And 2008 ended with a poof!
The 2008 American Legion baseball season for the Post 334 team came to an end on the last day of July on the first day of the 10th District tournament in Edina. A 12-2 first-round loss to host Edina, then an 8-3 loss to Maple Grove in the second round of double-eliminati0n play made it official.
Post 334 subsequently finished the summer of 2008 with a 29-18 record, which meant a consecutive string of 30-win (or more) seasons since 1987 came to an end. It also ended of six consecutive seasons that Post 334 had won 40 or more games.
The team was in trouble from the get-go on this day when Edina scored five times in the second to take charge. Post 334, which had just three hits, scored two in the fifth on a sacrifice fly and infield out to close the deficit to 5-2, but Edina slowly pulled away over the last half of the game to close it via the 10-run rule in the last of the eighth, 12-2.
In the second game, Zac Sather hit his eighth home run of hte season in the top of the fourth to forge a 1-1 tie, but in the bottom half of the inning Maple Grove scored four times off lefty Brandon Baumgartner to take charge. Two more inthe sixth and one in the eighth secured what turned out to be an 8-3 game.
The end of season meant the careers of four-year players Corey Johnson and Preston Ghizoni also ended along with the three-year carees of Baumgartner, Joe Morrissette, Zac Sather, Andy Evans and Jordan Frogner and the two-year career of Steve Schroer all ended. Ghizoni, Johnson and Baumgartner, will pick up their second seasons in their respective college programs at North Dakota State, Augustana College and the University of North Dakota, while Sather begins his college career at St. Cloud State.
Posted: July 31st, 2008