The British Baseball Federation has just announced the format and schedule of this Saturday’s Single-A League National Championship. Herts Baseball Club is represented by the Herts Raptors who reached the Semi-Final stage by finishing top of their division and are the second seed overall with 10 wins and 4 losses in the regular season.
A win for the Haverhill Blackjacks over the Guildford Mavericks in the quarter-final on Sunday has determined that the Blackjacks will be the Raptors’ opponent in the Semi-Final.
Haverhill had a record of 7 wins and 7 losses during the regular season. In their head-to-head meeting on 23 June the Raptors came out on top with a 31-12 win, so the team from Hertfordshire may have the psychological advantage but the form guide goes out of the window in the postseason as shown by the very closely fought quarter-final games last weekend.
Herts Raptors manager, Arnie Longboy, will have some difficult decisions to make when determining his starting lineup. One of them will be to select the team’s starting pitcher in this knockout game. Among the potential starters are Under-17 players Brodie Caress, Charlie Mayhew, Will Zucker and Zack Longboy, but the team also has several older pitchers such as Jeff Witter, Jim Arnott and Theo Scheepers.
Both semi-finals will be played at Farnham Park this Saturday, 7 September. The Herts Raptors vs Haverhill Blackjacks game will start at 11:00am. The winners will meet in the final on the same day with estimated start time of 3:00pm. The brand new baseball venue is expected to be packed with baseball fans as eight other teams are in action on the same day as part of the AAA and AA-League semi-finals.