SARASOTA, FL - The Prospect Wire Florida State Finals boys’ 18U championship was played at Ed Smith Stadium. It featured the La Ley Legends and Chet Lemons Juice.
The Legends jumped out to an early 3-0 lead in the first inning, but the juice did not lie down like the legends seemed to believe they would.
“With the first inning we didn’t play very good baseball,” said Juice head coach Chet Lemon. “It was pretty ugly there for a minute, were usually pretty tight our defense is one of our strengths. It didn’t look very pretty balls were going everywhere, I looked up and said ‘Whoa slow down’.”
Lemon commented on gathering his guys up after the rough first inning.
“After the first inning I got them all up together and said were better than that,” said Lemon. “Lets don’t quit we got a long way to go, lets fight these guys. They aren’t going to keep us from scoring, and sure enough we came right back and scored two runs and got back in the ball game.”
One of the more impressive performances of the afternoon came from Juice center fielder J. Greene, who not only put together a quite impressive batting stat line of (3-4, RBI, Stl), but also recorded all three outs in the second inning. Two of the outs came on a key game-changing double play where Greene hawked down a short fly ball and threw the advancing runner out at first.
Juice tied the game on a wild pitch, and then took a commanding 7-3 lead in the top of the 5th after driving home three more runs.
Lemon praised his pitcher Charles Fowler who shut it down after the first inning.
“This kid could have quit after all the ugliness,” said Lemon. “And he didn’t give up and didn’t quit and ended up throwing the whole game. He didn’t give up any more runs and won the game.”
Fowler finished with a complete game and five strikes, allowing just three runs.
The Juice won the game 9-3 and completed the career slam of Prospect Wire’s summer tournament. Winning the 14U and 18U championship this year along with the 16U championship last summer.
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