Mustangs are World Series bound

Noah Yates couldn’t suppress a smile each time he got the ball back at the mound during the sixth inning of the Mustang Eastern Zone championship game on Saturday. It took the Chesterfield Baseball Club all-star team’s closer just six pitches to shut the door on the Adirondack Heat (N.Y.) and send the CBC to Texas this week for the World Series.

Yates fielded the first out on a slow dribbler back to the mound off the first pitch. His second pitch yielded a routine fly ball to left field. The final batter in the Heat’s line up proved more problematic. Yates worked to a 1-2 count before forcing another fly ball to left field. Teammate Noah Witt fielded the ball cleanly, showed it to the umpire for confirmation and ran to join the celebration on the mound of an 11-3 victory.

“We’ve got a right handed pitcher [Grant Squyers] that throws pretty hard and then the left hander comes in, Noah [Yates], and he throws strikes … They’ve been a real good combination for us all year, right hander, left hander, different speeds, different movements,” CBC Mustang all-star manager Jack Horner said.

Adirondack entered the Eastern Zone tournament undefeated but fell to the CBC All-Stars in Friday’s second round game 6-4. The Heat rebounded with a 9-1 win over Vesta (Penn.) in Friday night’s semifinal to set up the rematch with the Chesterfield team.

Due to their earlier win, the CBC All-Stars needed only to win one game of two planned on Saturday to claim the Eastern Zone championship, but the Heat jumped out to an early 2-1 lead.

The CBC All-Stars went ahead 3-2 in the third inning, then broke the game open in the fourth, 7-3, behind hits by Jackson Horner, Bailey Peck, Brandon Pond and Campbell. The team added four runs in the fifth for the final tally.

In Thursday’s first round game, the CBC All-Stars erased a 9-1 deficit to Vesta for a 17-9 decision to enter the top bracket.

The all-star team has only been together since the end of June when the CBC regular season ended. Fifteen players were chosen from the various squads to represent the CBC in their quest to make the Mustang World Series being held in Dallas, Texas this week. Though the team has played together for only a few weeks as the CBC All-Star team, the core players have actually been together much longer according to Horner.

“All the kids play in the CBC, but then there’s a core group of kids that play on another travel team together. The starting nine guys here have probably played about 60 games [together] since April, so they play a lot of baseball,” Horner said.

The team will have their work cut out for them this week, as they face teams from Texas, Florida, California, Illinois, Puerto Rico and Mexico; but the coaches know what to expect, and they expect their team to be one of the best there.

“It’ll be good baseball,” Horner said. “I went to [the World Series] last year with a Mustang Zone team to understand what happens, so I’ve been there before. I know what it’s like, I know the experience, what we need to do, what we need to not do; so hopefully, if the boys go to play and if we get to the final four out there like the CBC Bronco [11] team is, I think we can win.”

Leading the team offensively was Jackson Horner, who went 3-for-4 with two runs scored; and Peck, who went 4-for-4 with one run scored.

Jake Fox went 3-for-3 to lead Adirondack’s efforts.