BNN Weekly Report
This Week in the CBO, BMU, and GBRL
by Nat Wright-Kawolski
14 March 2303
2303 Nuka Cup Rounds 5 and 6
All four regional tournaments are complete with the last four teams remaining. None of the four remaining were the host teams, thus #1 seeds, as both remaining #1 seeds, Nordhagen Beach and Fort Hagen, fell in the finals. Now, the four regional teams move on to Diamond City where they will play in the semifinals with the losers moving on to the Third-Place Series and the winners playing for the 2303 Nuka Cup crown.
Those four winners are as follows with the brackets attached below:
University Point Bracket Winner - #3 Vault 81 Dwellers
Fort Hagen Bracket Winner - #3 Starlight Lady Killers
Nordhagen Beach Bracket Winner - #2 Roxbury Rad Sox
Jamaica Plain Bracket Winner - #3 Atom Cats
Vault 81 and Starlight will face off in one of the semifinals series, while Roxbury and Atom will face off in the other.
Top Individual Performance
The Rad Sox's Gwinnett Southie held Goodneighbor in check for 8.1 innings of shutout ball. He allowed just three hits and struck out three in the 1-0 Roxbury win. The Hancocks' Quincy Eloquent also pitched a good game in the pitchers' duel by allowing just one earned run on seven hits with two walks and two strikeouts in 6.1 innings.
Heavy Hitter
Atom's 32-year-old RF Melon Sanderson is having one heck of a preseason so far. Sanderson has gone deep four times in the 2303 Nuka Cup Tournament, including two more in the Jamaica Plain Bracket Final Series versus County Crossing. In Game 1, a 14-2 thrashing by the Cats to give them a 2-0 series lead, Sanderson was 3 for 4 with a double, a home run, a walk, two runs scored, and three RBI. In the series-clinching Game 3, Sanderson was only 1 for 2, but that one hit proved to be the game-winning home run in the bottom of the 6th inning. Sanderson also walked twice, scored once, and drove himself in.
Wildest Game
Offense has not been spectacular so far in the 2303 Nuka Cup Tournament with lots of low-scoring games overall. Down 2 games to 0 in their series, Roxbury went on to win the next three to clinch the Nordhagen Beach Bracket over the host Party Boys. That included a shootout in Game 4 when the Rad Sox won 14-9. The Sox thrashed starter Matt Ranger, scoring nine runs in the first two innings. They added three more in the 5th for a 12-0 lead at that time before holding off the Boys' comeback efforts. Six Sox and five Boys had multiple hits in the game. Roxbury's catcher, Biddy Swenson, outdueled everyone for Game MVP honors, going 2 for 4 with a double, a home run, a walk, three runs scored, and four driven in. Dirty Dog Sapienza was the Boys' best run producer, going 2 for 5 with two home runs, two runs scored, and three RBI.
Season Pass Report
The Season Pass Tournament is now to its final two teams, the top two seeds in the tournament, #1 Echo Lake Harbormen and #2 Victory Cave Crickets. Those two teams faced off in the 2302 Season Pass Series to determine the best of the NWL-VL alliance. The Harbormen need to win just one game in the finals, while the Cave Crickets would need to beat Echo Lake twice. Main Season Pass Association writer Evan Guy is set to cover the finals report, which we will blast out to our baseball fans in the Boston area.