We might more appropriately be called the Florida Capitals this time around, but we'll nonetheless pit the Albany name against some good teams at the MSBL Holiday Classic in Orlando this weekend. The tournament has been moved out of Disney to the Osceola Baseball Complex, spring training home of the Houston Astros. There are 18 teams in the 45+ division. Friday, we play the US Cruisers, which won the Central Division of the Fall Classic two years ago. Saturday, our double header starts against the Chicago Royals, which have won multiple tournaments in recent years, and we end the preliminaries against the Clearwater Rays. There will be two playoff divisions, National and American, and we hope to still be competing in one of them on Sunday. Each division will have a championship on Monday.
For a while it looked like we would have more, but we do have a trio of CDMSBLers on the roster: Wayne Nicholson, Tony Parella, and Mike Surin. The rest are from various Florida locales, including Tampa-area players John Cirelli and Tim McGivern who played with Team Albany at the Fall Classic a couple years ago.
Last weekend high temperatures struggled to hit 50 (Florida's version of winter). It lasted two days. The forecast for this weekend in Central Florida has highs of 80 and lows of 60. Sounds like baseball weather to me!
A disappointing showing for the Albany Capitals in Orlando. We played three and lost three. Games were more competitive than the final scores indicate, but the results are the results. We lost 9-1 to the US Cruisers, who went on to lose in the National division semi-finals. We lost 12-2 to the Chicago Royals, who as I'm writing are playing the Boston Wolfpack for the National division championship. We lost 14-3 to the Clearwater Rays. We stumbled and bumbled more in this third game within 24 hours.
As a team we hit just .233, while posting an 8.64 ERA. That won't get it done. Of our 3 extra base hits, Tony Parella and Mike Surin each had one. And Wayne Nicholson threw important innings in relief in all 3 games. It was good to be playing ball in January, especially for me just 3 months removed from a big abdominal surgery.
