Welcome back to another edition of the Delco Baseball Now newsletter, where we keep you in the loop on everything going on in the world of Delco Baseball.
This is a pretty quiet week overall as all of our local teams outside of the Broomall-Newtown 13’s are done in the world of Little League, Cal Ripken, etc. Their World Series doesn’t even start until August 14th.
With an off-day in the Delco League semifinals, the Mid County League championship takes center stage.
If you are wondering what “Mid-County” is, you may recognize the former name of “EDCO” for this league, which has been going on for over 75 years. It is really a great place to play for guys who might not quite be good enough or have the time to crack some of these loaded Delco League starting lineups consistently, but still want to play at a high level.
As always, we invite everyone to subscribe for free to get these updates delivered daily. We will probably keep this format come the spring for high school ball as opposed to to writing 10+ individual articles every day just based off the feedback from our readers so far.
Mid-County:
Aston Valley seems to be made up of a ton of current/former Penn State Brandywine baseball players, and all four players mentioned in this newsletter are former or current Nittany Lions.
Oxford’s Cam Baughman was the star of the day as he belted two homers, but Sun Valley alum Ryan Snyder also ripped four hits including a homer. Marple Newtown alums Michael Paytas and Mike Govan were both strong on the mound.
After a couple of days of confusion, it appears that Aston Valley Mid-County will be playing at Sun Valley on Tuesday night, while Aston Valley Delco League will be playing at O’Hara. For a while, I just assumed all four teams were going to show up at the field at the same time and play rock, paper, scissors to decide who got to use Buggy Field and who had to take the walk of shame to the JV field.
If Aston Valley wins Tuesday night it’s over, if Clifton wins, Game 3 will be on Thursday back at Dermond Park.
Delco League:
It’s starting to feel like the 2016-2019 era of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors playing each other all the time.
Upper Darby has made the finals four straight years, winning in 2021 and 2024. Wayne has won 19 titles including 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023. They are both one win away from once again squaring off in the finals.
We will be streaming Delco League Finals games on our YouTube channel. We may have to miss Game 1 depending on how my MSBL Championship series goes, but we will absolutely have Game 2 and on.
Phillies:
That was not pretty.
Bryce Harper’s two-run single had the Phillies in front for a little while, but the White Sox scored six unanswered.
Luis Robert Jr. played like he wanted the Phillies to trade for him as he made a sensational diving catch in center field and also homered in the game.
Cristopher Sanchez has earned the benefit of the doubt that he just had a fluke bad start. He let up his first homer to a lefty hitter all year in this game.
They really need a bounce-back Jesus Luzardo start, especially with Taijuan Walker throwing on Wednesday.
MLB:
This is a tough loss for the baseball world.
Ryne Sandberg was one of the good guys out there, who was a Hall of Fame player and also spent time as a manager as well.
I was born in 1999 so I can’t say I remember much about him as a player, but he managed one of the worst Phillies eras in recent memory with class and a smile when there wasn’t much to smile about.
Our thoughts are with his friends and family during this difficult time.