Central vs. Frankford Baseball Championship

Two weeks ago I attended the PIAA District XII Philadelphia public league baseball championship game between Frankford High School and Central High School. My friend Pat used to live down the street from one of the stars on Central (Ian Lewis, CF, junior, Central's lone All-Star). The championship game was at Campbell's Field across the river in Camden, NJ - the home of the Atlantic League's Riversharks. The shot above is from the 1st base side with the setting sun behind the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.

Frankford's senior hurler, Esteban Meletiche, after getting roughed up a little bit at the start of the game, he settled down and threw hot fire all night long. The stands had a good amount of fans on each side, but Frankford's fans were definitely the more vocal. In addition to their voices, they brought along several drums and a cowbell. By the third inning, they had much more to cheer about as well with Frankford piling on runs at the bottom of each inning.

The bottom of the 6th (high school normally plays 7 innings) came around with Frankford up 8 or 9 runs. Meletiche, one of Frankford's 7 league All-Stars, stepped up to the plate with 2 men on base and belted a triple deep into the outfield batting in the game ending runs and enacting the 10 run mercy rule. The Frankford bench emptied onto the field (along with some of the fans from the 3rd base side) swarming Meletiche.

It was great to see a small-scale baseball game. I forgot how fun it is on a non-MLB level (I lost faith in MLB in 1993). It reminded me of going to a Pittsfield Mets (now Tri-City ValleyCats) game in Western Massachusetts around 17 years ago. I definitely think I'll be heading back across the bridge to catch some Riversharks games - it's a lovely stadium. A flickr set of photos from the game.