A Ball: South Guam Saints
Without a really outstanding month, the Saints worked their way to their best ever season with consistent solid performances each month. Turning in above .500 months all the way to the final month South Guam reached 78 wins, 11 wins more than their 2047 tally. April started with two straight losses, but they recovered to win eight of their remaining 12 games in the month (fun fact: in six of the eight wins Saints scored exactly five runs). May again saw a shaky start with four straight losses this time, but again they kicked on. An eight-game winning streak at the back end of the month carried them to a 15-13 record in May which included a dominant 18-4 win in Ulaanbaatar where five of the starters had three hits or more and eight of them drove at least a run in. June saw the Saints gather pace, winning 16 out of their 29 games in the month. There was a six-game winning streak in the middle of the month which featured three straight shutout wins and in total South Guam managed to shut out the opposition in six of the month’s 12 wins. July was a bit more inconsistent, only once did they manage to win more than two games in a row, but still came out above .500 at 15-13. Saints really hit the pace in August though, an eight-game winning streak in the middle of the month saw them finish the month 19-10. Although the 73 wins they had already was their best ever win tally, they were only fifth in the FEBL table, clinging valiantly on to the coattails of the first division teams. The final half-month, September, opened with a three-game losing streak and continued in that vein. A final tally of 5-8 on the month included an embarrassing 2-15 loss at third-placed Jakarta, but led to an overall 2048 record of 78-62. The total attendance through the gate for the Saints was over 300K for the first time as 360,803 rocked up, nearly 75K up on their previous best.
Riyadh’s #1 pick in 2047, Jouo Rovanpera, was the star man with the bat. In 116 games he led the team in all sorts of batting averages, runs scored (70), RBI (91) and walks (55). Add to that 29 home runs, just one behind the team leader, DH
Narihira Yamamoto. You can see his place in 2049 will be in Santiago and probably up as high as Port Elizabeth if he keeps developing.
Alba Gallino, the player drafted at 17-yrs-old to be the Vatican City’s first ever pro baseball player has inspired a second of Vatican City’s 836 inhabitants to shoot for a baseball career, 16-yr-old Pippo Richelmi is now in the Port Moresby high school about to start his journey in the Oceanic Baseball Academy League. Meanwhile Gallino, now 19-yrs-old, led South Guam in wins in 2048 with nine. He also pitched the Saints only complete gamer shutout, a three-hit 5-0 win against Ulaanbaatar. 18-year old Kononae Walakino posted a 9-6 record in 22 outings (21 starts) while holding his opponents to the lowest averages in the team. 22-yr-old Jesus Garcia recorded 12 saves, the most ever by a South Guam pitcher. He went on to record another four saves in Double-A and finished the year getting the win in his only Triple-A appearance.
