The Buena Chiefs are the defending group Ii state champs and hope to repeat that feat again this season. The Pleasantville Greyhounds are coming off a season where they went just 2-13 overall and had an opening day 22-0 loss verse Cedar Creek.

On Thursday the two teams met on the field and it wasn't a pretty ending - Buena 53, Pleasantville 3.

Yes, 52-3.

Some local high school fans are outraged - how could a team score 52 runs in a game?

(Philadelphia Inquire High School reporter Phil Anastasia joined Mike Gill to discuss the 52-3 baseball game that happened on Thursday)


How can this be prevented in the future, reports were that Buena coach Harry Grose pulled his starters in the second inning and had his JV team in the game, should they swing and miss on purpose?  Should they run into an out on purpose?

There doesn't seem to be a right or wrong answer.

The Chiefs scored 16 runs on the first inning and another 20 runs in the third inning of the game.  Reports that Greyhounds issued over 30 walks in the game and had 10 errors.

Some would ask why would these two schools even be on the same schedule?

They both are in south jersey group II and members of the Cape-Atlantic League National conference in baseball - which means they have similar enrollments.  The most recent enrollment numbers I could find date back to 2013, when Buena had 584 students and Pleasantville had 560 students from grades 10-12.

The Cape-Atlantic League (CAL) bases it's conference set-up on school enrollments.  The CAL has a unique problem in all of its leagues - a wide array of schools that range from group II to group IV among its 20 members who play baseball.

The league features five group IV schools, three group III schools, seven group I schools and one that is a group I school - add in the four non-public teams and finding middle ground becomes a challenge.

The league has similar issues in football with the uneven amount of schools, a wide variety of enrollments and the lack of talent in certain areas and the CAL has been in the news for the wrong reasons in recent seasons.

Could this have been avoided?  It's possible, but not an easy fix.

Entering the season, administrators could take into account that Buena and Pleasantville are on two different playing fields and are playing with two different purposes. Much like two years ago in football when Holy Spirit and Lower Cape May ended up on each others schedule - the result?

If the CAL wants to stay out of the headlines for the wrong reasons, it needs to take a better look at the way they make their conferences.

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