Note: Sunday, October 1st was an off day for all WPK teams.
The Denver Brewers:
Bryant Cox gets his first taste of the big league life and it appears he likes it.
Cox worked 7 2/3rds innings, blanking the normally hard hitting Baltimore Lords on 6 hits, striking out 3 and walking 1. If it wasn't his first big league start and he hadn't already thrown 102 pitches (and that after having recently returned from the IL) he might have been given a chance to get the complete game shutout win. Fortunately, the bullpen did not let him down and he got his first big league win.
Josh Schaeffer hit his 19th home run of the season, scored twice, drove in 2 runs, and added to his MGL-best walk total with two bases on balls to get to 107 for the season.
Val Guzman drove in a run to become the second MGL player to crack 100 this season (Baltimore's Robert Mustard has 101).
Joe McPhillips hit his 27th double of the season and
Zacarias Martell went 2 for 4 in the game, scoring one run and driving in another.
The Shoeless Joe League Pennant Race:
Well, I was really hoping that this would come down to the final day of the regular season.
But the El Paso Dawgs had other ideas and the Houston Cavaliers also gave them a hand.
El Paso is the SJL champ for the first time in their history after getting a walk-off win against the reigning champ Columbus. Former Brewer Brad Sherman was the walk-off hero, hitting a solo homerun to lead off the bottom of the 9th as a pinch-hitter against Columbus' talented 22-year old future rotation anchor Bill Thompson.
And somehow Philly managed to get their butts kicked by the 98-loss Houston Cavaliers. And that was that.
Still, I have to say that I am personally thrilled to see the El Paso Dawgs rise from their status of the laughingstock of the league for the first decade of the WPK existence to finally earning their chance for championship glory. They will have to defeat the now 110-win Denver Brewers to claim the ultimate prize, but hey, stranger things have happened. I wouldn't bet against David in this particular battle with Goliath. (Even though my team is Goliath in this analogy.)
