Panet

This town, just 15 minutes from Tirgu Mures is ethnically Hungarian. We met with the Mayor and city councilmen in May and agreed to equip and provide training. They now have a coach and a team that plays very well after just a few weeks of practice. We had a couple scrimmages a few weeks ago…and just put on a demo game with our Junior II kids and some of our younger softball girls for their annual town festival…It was a wonderful success and we enjoyed having the whole town there to watch the play. Panet’s pitching matched ours….the boys had NEVER pitched in a game before…(we used our ball thrower for our first meeting.)
The Panet boys who all grow up together, attend school together showed wonderful enthusiasm at each successful run as did the parents and local residents, though probably only a few know anything about baseball. HIGHLIGHTS: Mures’s long ball hitter had a home run…which by Romanian rules is held to a double. Vicentiu Dobrau hit one probably300 feet that was only stopped by a fence…Panet’s centerfielder caught a line drive on a bounce and threw out a runner sliding into third!...AND the third baseman made a picture perfect throw home in time to get the runner but the catcher dropped the ball….this is impressive on its own merit but even more so because this was their first real game, after only a dozen 2 hour practices in six weeks. 

Panet will be our showcase in picture presentations that our staff will take with them in the coming weeks to other villages in the area expressing interest in forming teams…the meetings will be held with local Mayors to set up demo games with our teams…possibly in conjunction with town festivals which is a perfect venue to promote the sport…we will certainly take some of the Panet players with us!