The Fruits of Their Labor

Pool Play Game 1
Pre-Season Baseball Classic
River City Renegades 2, Louisville Longhorns 13

Thousands of swings. Countless ground balls. Innumerable hitting, fielding and pitching repetitions. Starting back in early-December, Rick Arnold, homicide detective by day and head coach of the Louisville Longhorns 11U competitive baseball club by night, weekends and, well, a large part of the day for that matter, started planting the seeds of baseball fundamentals in the netted hitting cages, on the portable pitching mounds and atop the pristine turf of the new Louisville Baseball Center indoor training facility that had just been opened by Louisville Lightning 12U coach Mickey Wilbur.

The LBC provided Coach Arnold, and the other parents of the ten young men who would make up the 2011 Longhorns team, with the promise of fertile ground that was too rich to pass up. Only the most fortunate of other local teams is able to find any kind of significant practice time at a dedicated indoor baseball site over the winter, yet the ’Horns now had access to a veritable roofed field of dreams. But like those who for years farmed the soil on which many of our houses now sit can attest, it is not until harvest time that one truly knows what even the finest land, and the hardest work, will yield. On Friday night, March 18, at the Pre-Season Classic baseball tournament in Beechmont, it was time for the Longhorns to find out.

They took the field as home team in the top of the first inning for the opening game of the 2011 season in new uniforms: black, full-button jerseys; crisp, white pants with black out-seam piping; and white caps with contrasting black visors, buttons and eyelets. The new-look steer-head logos sewn on the left-chest of the jerseys and emblazoned on the front of the caps were emblematic of a roster that featured four new players joining the six returning Longhorn veterans. One of those fresh faces was Trey Sweeney, late of the Fern Creek Fire, who was handed the horsehide and given the honor of being the Game One starter. Fittingly, Number Seven’s initial offering to the River City Renegades’ lead-off batter was a strike, and he proceeded to set down the side in order, aided by some fine glovework by Matthew Higgins on a bounder to third and on a challenging pop-up over the head of Noah Baugher that was put away by the sure-handed second baseman.

Leading off for the Longhorns was Sweeney’s former Fire-mate, Andrew Littlefield, and the lefty got things off on the right foot by drawing a base on balls. One out later, Matthew Higgins, also batting from the port side, stroked a single to right field, and after clean-up hitter Andrew Arnold was issued the second walk of the inning, Sweeney drew a bases-loaded freebie to plate the first run of the contest and put the Longhorns up 1-0.

Some early-season rust was evident in the top of the second, resulting in the Renegades scoring two unearned runs, but the damage was mitigated as Sweeney set three batters down swinging in the inning. The Longhorns saw to it that the ’Gades lead would be short-lived, as Sweeney’s battery-mate, Bryce Elmore, drew a one-out walk in the bottom of the second and came around to knot the score at 2-2 on a single by Andrew Littlefield.


Matthew Higgins gobbled up another grounder in the top of the third and the last batter in the order was struck out looking. But with two outs, the Renegades looked to break the tie when their lead-off hitter delivered a two-out single through the hole, just beyond the diving reach of shortstop Casey Simon. The runner then stole both second and third base, and boldly attempted to continue home when the throw on the latter steal attempt got away. But Andrew Arnold, who had just replaced starting left fielder Brendan Koester, alertly backed up the errant peg and fired the ball to the plate, where Elmore slapped the tag on the runner to squelch the scoring threat and end the inning.


Two and a half innings had now been played. The Longhorns batters had two base hits, their base runners had scored a pair of runs, their defense had made plays in the field and their pitcher had not given up an earned run—indeed, all positive signs. But, starting at this point, the benefits of the hours the team put in over the long, cold winter would truly start to show.


Casey Simon, the erstwhile Lyndon Lightning shortstop who was making his full-time Longhorn debut after a one-tournament audition late last summer, led off, worked the count full and drew an inning-opening walk. Matthew Higgins lifted a rainmaker beyond shortstop that was simply too high to handle, and Andrew Arnold followed with another full-count free-pass. Trey Sweeney then stepped up to the plate and promptly roped a bases-loaded double to right-center, bringing home both Simon and Higgins. After Ryan Hamilton reached on an error that scored Arnold, the newest of the Longhorns, Simon’s former Lightning teammate Nicholas Parrish, drove in two more runs with a two-bagger of his own. When all was said and done, five runners had toed the dish and the Longhorns were on the smile-side of a 7-2 score.


Any chance of a Renegade comeback was rendered moot, first when Matthew Higgins came in to pitch the fourth inning and the hard-throwing righthander struck out the side—the numbers two, three and four hitters—looking, and then when the Burnt-Orange-and-Black piled on six more runs in the bottom half of the frame. Back-to-back singles by Andrew Littlefield and Casey Simon started off the flogging festivities, and Higgins then launched the first pitch he saw for a three-run round-tripper over the right field fence, adding yet another in an already long line of dents to the roofs of cars inadvisably parked within reach of his Ruthian blasts. Consecutive base knocks by Andrew Arnold, Trey Sweeney and Ryan Hamilton, and Bryce Elmore’s second four-ball handout of the game, followed before Noah Baugher sent a resounding double to the opposite field, capping off the scoring surge and ending the game early on account of the run-rule.


Carefully cultivated two nights a week over the frigid winter, the hardball seeds that were initially planted on that first night of off-season workouts in the late fall, and the others that were sown on the evenings that followed, indeed took root, and the resulting bumper crop of hard hitting, fine fielding and prime pitching was on full display last Friday night in the Longhorns season opener.