The Baseball NZ Nationals are over for another year, and this years event will go down as one of the biggest and most competitive yet. Teams from as far away as Christchurch, Palmerston North and Northland competed with the Auckland Clubs for Championship trophies in grades from U11 to Seniors.

Yesterday we saw boxing legend David "the Terminator" Tua throw the first pitch of the Seniors Final, and that kicked off a thrilling match between our HP Seniors team against West City. Any game between these two promises a thrilling matchup, and this game was no exception - WC got an early lead, then HP came back but WC had a strong 6th inning that our team could not answer, so WC take the seniors trophy this season.  Even though our team lost, Aaron Campbell won the award for Best Batter in the Senior league - WELL DONE AARON!!!

In Under 17, our team coached by Aaron Campbells played the first of the finals on Sunday against Bayside. Our team started well and was able to build a good lead to take out the Championship. Special mention goes to Luke Hansen, he played a strong game and also took out the awards for Best Batter, Best Pitcher and MVP - WELL DONE U17 SQUAD !!!!

Under 15 was only between our team and Bayside, and despite a strong start and leading into the 6th inning we lost the first game and then the second on Saturday. In the third game on Sunday our team was determined to get a win and just lost out in the last inning 3-2 against a strong Bayside lineup.

Our Under 13 and Under 11 teams played well but couldn't match up against strong Bayside and Central City teams - with Central taking out both grades.

This was a great showcase of our club and of Baseball in NZ, and we can't forget those who made it happen. There were so many from our club who played an important part in this, with food, umpiring, scoring, coaching, or just general helping to put up or pack away. Special mention to Lars Hansen for his fantastic work on making our fields look like real baseball diamonds.

There are heaps of photos on our Flickr.com website - check them out on our 2010 Nationals page on Flickr.com

Rookies Split Doubleheader with Bayside to Stay out of the Basement

It's been a rough few weeks for our beloved Rookies that led to the titanic clash in the first ever “Battle for the Basement.”  Firstly Dean ”Deano” Henney, the Rookies cagey center fielder, won the Best-Injury-of-the-Year award before the season even finished when he broke his leg sliding into home plate during a game with the North Shore Giants several weeks ago. Then like the All Blacks in the 1995 World Cup Final, the whole team battled food poisoning prior a big game against the lads from Central City, during which larger-than-life second baseman Mark “Mad Dog” McLaren caught a wicked bad hop to the face. Fortunately with the power of modern electron microscopes, team physician, Dr. Ira Killmore, was able to locate the scratch and give Mad Dog a right bollicking for wasting his time.

The Trivia night has been cancelled - but will be held at the start of next season so if you have prizes to donate please contact Adelita

The ABA Premier season concluded on Sunday with a great day of Baseball at our fields in Lloyd Elsmore Park.

First up, the HP Cyclones had a strong win (7-4) against the Angels to take 3rd place, ensuring that HP teams held 2 of the top 3 positions in the league. For details of the game click this link ABA Playoff.

The final was HP Sky Rangers against West City Wildcats for the championship title, and our Sky Rangers dominated from the early innings against  the Wildcats, and held on to tame the Wildcats. A combination of some great pitching from Andrew Marck (Pinky!) and John Lee shut down a strong WC batting line up. 

When it came turn to bat, our team dominated with some massive hitting and stealing bases to close out the game in the 7th inning with a mercy rule win by 18 runs to 2. Full details of the game - ABA Finals

This win is a great lead in to the Nationals, where we see our teams going against All-Star teams from across the country. We are hosting the Nationals this weekend (26-28 Feb) so looking forward to more great baseball and some more wins from our teams across the grades.