It was a beautiful afternoon in Chugiak: sun, 70 degrees and a ball game in which the home town Chinooks hosted the league-champion Pilots. Thats right, I said champion! For those of you who are as ignorant as I was about the ABL rules, the league tiebreaker goes to the winner of the season series. [...]

The predecessors of the Chinooks — the AIA Fire — have always been a fun team to watch because of the variety of players they pull in from around the country (sometimes beyond) and throughout baseball. They have cast a wider geographical net than most ABL teams while, at the same time, have recruited players [...]

The days are getting longer, things are starting to thaw out a little bit, and can you believe it? It’s only about four months until ABL season gets into the swing. Junior colleges have started playing ball way down south, and although things seem to be frozen solid up here in Alaska, the Chugiak-Eagle River [...]

It’s been a while since we’ve had a look at one of the talented members of the 2011 AIA Fire, so why not keep the rotation going for another round and have a look at sophomore southpaw hurler Andrew Work? Work had hard luck this season, being the pitcher of record in a lot of losing games for the road-based Fire this year. But according to the rest of his stats and my scouting notes, he has more talent than a cursory glance may reveal.

This post is way overdue! Part of the reason is that it went 11 innings long — although at 2 1/2 hours it was merely an average game, time-wise — and I took pretty thorough scouting notes. I took these notes live via my Twitter feed, which is kind of becoming my standard practice. However, [...]