by Jonathan Vander Lugt

The dog days of summer have come early for the Mt. Airy Stars American Legion baseball team.

Rain early in the season has stacked the back end of the schedule for the Stars and Sunday evening’s tilt against Loudenslager Post 366 (from the area around Fox Chase and Frankford) marked the first of five consecutive and seven games overall in the next eight days.

Seven games represent more than a third of the team’s season—in around just a fifth of its calendar days—so getting off to a good start was crucial.

With the heat creeping up into the 90s, the Stars handed the ball to Sam Greene and he delivered, throwing six solid innings in Mt. Airy’s 8-6 win.

“I was locating my fastball well today,” Greene said. “My curveball was feeling good too.”

Greene’s repertoire also features a slider and a changeup, but the fastball and curve made up most of what he offered.

Greene had to fight through a bit of rocky defense early as well. He gave up a pair of unearned runs in the second on errors by the catcher and shortstop, respectively, but still felt confident in the team behind him.

“It took us a couple innings to wake up in the field,” Greene said, “but we picked it up in the end. My team has my back. They made some good plays too, so it goes both ways.”

He gave up another run in the fourth (this one earned) on a double and sacrifice fly, but by that point the Mt. Airy offense was more than up to task.

Three first-inning runs came across the plate on an RBI groundout by Thomas Primosch and a two-RBI knock off the bat of Colin Brown. They got another one an inning later on when Demetrius Smith’s fielder’s choice plated Thomas Laws, and Greene himself got in on the fun in the fifth. He knocked out a two-run shot in the fifth to put the team up 6-3, but the longball was particularly unique.

For anybody that hasn’t been to Leeds Field to see a game, here’s a brief lesson in its layout: The field is in a rectangular lot, with an incredibly deep left-center gap as well as an incredibly shallow 250-foot fence in right. To compensate, a 15-or-so foot fence extension that looms in right, but there’s about a 2-foot-long gap between the edge of that fence and the edge of the foul pole, leaving a normal height fence in between. Basically, there’s a little sliver of space where the field plays very short. A lucky hitter could hit what would be little more than a popup on a standard field and end up trotting the bases.

If you haven’t already guessed based on this lead-in, that’s exactly where Greene sent his homerun. Make no mistake—it was a well-struck ball—but the tater was improbable nonetheless.

“I got a little lucky on that one,” he said, cracking a smile. “I just tried to hit the ball hard the other way. It worked out—that’s what happens in baseball. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.”

Those runs were big, because he let Loudenslager back into it in the top half of the game’s penultimate inning. Gassed, he walked two batters and gave up three hits, all leading to three runs (two earned) in what wound up being his last inning. He finished with six innings, 10 hits, seven strikeouts, and three earned runs.

Mt. Airy bounced right back though, scoring a pair in the bottom half before setting Loudenslager down 1-2-3 in the seventh to seal the win.

The victory puts the Stars at 6-4-2 on the year and in good position for a solid seed come playoff time. All but one of their remaining games will be at home, and that, coupled with good team chemistry, bodes well for the team’s final stretch.

“We’re really together,” Greene said, despite the fact that the team is made up of kids that all go to different schools. “We like playing together. We have fun, but we’re intense when we need to be.

“I feel like it’s a neighborhood thing. We like playing for the neighborhood.”