Richmond Braves National Team '08 went 4-1 in pool play and should be seeded between 9th and 11th for the 32-team elimination rounds that start Thursday morning.

RBI Gold went 3-2 and should also make the elimination rounds.

Only 3 teams went 5-0, 13 went 4-1. A 3-2 record usually advances.

Midlo Dad - Congrats to Richmond Braves, playing extremely well. RBI Gold just missed the cut for the Championship round. Are you down here with a team? We are here with the North Wake team out of NC. We finished pool play as the 16 seed and look forward to getting back on the field tomorrow.

Congrats to both. I saw North Wake beat Team Florida USA. Nice inning!

Tyler Webb, pitched a beauty. He had only 57 pitches going into the 7th inning, but got a little nervous and started trying to place the ball.

Good luck to he Richmond Braves, and enjoy to the rest.

Al McCormick
www.mostvaluableplayer.biz

Sorry for the bad info on RBI Gold. We have lots of friends on that team and were pulling for them. Unfortunately they lost out on the tie-breakers, one of 5 3-2 teams not to advance. Then their Thurs. consolation got rained out, may not be rescheduled.

Midlo Son is on the Braves, so we're still here. We made the final 8. Still not hitting all that well but got two stellar pitching starts and two solid saves today to win 3-2 and 2-1. In the evening game, Zak Sinclair had a no-hitter for 6 2/3 and 1-2 count before yielding two clean hits. Will Roberts was almost as sharp this morning. Danny Hultzen has been putting on a clinic in relief.

We're hoping we can muster enough pitching to keep it up. We've got two of our top guys out hurt and it may be about to catch up with us.

Sorry about the game today for North Wake. The team that beat you also pinned our only loss on us, 3-hit shutout Sunday a.m., so we know they were tough. Plus they had two of last year's Youth National Team finalists pitching on that squad.

We'll be back out there Friday at 9 a.m., hoping we can get the sticks going. I can't take any more of these nail biters.

Congratulations to the Braves, Midlo. Now that we are out of the running for the top spot, we'll be pulling for our near neighbors to the north. North Wake gave up 10 unearned runs in the first inning and never dug out of the hole. Not all bad news. Baseball Buzz son was asked to try out for the Youth National Team. He is very honored and we are very proud of him. We'll be pulling for the Braves tomorrow - good luck!

Buzz, we'll see you Friday night at the meeting! But we'll arrive late, because the Braves squeaked into the final 4 with an extra-inning win this morning. The semifinal is at 6 p.m.

Things looked bad early. Palm Beach Raiders came out swinging and got a run early, plus a liner off our starter's foot took him out of the game after 1 inning. Jake Mayers went 8 innings after that. We were down 4-0 but got 2 in the 5th, 2 in the bottom of the 7th, and the game winner in the bottom of the 9th to win 5-4. Looked like they had Jake on the ropes in the 5th but he survived and got second, third and fourth wind to shut them out the last 4 innings. And this was on short rest after a 100-pitch outing Tuesday!

Now we have to play 2 more games (even if we lose tonight), and we only have about 8-9 innings of pitching left. Any suggestions?

Midlo - I hope by the time you read this the Braves will be on their way to the Gold Medal game tomorrow. Look forward to meeting you and your son tonight at the YNT meeting.

No suggestions on the pitching woes - we had our own problems. Lost our consolation game this afternoon 4-1 against the #1 seeded Dynasty Elite. We had 3 hits, they had 3 hits. We scored 1, they scored 4. You can figure out the rest! -Buzz

Things didn't get better from a pitching perspective. Friday morning game's starter tried to come back but could not overcome a feeling that his leg was asleep -- a side effect of the line drive in the early game; we're now told that's typical because of a nerve that runs through that part of the foot and up the leg. Relievers did pretty well but the offense again failed to show and we lost 6-1. Saturday in the Bronze game, our two Thursday pitchers (100 pitch outings for both on Thurs.) both gave it all they had but it was just too much to ask. In any event you can't win if you don't score, and we didn't. We looked worn out!

In the end we finished 4th and were the only non-FL team in the final 4. We lost 3 games but lost them to the 1-2-3 finishers, so no shame there. We had two top pitchers out injured and were left to wonder where we'd've been if they could've made the trip. Oh well, that's baseball I guess!

Buzz, pleased to meet you in person Friday night. Congrats again to your son. As the lone catcher selected from JO's East, he is truly sitting (squatting?) pretty -- they kept 3 catchers on the team last year.

Hope he can handle a good heater! With any luck we'll see you in Venezuela!

What JR Olympics are you talking about?
The AAU Jr. Olympics are scheduled to begin on July 28th in Virginia Beach.

See www.usabaseball.com for complete JO's info.

I don't know that the one in VA embraces baseball -- does it? If so, what age group?

The AAU 16U Nationals are a part of the JO's to be played here at VB. If your son's not doing anything that week we'd love to have him on our roster Unfortunately, I believe AAU rules require that the athlete participate in the state AAU tourney in order to be eligible and that was held when you guys were in Jupiter. Good luck at the YNT trials!

If he has good luck, he'll have to be in Florida during your JO's!