Headin’ down the Parkway

Post 401 travels to Wildwood for District 4 legion tourney

By: Rich Fisher
   Dust off those old Bobby Rydell records, it’s time to start singing about those Wildwood Days.
   Well, the Post 401 baseball parents can dust off their records, but the players themselves probably never heard of that song.
   Either way, South Brunswick is spending at least a weekend at South Jersey’s most popular shore town (which inspired that oldie by Rydell), as Post 401 opens the New Jersey American Legion District 4 tournament at 4 p.m. Saturday against Flemington in Wildwood.
   If South Brunswick wins, it plays at either 4 or 7 p.m. Sunday, if it loses, it plays 10 a.m. Sunday.
   Thus, there may be some scrambling for hotel rooms in a town whose hotels are usually booked around this time of year to begin with.
   "Some of our guys have already gotten places to stay," manager Tony Cosumano said on Tuesday. "We’ll have a practice and I guess we’ll address what to do. I mean, if you lose on Saturday, you won’t get home til about 10 or 11 on Saturday night, then you have to get up and drive three hours to get there for a game at 10 the next morning."
   Yeah, this set up is not the best as far as logistics are concerned, but it’s the cards South Brunswick has been dealt so they have to play them.
   And according to Cosumano, Post 401 might have gotten a break as far as what sectional it is in.
   "I’m not trying to jinx myself, but when I looked at brackets, it looks like the bracket playing in Union has a lot of first- and second-place teams from leagues," Cosumano said. "West Deptford has the toughest teams from Camden County, but the brackets in Mercer and Wildwood don’t look as bad."
   The eight teams in the District 4 tournament were not posted on the web earlier in the week, but Cosumano knows that Edison is also playing at Wildwood.
   As for Flemington, the coach was tight-lipped about how much South Brunswick knows about it’s first-round foe.
   "I know they won their division and they lost in the county playoffs in two straight games to Alpha, which is Phillipsburg," Cosumano said. "They’re supposedly pretty good.
   "We got a little scouting report from somebody concerning Flemington, but I can’t tell that kind of stuff to the paper," he added with a laugh. "We haven’t decided on the pitching yet. We’re just going to play it by ear."
   Post 401 played for the first time in six days Sunday and fell to Roselle, 6-5. It rallied from a 5-0 deficit but lost in the seventh. South Brunswick met Edison Wednesday at Crossroads.
   "I think our rust showed," Cosumano said. "But we’ll play Edison, hopefully we’ll have some good practices and we’ll see what we can do."
   The top two teams from each district tournament will advance to the state tournament, which begins at Lyndhurst’s Breslin Field on Aug. 4. South Brunswick finished third in last year’s states.