24 hours after Saturday’s Youth Playoffs it will be the turn of the country’s top tier league teams to commence their postseason campaigns.
The Herts Falcons and the London Mets have already booked their place in the National Baseball League (NBL) Semi-Finals by virtue of finishing first and second, respectively, in the regular season, but for the teams occupying the next four places in the NBL standings, it will be do-or-die this Sunday, 1 September.
The BBF has announced that both NBL Quarter-Finals will be played at Grovehill Ballpark in Hemel Hempstead – the home of Herts Baseball Club.
The first NBL playoff game is at 11:00am between fourth-placed Harlow Nationals and fifth-placed Bracknell Blazers. Harlow are the reigning NBL champions, but they will have a difficult task against the Blazers who have proven to be very difficult to play against with good pitching and a defence which on their day can limit opponents’ offences to just a handful of runs. The two teams have met twice this year. On both occasions Bracknell came out on top with 6-4 and 6-5 wins.
In the second quarter-final third-placed Southampton Mustangs will clash with sixth-placed Essex Arrows. Southampton have had their best ever season in the NBL with 23 wins and only 5 losses. Some would say that they were very unlucky to have to go through the playoffs after finishing just a game back on the leaders and they were pushed into third after applying a tie-break rule. They go into this game with a 16-game winning streak. The Arrows sneaked into the playoffs on the last day of the season jumping over the Lakenheath Diamondbacks who lost to the Nationals. This has energised their fans. Can this momentum carry them into the Semi-Finals? If it does, it would be a major upset. The game starts at 2:00pm.
Admission is free for this event. Click here for address and directions to Grovehill Ballpark.