QUICK SCORE SUMMARY - CLAXTON SHIELD 2006

5

CONGRATULATIONS 
QUEENSLAND RAMS
2006 CLAXTON SHIELD CHAMPIONS!

UNDEFEATED RAMS CLAIM 5TH CLAXTON SHIELD

But, if you have to lose such an important game, there are MUCH more palatable ways of doing it than the gallant Victorian Aces did tonight when they failed to close out a FIVE-RUN lead after six innings. The Aces led the game from the start and maintained 5-0, 6-1 and 7-2 leads until the walls came crashing down in the bottom of the seventh inning. It was a fate too horrible to contemplate for Victorian fans who lost narrowly to Queensland in the 2003 Claxton Final and to NSW in the corresponding fixture last season. Three such gut-wrenching losses in five years is a bloody bitter pill and they will know better than anyone that there is no prize for coming second! 

To say that the game is hard to analyse and report is an understatement because, even allowing for Queensland's devastating five-run seventh inning, it is still hard to see exactly where Victoria lost the game. In the end it seemed to come down to the fact that, while both teams were scraping the bottom of their bullpens, the Rams had a little more poise and experience going for them "at the death". While the Rams closed a massive gap somewhat towards the end, they were still out-hit 12-10 in the game and Victoria left 11 on base compared with 6... about the only offensive statistic that Queensland had the edge was in runs... and you don't win a prize for guessing what statistic counts the most! 

One unfortunate fact of life in these competitions is that the semi-final games are very often better games of baseball where teams have to call upon their best pitchers to give themselves the very best chance of making the Grand Final. Then, having made it through to the big game after six games in seven days, the pitching stocks of both teams is either severely depleted or dog tired, or both... this was the case once again at Blacktown in 2006.

What a pity for Victorian fans that starter Greg Wiltshire ran out of arm strength in the fifth inning after sailing through four magnificent frames with no hits, no runs and seven strikeouts. For a moment it looked like he might be on course to top his brilliant performance at Claxton 2005 but his heavy workload in club baseball where he has tried to rest in recent weeks came to haunt him at just the worst moment. The well-performed Russell Spear did his best to backup after his strong performance mid-week, but he could go no further on short rest. 

19yo Donnie Hendricks had shown plenty of his great potential at Claxton 2006, but he struck a speed-hump tonight with a barrage of hits from the seasoned Queensland hitters that rocked the youngster in that decisive seventh frame. He had to be replaced by experienced lefty Cameron Forbes who could only contribute two wild pitches and a walk as the wheels quite literally fell off for the Victorians. Adam Bright entered the game too late to completely stop the carnage in another pretty good outing, while we cannot blame veteran utility Peter Moylan for allowing the winning run unearned!

As mentioned, the Rams' pitching story was quite the opposite as it finished in triumph after appearing to have given up a game losing start to the Victorians. Highly respected former New York Mets pro Wayne Ough was chased from the mound early with seven hits from four innings, while neither Drew Naylor nor Mark Kearney looked capable of stemming the Aces flow on this big occasion. An unsung hero for the Rams will be Tristan Loetzsch who hasn't had too many memorable games in his AMLB career but he found the most important blank innings of his life at just the right time tonight. It allowed two of Queensland's bullpen stars of Claxton 2006 in Matt Gahan and Phil Stockman to collect the spoils of victory!

You can look for yourselves below to see those same familiar names listed among the Queensland hitters and RBI men in this game as they have been in most of their other games... this has been a key to their consistent success! 

Victoria tended to share around the offence a bit more during the tournament with different players coming through at different times in different games, but it should have been no surprise that Berg, Clarke, Kent and Dingle are among their average leaders for the tournament. Mathew Kent very nearly found a phone box and changed into his Superman costume for this game and he was nearly the superhero with his great 4-5 (3RBI) game in this Grand Final!

To finish our report where it began, Victorians will still be shaking their heads while assuring you that being a baseball supporter is a "tough gig"... Queenslanders will confirm what we all know... that baseball is the greatest game on earth! 'Flintoff & Dunn' CONGRATULATE the undefeated Queensland Rams on securing the fifth Claxton Shield victory, not including the ABL Championships won by Queensland teams. Regardless of anything else that might be said in the aftermath of a pulsating Grand Final game, you simply cannot take anything away from a team that emerged from a seven game Claxton Shield campaign UNDEFEATED... they took on a "team of destiny" look at Claxton 2006! 

Well done QUEENSLAND RAMS... it will all start again next year... at Blacktown again we suppose? NO, sorry folks, we no longer have the energy or the inclination to get into this negativity again... well, not until next year that is!! See ya!

VICS PULL LAST INNINGS ACE 3-2 OVER NSW!

Look, we've said enough about the AWFUL situation that wastes so much of our energy and print pointing out just why the Claxton Shield MUST be moved from Blacktown... we don't suppose that anyone with the will or the willpower is listening so, thankfully, we can give this a rest for the time being... but we will NEVER be silenced as long as this situation remains! 

As we mentioned in my recent report, the Victorian Aces had beaten the Patriots in a fabulous game on opening night, but they faced the "odds against" situation of having to make lightning strike twice to earn their way into the Grand Final. The fact that they were able to do this in another "barn burner" between two obviously evenly matched teams is a great credit to the management of the Victorian team and the character of the players they have chosen. To overcome the two-time defending champions who know the Blacktown venue better than their own backyards TWICE in the same short event is a victory worthy of more merit than usual... nobody could deny the Aces their place in the final against Queensland!

Cometh the hour cometh THE MAN! The man in this case is big Victorian pitcher Simon Beresford. The easy-going 23yo colossus from Melbourne seems to thrive on the cauldron of the Claxton Shield, and any other big event in Australia! The 2005 Golden Arm Award winner has battled his way through another tough pro season in the USA where an untimely injury derailed a promising season and he found himself unwanted by the Milwaukee Brewers organisation after three years of pro baseball that, to be honest, didn't reach any dizzy heights. How this is possible when we have again witnessed the unique talent of young Beresford on home soil is one of those unanswerable questions? The only thing we can point to is opportunity and the Brewers seemed determined to use Simon as a short-innings reliever when everything we have seen of him in Australia suggests that his pitching talents are best suited to starting... but who are we to tell them!?

Anyway, Simon was reduced to human proportions on opening night with a solid, but not imposing, 4.0 innings start against the same NSW team and his Golden Arm Award form looked far away, but then, the big fellow has been a bit short of live pitching this summer and it was a lot to expect of him. Now, just when you thought that we'd finished with talk about the "home advantage" enjoyed by NSW, we urge you to consider the fact that Simon Beresford has had to return to Melbourne in between starts to attend to non-baseball matters and he would not have made the trip back to Sydney if the Aces had missed the finals. The fact that he was able to step off the plane and produce another spectacular performance in the hottest of Australian baseball kitchens says a lot about the talent and attitude of this likeable big guy! He is a rough chance to retain the Golden Arm Award after his 7.0 innings quality start in another Claxton Shield semi-final.

Youngsters Edlich and Wilson contributed one out each for the Victorians tonight, while a maturing Adam Bright has become a very important lefty reliever with another composed and impressive closure that earned him the win.

For NSW the experienced Craig Anderson was very good as we would expect, but we must wonder why he was dragged from the game after just 3.1 innings of quality work? LA Angels pro Richard Thompson was solid enough, but not brilliant, while tonight's losing pitcher Matt Bennett was just in the wrong place at the wrong time when Victoria mounted a last innings two-out rally to snatch the game.

We won't try to analyse why NSW out-hit the Aces 9-5 while the Vics left 8 runners on base compared with NSW 6... the answer can only lie in the fact that the NSW pitchers issued six walks whereas the Aces gifted just one... what a killer statistic this always seems to be at the end of a tight game! Anyway, most of the batting honours went to the Patriots with the prolific Gavin Fingleson standing out with his 3-4 and RBI game. Not too far behind was the often mentioned Andrew Graham who is growing and growing in stature with another two hits in a pitching dominated game.

Young Minnesota Twins pro Paul Rutgers surged late in the tournament to prove his liking of the Claxton Shield once again and his 2-5 with the game winning RBI tonight will no doubt be one of his career highlights so far. The dangerous Hayden Dingle also banged an important double in the pressure-cooker environment tonight to earn his 'big league' stripes.

We've deliberately left until last our congratulations to one of Victoria's great stalwarts and one of the most respected players in Victorian baseball, Ben Utting. Utting's HUGE RBI double and game-winning run was another euphoric highlight in a splendid career for the former Melbourne Reds ABL star. We used to refer to the younger Ben Utting as "The Rolls Royce of short stops" during the ABL era, but he has rarely been praised for his hitting, a fact that probably cut short his professional career with the Atlanta Braves. He won a BIG game with the bat today... GREAT STUFF Benny!

We think that it is always fitting in top level sport when the two most deserving teams battle for the Championship... this is exactly what will happen at Blacktown tomorrow night... no "home field advantage"... good luck to both fine teams!!

Oh, and while we have said plenty about their good fortune of playing at home for the past few years, we simply cannot overlook the fact that this abundantly talented and deep NSW Patriots team have NARROWLY missed the chance of winning the famous Claxton Shield for the THIRD successive year. "Asterisk" aside, it is a performance deserving of the highest praise and EVERYONE in baseball knows just how powerful they have been during this era in our baseball history!

RAMS INTO FINAL 2-0 OVER GALLANT WA!

Secondly, for the baseball purists, and you can count 'Flintoff & Dunn' in this, it gives our illustrious Claxton Shield even more credibility when our strongest teams produce a classic "pitcher's duel" like today, as happens in most big baseball contests when the pressure is at its most intense and when there is a lot at stake.

Top billing today, very obviously, goes to the Queensland pitching duo of Matt Gahan and Tristan Crawford who will both sleep easily tonight knowing that they have both produced the performances of their AMLB lives and historic ones as far as the Claxton Shield is concerned with a complete game five-hit combined SHUTOUT! Something that was produced alone by Victoria's Golden Arm Award winner Simon Beresford in 2005, but it has rarely been done before!

Gahan, a former New York Mets professional, has maintained a very useful record in AMLB from the IBLA era and with the Queensland Rams, but we can never remember him producing such a memorable start than he has on this occasion to stifle the dangerous WA lineup to the melodic tune of four hits, zero walks and six huge KKKKKK's! Take a bow Matt Gahan you have done everything you can... and you've done it magnificently!

Not far behind him, and maybe even more imposing, was former Minnesota Twins pro Tristan Crawford who has been good rather than great so far in AMLB... today he was nearly great! Like Gahan, he walked none and gave up only one hit and, for the second time in this tournament, I cannot quite understand why our information says that he was not credited with a save... someone must have changed the scoring rules without letting us know!!? Great job Tristan!

Next on the order of merit were the gallant WA pitchers. Unfortunately the impressive Scott Mitchinson took the loss and he might feel like a loser tonight after allowing all of the offensive action for Queensland during his 3.0 innings... but this would be doing him a bit of an injustice. The impressive young 'Philly' pro made the mistake of walking three, but then the first run he allowed was unearned after a leadoff error in the second inning. The run scored by Queensland in the third was also "scrambled" on a fielder's choice... but then, that is what big game baseball is all about! Scott Mitchinson should not feel too bad about himself... he will have much worse days when he enjoys the spoils of victory! 

Much like the Rams' pitchers today, we can't remember middle-reliever Brendan Wise having a better day in AMLB than he did today under the Claxton Shield spotlight. The Detroit Tigers Rookie League player pitched with the aplomb of Detroit's World Series MVP legend Jack Morris to allow nothing more than one hit over his four fantastic innings... top job! Brendon Thomas also did himself proud once again as one of the really consistent performers over the recent history of AMLB.

On a day when offence was at a premium, WA might bemoan the fact that they actually out-hit the Rams 5-3, but then when you consider that Queensland's stingy pitching duo did not add a single walk to their efforts, it really highlights what those free-passes can do for a team in our beloved game of baseball!

It does not surprise us to see the quality players getting the job done at this stage of the carnival with Roneberg, Utting and Naughton doing the hitting for Queensland, while the well performed Sutherland and Simpson supplied the two huge RBI's that really mattered in this game. Brett Roneberg, importantly, also milked two decisive walks in a game when hits were very hard to come by and when any on-base was welcomed... what a superb, unselfish team contributor he is!

It is a well worn and perhaps overused statement at times like these, but we can't find anything more apt than to repeat that there maybe didn't deserve to be a loser in this game and that the game of baseball was the clear winner! WA can be very proud of another terrific effort at Claxton Shield 2006 while Queensland will be hoping that their undefeated run in this tournament doesn't come unstuck at just the most vital moment... they have been great, no doubt about it!