Softball side unbeaten

Press, 4 March 1983, Page 32

Softball side unbeaten

From Tim Dunbar in Palmerston North

Noel Leeming Burnside displayed its best batting performance to stay unbeaten in the Pan Am national men’s inter-club softball tournament at Palmerston North yesterday. On a wind-swept Colquhoun Park, Burnside crushed Pukekohe, 8-0, and then beat Panthers, 11-6, after being on the receiving and from the Southlanders in two traumatic innings.

After two days, the top four seeds in the tournament — Ramblers (Auckland), Miramar (Wellington), Marist (Hutt Valley) and Burnside — are all unbeaten with four wins.

For Bumside, the moment of truth will come this afternoon when it meets first Ramblers and then Miramar.

“I want to settle the score with Ramblers,” said the Bumside coach, Mr Arnold Hall, referring to his team’s 1-3 loss in last year’s final. “If the boys keep batting the ball we are in with a show.”

In the Oarly game yesterday, Bumside had the minimum of trouble with Pukekohe, a team which has pushed all the other top teams. Bumside’s batters walloped 13 safe hits off the two pitchers and in the words of their coach, “going absolutely crazy.”

Bumside scored three runs at the top of the second innings, three more in the fifth after getting four hits in a row, and two in the seventh.

Jimmy Hall batted 1000 with three hits, Graeme Anderson, .666, and Roy Ah Kuoi, .500'

Hall pitched as well, striking out nine of the 27 batters he faced, including the big New Zealand first baseman, Murray McLean. He gave up seven hits and no walks. After a well-earned visit to their spa pool, the Burnside players took up against Panthers where they left off in the morning. Bumside went right through the batting order in the bottom of the first innings to lead, 7-0. However, Chubb Tangaroa was out of sorts on the pitching mound and, at one stage, conceded three hits off consecutive pitches, including a home run by lan McMurdo. Southland had six runs when Hall took over in the fourth innings, but he kept the opposition scoreless from then.

For Bumside, John Kottier batted .666, hitting his second

home run for the tournament and scoring in two other runners in the process. Alan Hall, Murray Lanini and the young utility, David Workman, also collected two safe hits each.

Of the top teams, the only one seriously troubled was Marist, which was outbatted eight to six by Panthers and had to overcome a 0-2 deficit after a two-run homer by Peter McMinn in the first innings before going on to win, 6-4. And against Pukekohe, there were more anxious moments when the Counties side made a stirring rally to load the bases and level at 2-2 at the top of the seventh.

However, Marist’s Barry Casley produced a wellplaced safe hit to bring home his catcher, Brian Fenton, in the bottom of the innings.