Varsity Baseball: Knights look forward at chance to scrimmage Central

By Ben Spector
Winning After MidKnight

                       

The Middletown High School Knights Varsity Baseball team will play their first and only pre-season game on Wednesday, March 18^th when they scrimmage Central High School from Martinsburg, Pennsylvania at Frederick Community College.

This game will give the Knights a chance to try out some younger pitchers that have come up from the JV team and also get a chance to see live pitching on a real baseball field, something that most teams in the state including Middletown haven’t gotten the chance to do this season.

With their first game on Friday, March 20^th one would assume that Middletown would keep the pitch counts of all of their pitchers low in order to ensure that if the scenario would arise that they would be able to pitch on Friday.

This will be Middletown’s first time on an actual baseball field this season due to the fact that a late February snowstorm tacked somewhere between six and nine inches of snow onto Keller Field at Middletown High School.

While, the snow from that snowstorm has melted off, Keller Field at Middletown High School sits on one of the lowest spots on the school campus, bordered up against a massive hill and in what used to be a pond. Due to this configuration when big precipitation events occur the rain/snow/melted snow will run off down the hill and deposit itself in the low spots of the outfield.

It has been a common occurrence in the past couple of years that when there are big rain events that leave the field sodden, the outfield turns into somewhat of a sponge causing multiple games to be moved due to the water in the grass.

This has been the case this year, although it hasn’t caused the cancellation of any games, and it has forced Middletown to have to move all of their practices either indoors or onto the main turf field.

The issue with that configuration is most other athletic teams in the school are in the exact same boat and because of that time on the gym floor and on the main turf field has been extremely limited forcing the Knights to not be able to do what they had wanted because of the lack of time and the practical limitations on what can be done that is baseball related on the main turf field or gym floor.

The Knights though will look to overcome these obstacles when they play Central today and take advantage of the chance to finally play outside.