Seales dominates for Philly
By By Marty Stamper / EMG sports assistant
July 13, 2004
PHILADELPHIA Jakweon Seales turned in a dominating performance on the mound as Philadelphia Westside blanked West Lauderdale 4-0 in the opening round of the Dixie Youth District 4 12-under tournament Monday at Northside Park.
In the other 12-under contest, Philadelphia National tallied 13 runs in the top of the fourth inning to rout East Mississippi 16-3.
West Lauderdale and East Mississippi meet tonight at 6:30 in an elimination game, and Philadelphia National and Westside clashing in the winners' bracket contest at 7:30.
The winner of the four-team tournament will advance to the Dixie Youth Majors state tournament at Pascagoula.
Seales tossed a one-hitter and struck out 14 in six innings to lead Westside. He walked two and hit one batter.
Westside didn't exactly wear the ball out at the plate, managing just three hits. The key blow was a three-run homer by Andries Huddleston to right field in the top of the fourth to pad a 1-0 lead. Jerry Calloway and Ben Young drew walks prior to Huddleston's two-out blast.
Westside had taken a 1-0 lead in the top of the third as Jamie Hill led off with a triple and scored on a single by Scottie Brown.
Blake Thomas' two-out single in the bottom of the fourth was West Lauderdale's only hit.
Philadelphia National 16
East Mississippi 3
Brandon Burton's three-run homer to left field in the top of the fourth inning snapped a 3-3 tie and the host team went on to parade 18 batters to the plate before East Mississippi could record three outs.
Philadelphia National scored 13 runs in the big inning. In addition to Burton's blast, Kyle Barrett had an RBI double, Cassius Lunderman and Brandon Jones both had a two-run single, and Burton and Hunter Stovall added RBI singles. East Mississippi also committed three errors in the uprising.
Burton and Jones both had two hits for the winners.
Djon John, Lunderman, and Ivan Willis combined to allow only three hits in the four-inning run-rule win.
East Mississippi, which drew four straight walks to start the bottom of the first inning, got a two-run single from Gabe Lofton and a single each from Cameron Burford and Ben Griffin.
11-Year-olds
West Lauderdale 4
Philadelphia 3
West Lauderdale took a 1-0 lead in the best-of-three series between the only 11-year-old teams in the district.
Trey McPherson scored two runs for West, including what turned out to be the winning run in the top of the sixth inning. He reached base on a walk.
Philadelphia took a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first on a two-run homer by Caleb McKee.
West scored once in the top of the second on a solo homer by Eli Alexander and took a 3-2 lead with two runs in the top of the fourth.
In the fourth, McPherson reached on an error with Gary Thomas and Cory Goodman following with singles.
Philadelphia got its final run in the bottom of the sixth.
Goodman had two singles for West, while Zach Carpenter had one single.
Kameron Thomas had two singles for Philadelphia with C.J. Johnson, Michael Mingo, Drakian Wells, and Sam Benson getting one each.