Tonite's the Night
With six teams slugging it out over the course of a 75-game season all summer, the Golden Baseball League has become a haven for natural rivalries developing on the fly. Tonight's first meeting of the young GBL year between the Outlaws and the Orange County Flyers is no exception.
All of you back in Chico (a hearty hello from Fulerton, site of tonight's game) probably don't need to be reminded why. The Outlaws were a dead lock to win the league's second half championship going into August and picked by many in the know to move over first half victor Reno for the GBL title afterward.
That was before Orange County (then the Fullerton Flyers) flipped the script in a big way. Manager Gary Templeton's scrappy group positioned itself right behind the Outlaws at the top of the standings, played some of its best baseball of the season in the final week and moved past its NorCal counterpart after the Outlaws dropped four of their final five games to the Reno Silver Sox.
It also doesn't hurt that both organizations are two of the GBL's original franchises and have swapped several players from eachother via free agency.