifth and two in the sixth, losing by a margin of 11 to 5. Cedar outhit the Salt Lake lads 10 to 9, with Cedar collecting col-lecting six of them in the big fifth inning, but experience countei heavily in this game, and the southerners could not make their hits count for as much as did the players from the state capital. Gary Anderson, who won against Elko, piached the first three innings and Eric Gardner went to the mound for the last three, and again every player on the squad got into the game. The kids did a swell job, had a wonderful experience, and above all learned a lot that thPie are a lot of good players every ,vhere, that to win you must have lots of know how, work hard and do your best at all times,and even more important, that you can have a lot of fun and enjoy the satisfaction of doing do-ing a good job even when you can't win. They will be back on their regular teams for the remainder re-mainder of the season, having fun, playing to win, and being genuine good sports in victory or defeat. |
