Grant Lewis

I had the pleaure of watching Grant Lewis pitch for the Orland Park Magic at Bremen High School in Midlothian this afternoon. Grant played two (2007 and 2008) seasons with the Warriors. He led the 2008 team in batting average, on-base % and runs batted in. Grant also led the pitching staff that season in earned run average as well as WHIP (walk and hits per inning pitched). More importantly, he was one of our team leaders and was always a positive influence for the team.

Grant continues to make significant progress as a baseball player. His performance this afternoon was impressive as he held High School players (including Seniors) scoreless in this outing. The Warriors are proud of Grant Lewis and wish him the best of luck in the upcoming seasons. Click on any photo for an enlarged view:

Baseball's Hall of Fame

My father and I visited the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York last week. This was my first visit to Cooperstown. You may CLICK HERE to view my photos from the trip. You can also click on any of the photos below to view an enlarged image.

I captured this photo of Doubleday Field. Legend has it that baseball was invented on or near this site.

The Hall of Fame is a "shrine" to baseball. Hopefully, this photo conveys the almost church-like environment inside the building:

Finally, I spent quite a bit of time reading the plaques for the individuals inducted into the Hall of Fame. CLICK HERE to view photos of some of my favorite individual plaques--including the First Class (the first five players inducted into the Hall of Fame): Babe Ruth, Christy Mattewson, Walter Johnson, Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner. I also included photos of the plaques of three of the players who we discuss often during practices: Fergie Jenkins, Ted Williams and Jackie Robinson. I pulled three of the plaques from the Chicago Cubs' famous double play combination and combined it with a popular poem from the times into Photoshop to create this poster:

A Visit to PNC Park

On September 8th, I visited PNC Park in Pittsburgh to watch the Chicago Cubs play the Pittsburgh Pirates. The following photo captured the first pitch of the game. You may click within the photo to see a larger version.

The Cubs lead off hitter, Ryan Theriot, started the game with a base hit. Then, the next seven Cubs batters also reached base safely on hits before the ninth batter of the inning, Ryan Dempster, was retired on a sacrifice bunt. The Cubs tied a Major League record with eight consecutive hits to start a game!

CLICK HERE to if you would like to view the rest of my photos from Pittsburgh from that day.

Warriors Announce Roster for 2010!

The rosters have been finalized for the 2010 season. We’ve decided to go with two Metro teams—both of which will have a mix of 13 and 14 year old players.

Tim Swiontek has already confirmed commitments from each of his 13 players. Please contact me at gnagel60@comcast.net or 708-846-1466 (cell) to confirm your commitment to next year’s Warriors team. Note that we are going with a reduced roster size this season to allow for fewer deactivations. All players will hold full-time roster spots with the exception of Jim Robley who once again prefers the part-time option this season. As I mentioned in some earlier blog postings, the registration costs for the travel team will increase somewhat (from $415 last year to approximately $500 this season). That increase will be dedicated to more playing time (fewer players on the roster) as well as more indoor professional development sessions this winter. Like last year, players will also incur the regular OYA Pony League registration fee.

The creation of this second team was very important as it allowed for more players to play baseball—and it allowed for us to allocate most (all but one) of the returning Warriors to one team. If only one team had survived, 13 less players would play baseball and at least four of the returning Warriors would have been replaced with new players based upon the independent tryout evaluations. But, the creation of the second team was a challenge. First, there was the issue of identifying a qualified coach. Then, the roster needed to be populated with enough quality players—even after some of the top performing players at the tryouts were approached by other full-time travel teams.

The first two steps of this process went forward with relative ease. Then, we were faced with a barrier. Tim Swiontek was unable to identify an assistant coach to help with the team! As you know, having success with one of these travel teams takes considerable time—and this requires assistance from other qualified coaches. After calling the parents of each of the 13 players, the team still only had one coach! This lack of an assistant coach was going to be a deal-breaker for forming the second team.

I approached Dennis Bresingham (the coach) to see if he would be willing to assist Tim with the other Warriors’ team. Dennis has the coaching experience—and more importantly a shared philosophy regarding coaching youth sports—to be a valuable addition to that team. More significantly, Dennis then had to ask his son if he would be willing to move to the other team for the benefit of both Warriors teams.

As most of you would agree, last year’s season was a very special one for the Warriors. As a second-year Warrior, Dennis Bresingham was an important part of that. At considerable sacrifice, Dennis has agreed to move from our team to play with the new team. His sacrifice (along with his father’s willingness to coach) resulted in the creation of this second team, keeping the remainder of Warriors playing together, and allowing us to keep our existing coaching staff (Jim Waner, Paul Lebert and Rich Tannebaum) in place. Please join me in expressing appreciation to Dennis for his decision.

I’m really looking forward to coaching this group of players for another season. I’ll be in touch soon regarding an optional Fall workout/scrimmage session for our Warriors!

Here are the rosters:

13/14U Warriors- Tim Swiontek

Bresingham, Dennis
Davis, Justin
Dempsey, Tyler
Giron, A.J.
Gurgone, Matt
Guitierrez, Julian
LeVigne, Matt
McHale, Shawn
Murphy, Matt
O’Connor, Patrick
Sichelski, Trent
Struzik, Zach
Swiontek, Scott

13/14U Warriors- Glenn Nagel

Cardinal, Lance
Knightly, Ryan
Lauciello, Anthony
Lebert, Jack
Marc, Sam
Maxfield, Robbie
Novak, Ryan
Prendergast, Tim
Robley, Jim (part-time)
Tannebaum, Ryan
Ullrich, James
Waner, Jason

Please do not hesitate to contact me at 708-846-1466 (cell) with any questions or comments.