Welcome back to another installment of the Delco Baseball Now newsletter, where we inform and entertain about what is going on in the world of Delco summer baseball.

It was overall a pretty quiet Friday night, but we had one of the biggest stories of all so far this summer as the Broomall-Newtown 13’s are heading to the World Series in New York in a couple of weeks after winning the regional championship.

We’ll cover that along with the MSBL semifinals, Delco League semifinals, and a Phillies sluggest in the Bronx.

As always, we appreciate anyone who takes the time to subscribe for free below:

Babe Ruth 13U:

Broomall-Newtown is heading to the World Series for the seventh time in program history, according to Delco Sports encyclopedia Dave Burman.

BN has won two World Series titles, both coming in 2014 when their 13’s and 15’s both won. Their most recent trip was 2023 when their 14’s squad came in fifth place.

This World Series will be fairly local as they head to Jamestown, New York. They will have plenty of time to prepare as the tournament will not begin until August 14th. Shoutout to 2024 DBN First Team All-Delco outfielder Lucien Burger from Marple Newtown (top left in picture) as well as former Tiger Kevin Raftovich (top right).

Delco League:

These are two really interesting series in the Delco League semis, both with some great storylines.

Aston Valley and Upper Darby met in the 2021 and 2024 Delco League Finals. I was the DH for Upper Darby in that epic five game series where the Blue Sox won their first title and it was some great baseball. Upper Darby took down Aston Valley in four games last season, so these guys are very familiar with each other.

Chester and Wayne have not in the playoffs recently. Former Wayne star Billy Ford now plays for Chester, and former Chester star Steven Wells now plays for Wayne, so there’s some cool storylines to keep an eye on.

Make sure to check out our semifinal preview podcast with Wayne’s Steven Wells and Upper Darby’s Alex and Sammy Burman to hear more:

MSBL:

I started this account in the summer of 2022 with one main goal in mind:

Make sure my name does not get misspelled in game recaps anymore.

Unfortunately, I haven’t really done much worth writing about since then, so it’s about time I got to write about myself in the third person.

The real story of this game was Calen Reigner, who was dominant once again on the mound. Reigner and Joe Nestel combined for 13 shutout innings with four total hits and 18 strikeouts as the two starting pitchers for the Phillies in this series.

Also a quick shoutout to Tommy Crumlish for somehow making our field (kind of) playable last night. It was a bit muddy but with the amount of rain that we had, it was impressive.

Our series began early as former Ridley Head Coach and current Widener assistant Anthony Monzo is getting married today (congrats!) so playing on Saturday was never going to happen. The Springfield Cardinals and Collingdale Colts will have a doubleheader with the if necessary game Sunday.

From my understanding, the championship will be a doubleheader next Saturday with the if necessary game Sunday. Our home field is typically Dermond Park in Drexel Hill, but we were told the fences were coming down soon because of football season.

If I had to guess, the finals will probably be at O’Hara or Bonner depending on the Delco League schedule.

Beep Baseball:

This certainly was not the result that the Philadelphia Fire were looking for, but this wrapped up another great summer for the visually impaired baseball squad.

I have been following this team for a few summers now and I have never seen some of the high scores that they had yesterday. That is some serious talent being played there.

If you ever get the chance, going out to Norwood Park and seeing these guys and girls play is mesmerizing. You’ve never seen anything like baseball blindfolded.

Phillies:

That was certainly one way to respond to losing that backbreaker to the Red Sox on Wednesday.

Winning a Taijuan Walker start on the road is HUGE, and now the Phillies have Ranger Suarez and Zack Wheeler going where a win in one of those games is a series win. My expectations are higher than that, especially with Max Fried not pitching in this series.

Shohei Ohtani will probably win MVP like he always does, but Kyle Schwarber has as good of a case as anyone. He has been spectacular this year. I can’t imagine an extension gets done during the season but letting him walk would be criminal.

MLB:

I typically don’t do too much with the rest of the MLB not named the Phillies in this newsletter, but how could I not add this?

I won’t act like Lancaster is right around the corner from Delco, but a kid from less than two hours away just became the first rookie in MLB history to hit 4 HR in a game. He’s only the 20th ever!

This is easily one of the best offensive performances in MLB history when you add in that he had two other hits as well. Kurtz joins Shonn Greene as the only players to go 6/6 with 4 HR in MLB history.