St. Joe's Baseball

Well, it's over. At least the quest for Minneapolis-St. Paul, Eighth-grade baseball dominance, that is.

I've been helping to coach the St. Joseph West St. Paul baseball team this spring with some good friends from our days at the elementary school, Brian Monahan and Mike Fretchel. We fell to our cross-Mississippi rivals, the Natives of Nativity, who were a pretty good squad. I'm sure that Brian will post the media-write up at his website (http://www.monahan-brian.com/) so you can get the box score there. Aside from one inning St. Joe's battled with the best.

We actually split the regular season record with Nativity, 1-1, with each visiting team getting the win on the road. I'm pretty proud of our kids, especially given the fact that the last time St. Joe's was in the St. Paul championship game it was our 8th grade year, 1995 (fact checker anyone?). Maybe I'm overly nostalgic (okay, I admit to it), but it was the same field that we played the game on, just blocks from where the St. Paul Saints (now Chicago White Sox) played. It was also the first time our players beat St. Thomas Academy in any sport, period. So that was particularly fun as the opposing coach was Brian, Mike and my high school English teacher.

We do have one more game to play, the runner-up game of the Twin Cities league, so we still have a chance for bragging rights over all but one Minneapolis school. We'll see - the game is next Wednesday at 1:30pm, so I'll likely be at work. Either way, go Jets!