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Show Pony League play under way, excellent pitching, unusual hitting displayed By Gary Kins mo The Cedar City Pony League, made up of 13 and 14 year-old, year-old, moved into action just last week and there Ls already a favorite to win the league. The State Bank of Southern Utah, with probably the best all-around player in the league in Nolan Roberts, rol league in Nolan Roberts, rolled past their first three opponents oppon-ents and are now in first place. They meet the only oth-er oth-er unbeaten team, Southern Utah Mortuary (2-0), tonight "at 5:30 at the Pony League Ball Park. The winner will have sole possession of first place. drove in four runs in a losing effort. Southern Utah Morutary, also al-so still undefeated, won their two games in two completely different ways. In this year's league opener they beat Utah Construction 17-4, with Clay Bulloch, Dale Flannigan, and Curtis Carter each getting two hits. Then they came back to beat Utah Parks 5-3, as Dale Flannigan struck out 10 of the last 12 batters he faced to pre-serve pre-serve the win. In other games, Doug Watson Wat-son and Derol Simkins drove in three runs apiece to lead Utah Construction to an 8-4 win over California Pacific Utilities. Tom Torres was the winnng pitcher, striking out 13 opponents. Then last Tuesday Tues-day night, Cal. Pac. picked up their first win by downing Utah Parks 10-2, with Matias Quintinella driving in three runs. State Bank won their first game at the expense of Utah Parks, by a score of 8-2. In that game, Roberts struck out 14 and was helped by teammates team-mates Kim Lamoreaux and Chris Kupfer who each had two hits. Their second win was an uneventful 6-1 victory over California Pacific Utilities, with Lindsey Whithead striking strik-ing out 15 and throwing a one-hitter. one-hitter. He had a no-hitter going go-ing until Kevin Cox got a pinch-hit single in the sixth. The third win was a little harder to come by. In an error-filled game last Monday night, they just got by Utah Construction by a score of 9-7. Craig Rollo was the leading hitter for State Bank, getting twp hits whiLe scoring four runs. The best sticker in the game, however, was Utah Construction's Con-struction's Doug Watson, who slammed two doubles and So, after seven games, State Bank of Southern Utah is in first (3-0); in second is Southern South-ern Utah Mortuary (2-0); Utah Construction and California Pacific Utilities are tied for third at (1-2); and Utah Parks has yet to win their first game (0-3). There is one surprise when looking over the various individual in-dividual categories. Nolan Roberts Ro-berts of State Bank was expected ex-pected to be the leading hitter hit-ter this year in the league, but so far he is taking a second sec-ond seat to Doug Watson of Utah Construction. Nolan does have three home runs, to lead in that department, but he has only one other hit and is batting bat-ting at a .571 clip, which really real-ly isn't bad. However, Doug has been hitting hit-ting the ball at a fantastic pace, with seven hits in nine official bats for a batting average av-erage of .778. Four of the seven sev-en hits he has are doubles, to give him the lead in that department, de-partment, too. Doug also has eight RBI's to put him two ahead of Roberts. In other individual in-dividual batting categories, Cal. Pac.'s Kevin Cox has drawn six walks to lead there, and probably the least envious is Lindsey Whitehead of State Bank, who has struck out nine times in three games to lead all others. In team batting, Utah Construction Con-struction is the most consist-ant consist-ant wih an average of .246; followed by Southern Utah Mortuary at .235; State Bank with an average of .213; California Cali-fornia Pacific Utilities with .130; and winless Utah Parks with .106. |