Baseball: Don’t discount Lakewood -- they’re led by one hot potato

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Anybody named Spud, I just gotta love. Maybe because I can never pass up French fries or tater skins or a baked potato slathered with sour cream and bacon bits.

Speaking of all thing spuds, I was just chatting with my new favorite one, Spud O’Neil, who’s in his 25th year as coach of Lakewood baseball. One topic came up -- his team’s shabby 8-9 record. ‘Offensively, we’ve just been struggling,’ O’Neil said.

So, for the next four days, O’Neil and his team will have nothing but practices which he has titled ‘Back to Basics.’

‘We’ll just be relearning the basics and retooling and working on things like hitting to the opposite field,’ he said.

O’Neil then found a perk of what might look like a scuffling season: ‘Hey, we still are 2-0 in [the Moore] league,’ he said. ‘We’ll see where we are at the end of this thing.’

It’s true, Lakewood is tied for first with Long Beach Millikan. And I wouldn’t be surprised if O’Neil and his Lancers end up winning the division crown. Now, remember, he’s a coach who has won more than 500 games and has appeared in 15 Southern Section finals.

-- Anthony Stitt

-- Image from www.nystuffedidaho.com