Top Gun Rock the Diamond Game 2: WR 11U Blue 14, New Bern Flames 2

The second game of Saturday's doubleheader brought more strong 12U competition, as the New Bern Flames had won 14 games in a row, including taking the Summer World Series in undefeated fashion. But buoyed by the rally in game one, 11U Blue played very well on the way to a 14-2 win in a game limited to four innings by the run rule.

West Raleigh never trailed on the way to the victory, and a pair of pitchers allowed the Flames just a pair of hits and only one walk. The comfortable cushion allowed time for some of the best dugout hijinks of the summer, as you'll read below.

Seeds and times for tomorrow will be determined later tonight.

Game 2 11U Blue scoring plays

First inning

Gavin blasted a solo homer.

Score after one-half inning: 11U Blue 1, Flames 0

Second inning

Andrew walked and stole second. Jake walked. Elias walked. Colin lifted a sac fly, and then Jake stole home.
Score after one and a half innings: 11U Blue 3, Flames 0

Third inning
Chace rocketed a solo homer. Drew, Banks and Andrew had back to back to back singles. Jake drew an RBI walk. JT drove in a run with a fielder's choice.
Score after two and a half innings: 11U Blue 6, Flames 1

Fourth inning
The first two hitters were retired in order...and then the explosion happened. Gavin singled and stole second. Chace doubled, scoring Gavin. Chace stole third. Drew walked and stole second. Banks walked. Andrew and Jake had RBI walks. Asher hit a two-run single. Ben hit a two-run single and celebrated with a spell (see below). Colin doubled home a run.
Score after three and a half innings: 11U Blue 14, Flames 1

Pitching Performances

Chace started and went two efficient innings.

Colin finished it up with two equally efficient innings.

Dugout wisdom
This all started because New Bern had a pitcher whose last name was Potter. So a couple of the readers in the dugout started throwing out spells from the Harry Potter books while he was pitching. Bryce, however, interpreted "expelliarmus" as "'spelliarmus" (it makes more sense when you hear it pronounced). Around the same time that happened, the offense started clicking. So the spells, obviously, had to continue, with Bryce and Ben often taking the lead. "I know it's expelliarmus, but 'spelliarmus is what's working," Bryce said when asked why he wasn't saying it correctly.

Finally, Gavin asked, "Bryce, have you ever actually read the Harry Potter books or seen the movies?"

Bryce looked at him as if this was a crazy question. "No," he said, "I saw it on Dude Perfect."

This seemed to greatly offend Gavin's sensibilities. "Bryce," he said, "you can't just go around doing random spells."

Of course, that didn't slow down Ben, who continued to "expelliarmus" all over the place for the rest of the game, including after he crushed an RBI single on his way back to first base, which was one of the funniest moments of the summer so far. From inside the dugout, here's how the spells worked:

There's a longer story to this that will be in the blog, but for now here's @ben_s_27 casting spells on opposing pitcher and getting a walk.

A video posted by West Raleigh 11u (@westraleigh11u) on Jul 9, 2016 at 9:38am PDT

Game 2 Web Gems

• Somehow I didn't write down a single web gem. I assume that's wrong and Ben cast some sort of spell on me that prevented me from seeing the web gems.

Game 2 line score	1	2	3	4	5	6	R	H
WR 11U Blue	1	2	3	8	X	X	14	9
New Bern Flames	0	1	0	1	X	X	2	2