Using persuasive powers Carney Pirates executives are (in)famous for, the upstart CGL team landed a big one, signing Billy Emerson as GM/Head Coach of the 2009 Carney Pirates. Whereas, it’s not as rich as the A-Rod contract, let’s just say that Coach Emerson will easily be able to afford Carney Pirates’ season tickets for his entire family. Coach Emerson is the hugely successful head coach of one of the Washington DC metroplex’s premier high school baseball programs at Paul VI (the Carney Pirates home field). His teams are regular finishers in the Top Five rankings, several times finishing the season rated in the Top 25 in the country. Last year’s team won the state championship, the conference regular season, and the always competitive and highly prestigious Southeastern Baseball Classic and finished ranked in the Top 20 (as high as 12th) in several end of the season national polls.

Coach Emerson has advanced teams to the Clark Griffith League Championship game the past three seasons (the only one to accomplish that), is highly regarded among college coaches, and through his work as a crosschecker for the pros, works with professional baseball  scouts (which of course is beneficial to our Carney Pirate players). Last year alone, he was named the VISAA Virginia State Coach of the Year and the BCA/Baseball America District 2 (Va, Md, DC, NJ, Pa, De and WV) Coach of the Year and is currently nominated for Coach of the Year for the entire US of A! He had similar impressive awards in many of his previous 18 years of successful coaching, but I have a family and want to have dinner with them - so ask about those awards at the ballpark. On top of all of that, he even counts The Voice as a friend,  and his father is a legendary, Hall of Fame Bluegrass Musician Bill Emerson - The Bluegrass Connection (oh yeah, I’m thinking Seventh Inning stretches !).

The Pirates owe a debt of gratitude to inaugural head coach Scott Rowland who built a tremendous foundation, crafting a .600 winning team without the luxury of having first hand knowledge of many of the collection of players assembled, and with graduation ceremonies, beach weeks, pre-scheduled family vacations (not this year!) and college orientations. Due to all of that, we were unable to field the same team for several weeks of an eight week season. We are very glad Coach Rowland, who preferred to have his summers free, finally agreed to help us out. He and the Pirates performed as well as we could have hoped, especially given all of the obstacles they faced and overcame. Coach, swing by sometime this summer, and catch some of your teammates’ performances. Your money is no good at the snack bar (except of course during Surf and Turf night),  everyone will be glad to see and hear from you.

Happy Holidays to all Carney Pirates fans (depending on when you read this; Columbus, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Memorial). See you at the ol’ ballpark (this year we’re serving ice cream - save up).