The Pennsylvania Babe Ruth state tournament will resume play today after a complete rainout Friday. The games scheduled for will be played on Tuesday. In today's games, Wayne County will play Bensalem this morning at 10, Altoona will play Valley West at 1, the host team West End will play Mifflin County at 4, and Media will play Pine Forge at 7 to finish the day.
The tournament's opening ceremonies were supposed to be held Friday. However, they were canceled because of the weather.
"We had to cancel the opening ceremonies because of the rain, and now we won't be able to do them due to not having enough time," said Jim Winder, president of West End Babe Ruth.
Mike Sharrow, an umpire for the league that is serving in his 35th year, was going to be inducted into the Pennsylvania Babe Ruth Hall of Fame. He would have joined Jim and Bonnie Winder, as well as Tom Marnon and Dave Cipriani as members from West End to be inducted into the Hall.
In order to be elected into the Hall, one must coach for at least 15 years or have 20 years of service within the league.
Today, Winder and others from West End will report to Logue Field at 6:30 a.m. to prep the field so that the conditions are playable.
"I don't expect to have to use Green Ave. (Winder Field) but we may have to. We want to try and keep everything at Logue Field," said Winder.
West End lost its first game Thursday night, 10-8 to Altoona.
"We came out flat and played Altoona twice in districts and won both times. It's hard to beat a team three times. Don't get me wrong, Altoona is a good team so I don't want to take away credit from them," said West End manager Scott Niklaus
West End pitchers struggled to stay ahead, often falling behind 2-0 and 3-1 in the count.
"We got behind and couldn't set our pitches the way we wanted to. We also made uncharacteristic errors that were mindless and we didn't produce with the bats and hit the ball when needed until the 5th or 6th inning," said Niklaus
With the tournament format as pool play, West End still has time to recover from its first lost and have to show up to play a tough Mifflin County team, which won its first game Thursday, 33-2 over Brandywine.
"With this loss, we need to find the negatives and if we can come back and turn the page and put it behind us we will be fine," said Niklaus.
"Our main priority is to try and take things one step at a time. Our first goal was to win districts and we did. Our next goal is to win states," said Niklaus.
"We must be ready to play Mifflin County, we were in this situation when the kids were 13 years old and know what it takes. We have strong kids and we will find out what we are made up after today,"?said Niklaus.
With it being towards the end of the summer, health issues are a little concern for the team with some illness's going around and kids recovering from being sick.
