That same, protracted exclamation can be employed to describe the play, on both sides of the ball, of the Louisville Longhorns 11U baseball club in the Memorial Day weekend tournament at the foot of the Great Smoky Mountains in Sevier County Park in Sevierville, Tennessee. Coming off of three straight tournament championships and victories in their last 12 tournament tilts, the L-Horns continued their winning ways, going a perfect 4-0 to capture their fifth championship in six tournaments played this season.
Five different pitchers joined forces to limit their neighbors to the south to barely one hit every other inning, and only four earned runs over the course of the tournament, while the obdurate offense meted out 43 base knocks and put a total of 33 markers up on the board, at one point tallying runs in 12 consecutive innings. As if the miserly moundsmen and prolific pill-pasters were not enough, the defiant defense accounted for three double plays, two would-be base-nabbers denied, one runner picked off first base and enough other instances of leather-flashing brilliance to keep even ESPN’s major league Web Gem editors hopping.
In the end, they took their hard-earned championship trophies back to their Wilderness at the Smokies resort rooms, changed out of their tournament togs and into their swim trunks, went out, en masse, to the hotel’s waterpark wonderland and proceeded to do what they had just done on the diamond—they had a blast!
Nicholas Parrish drives home one of his 3 runs.
RE-CAP After a 4+ hour drive from Louisville, Kentucky down to Sevierville, Tennessee, the Louisville Longhorns got out of their cars, stretched their legs and immediately got down to business, scoring 2 runs in the top of the first inning and going on to a 9-2 pool-play Game 1 victory over the Kingsport (Tennessee) Raiders. Any kinks from the lengthy road trip were worked out in the batter’s box, where the Longhorn Ten banged out 12 hits over 5 innings, including a 6-hit final frame in which the able batsmen plated 5 runs to seal the deal, while two Longhorn slabmeisters combined to limit the Vol-Staters to only 1 earned run, on 3 hits, while striking out 4.
Brendan Koester was a perfect 2-for-2 at the plate.
SEVIER-ANCE PAY Peerless Pelting: Clean-up hitter Andrew Arnold went 3-for-3 with a double and 2 RBIs... Driving Force: Nicholas Parrish’s 2 hits included a first inning, 2-run base knock and a fifth inning, run-scoring two-bagger... Clean Living: Brendan Koester was an immaculate 2-for-2 at the dish... Running Wild: Casey Simon pillaged a pair of bags and Matthew Higgins had a trio of sack-snatches, with both pawing the plate for 3 runs apiece... Pitchers’ Best Friends: The Longhorns had two double plays in the game, a Sweeney-to-Baugher, 6-4 twin-killing and a Simon-to-Baugher-to-Parrish, 6-4-3 two-turner... Sweet Sweeney: Trey Sweeney was handed the horsehide for the tournament-opening tilt and flung 3 innings of 2-hit ball to earn the victory.
Slingin’ Sweeney hurls a heater.
There goes Rhymin’ Simon,
stroking one of his 3 base hits in the game.
Cool as a cucumber in the early-spring heat,
Andrew Littlefield got the Game 2 start
and allowed only 1 hit over 2 innings.
VOLUNTEER STATE-MENTS Three Dimensional: Casey Simon was 3-for-3 with a double, 2 runs scored and 3 pilfered sacks, and Ryan Hamilton was 3-for-3 with 2 runs scored and 2 RBIs... Triple Crown: Bryce Elmore’s 2-for-3 afternoon affair included his team-best second triple of the season... The Three Rs: Not Reading, ’Riting and ’Rithmatic, but rather 3 RBIs for lead-off hitter Andrew Littlefield... Three’s (Good) Company: Littlefield hurled 2 innings of 1-hit ball, Nicholas Parrish shut the Blazers down over the next 2 frames and Andrew Arnold allowed nary a hit nor run in the concluding chapter as the three fiddle-hitchers combined for the shutout.
Bryce Elmore knocked out 2 base hits,
including a second inning triple.
With temperatures every bit as hot as the play of the Longhorns’ ball club,
catcher Andrew Arnold took a break to cool off with a refreshing libation.
RE-CAP A 2-0 record and only 2 runs allowed in pool play earned the Louisville Longhorns the No. 2 seed and a first round bye in Sunday’s bracket-play phase of the tournament, and the ’Horns used their well-deserved Sunday morning respite from the early-spring heat to answer the siren-call of the Wilderness at the Smokies’ indoor and outdoor waterparks. But after a morning of saturated fun, the Longhorns changed out of their board shorts and into their baseball business suits and proceeded to bedevil their semifinal opponents, the Greeneville (Tennessee) Little Devils, with a lethal combination of propitious pill-pasting and parsimonious pellet-projecting.
Matthew Higgins smites a first inning twin-bagger.
SUNDAY BESTS Four-Part Harmony: Four Longhorn batsmen—Andrew Littlefield, Casey Simon, Matthew Higgins and Trey Sweeney—knocked out 2 base hits apiece and accounted for 8 runs scored... Knock, Knock, Knock... Higgins knocked in 3 runs with a first inning double and a fourth inning single... Sac Lunch: After chalking up a sacrifice fly in the previous contest, Andrew Arnold delivered 2 SFs, good for 2 RBIs, in Sunday afternoon’s game... Potent Parrish: Nicholas Parrish went the distance atop the hill in the 4-inning run-rule affair, allowing but 4 singles and a lone run to earn his 7th victory of the season.
Portsider Nicholas Parrish delivers en route to earning win No. 7.
Right fielder Andrew Arnold is all smiles; perhaps something
that departing center fielder Noah Baugher just said?
RE-CAP In what was indisputably the best game of the season, one that saw four different batters robbed of base hits on remarkable defensive plays, two base runners thrown out on attempted steals, two other runners picked off of first base, one double play turned and one runner thrown out at home plate, the Louisville Longhorns were the last team standing in a 4-2, come-from-behind championship game victory against the East Tennessee (Chattanooga) Select at the Memorial Day NIT tournament in Sevierville, Tennessee—a hotly-contested affair in which the deciding run ended up crossing home plate a nano-second before the third out of the inning was made on the front end of a delayed double steal. The only breaths deeper than the one needed to recite the previous, lengthy sentence in its entirety were the ones exhaled by the Longhorn faithful during the tense, 6-inning nail-biter.
Andrew Littlefield went the distance and only allowed 2 hits.
CROWNING ACHIEVEMENTS Littlefield, Big Results: Making his second consecutive tournament championship game start, Andrew Littlefield turned in another sparkling performance, limiting the Select to 2 hits over 6 innings, and only one base runner over the final 5 frames... Rolling Thunder: For the second consecutive contest, Matthew Higgins was 2-for-3 with a booming double... Stealing the Show: Having swiped second base moments earlier, Trey Sweeney purloined home plate at the tail-end of a delayed double steal to score the go-ahead, and ultimately winning, run in the fourth inning... Whole Lotta Glove: First baseman Nicholas Parrish made a marvelous, running, over-the-shoulder, backhand nab of a foul-pop for the first out in the last inning and left fielder Brendan Koester darted in to make a sparkling shoe-string grab of a screaming line-drive for the final out of the game.
Another banner day for the champion Longhorns.
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