Finished as District 4 runners-up

The Buckingham County Majors all-star team finished as the runner-up of the 2019 Dixie Youth Baseball Major League District 4 Tournament in Dillwyn, and the boys will be able to build on this performance beginning Friday evening in the state tournament.

Buckingham (2-2) was one of three District 4 teams advancing to the Major League state tourney in Lunenburg.

Trailing 4-0 in the sixth inning of the district championship game against the Goochland all-star team June 25, the Buckingham All-Stars came alive after Goochland switched pitchers, staging a dramatic rally that fell just short. The final score was 4-3.

“We just didn’t hit the ball as well as we had been tonight,” Buckingham Manager Troy Wooten said. “We waited too long to get going, till the sixth inning. We rallied back, tried to get back in it and made it tight. A few calls could have went either way, probably hurt us this way or the other. I’m sure we’ll probably see this team again.”

Goochland and the Amelia all-star team are the other District 4 squads competing in the 2019 Dixie Youth Baseball Major League State Tournament.

In the district tourney, Buckingham defeated Amelia 11-3 on June 22 and routed Goochland 7-1 the next day. Then the host team fell 6-5 to Goochland on June 24, setting up the championship game that followed in the double-elimination event.

Buckingham will open its state tourney run by playing the tourney’s host team, the Lunenburg All-Stars, at 8 p.m. Friday on Lenhart Field in Victoria.

Wooten noted that the best could be yet to come in terms of Buckingham’s performance.

“I think we have more in the tank that we haven’t shown yet,” he said.