Livingston Juniors Sweep Montclair

LIVINGSTON - The Livingston Junior American Legion team put an exclamation point on the regular season as they took a pair of games from Montclair on Thursday.

Post 201 completed a game that was postponed earlier in the season with a 6-5 victory and then dispatched Montclair in the regularly scheduled game, 11-0, in six innings at the Livingston Oval. The make-up rescheduled game and the regular game were postponed twice this week because of rain and were necessary for Montclair for the seedings in the post-season playoffs.

"I could not have been happier with this group of guys," said Livingston Manager Bob Thiemer. "They have been to every game all season. They have not given any excuses for not coming out."

He added that the result in both wins showed how his team has performed all season.

"They've played hard and played very good defense and we've had very good pitching," said Thiemer.

The two victories gave Post 201 an 18-2 record for the season.

"We're two runs from having a perfect season," said Thiemer, whose team lost one run games to both Nutley and Millburn.

Livingston had already clinched a spot in the Essex County Junior American Legion Championship series this weekend against Nutley. It will be a best-of-three with the first game on Saturday at the Livingston Oval at 10 a.m.. The second game is at Nutley on Sunday (10 a.m.) with possibly a third game on Monday in Livingston at 5:30 p.m.

Despite knowing their future in advance of the game, Post 201 showed that they wanted to go into the Essex County Championship series with momentum.

In turn, they ruined Montclair's chance to get a better seeding in its drive for one of the last bids in the state tournament. Both Livingston and Nutley have qualified for the state tournament, with the championship series going for bragging rights. Montclair needs to beat Bloomfield, South Orange and West Orange for one of the two remaining spots in the state tournament.

Livingston first baseman Max Farbstein said that the team definitely wanted to win on Thursday.

"Who doesn't want to win?" asked Farbstein after the win. "We didn't want to go out there and slack off."

Heading into the 2010 season, Farbstein and the rest of Post 201 were confident that the team would do well this season. "A lot of us have been together for a long time, so we all know each other," said Faberstein.

In the first game on Thursday, Brady O'Connor whacked a bases-loaded base hit to score Jacob Dock to score the winning run in the bottom of the seventh inning.

In the second game, Livingston could not get such a hit off of Montclair pitching to take the lead. But Post 201 still scored — a lot, in the fourth inning — and took a commanding 9-0 lead. 

At the start of the fourth inning, Livingston only had four base hits, but was able to coax seven walks and one hits-batsman. At one point, Post 201 put nine batters on base either through a hit, hit by pitch or a walk.

The big hit came from centerfielder Taylor Parsons, who had a double to left field that scored Connor Kimmel and Jake Binehaker to gave Livingston a 4-0 lead.

After the nine-run bomb in the fourth, Post 201 put the game away with a pair of runs in the top of the sixth inning. Brent Birbaum smacked an RBI single that scored Kimmel and Binehaker came home on a fielder's choice by Parsons.

While all the offense was going on, Thiemer gave his pitchers a couple of innings of work in the second game with the championship series a couple of days away in mind. On the mound, Hunter Bushwell started and went two innings of no-hit, no-run ball and then Justin Tepper and O'Connor pitched two innings of relief each, with O'Connor getting the save.