2022 Week 14D: Blythe Given Computer Edge over Muir in D-VAA

Pasadena Muir (8-6) travels to Blythe Palo Verde (13-1) for a Division V-AA playoff

These aren’t the 1935-vintage Muir Mustangs, featuring a future baseball great named Jackie Robinson, who came South and manhandled unbeaten Hoover, 27-0.

These Mustangs are more like the Mustangs who came South from 1947-54 and lost seven of nine games to San Diego, Hoover, and Grossmont.  Muir won a home game in the  Pasadena Rose Bowl, 26-7, over Mission Bay in 1957, the last year it played a San Diego-area squad.

The ponies won five of their last six this season and tied for second in the Lower Pacific League, earning themselves a 224-mile jaunt to the farming community on the California-Arizona border.

YELLOWJACKETS FAVORED

The computer algorithms of calpreps.com gives Palo Verde Valley (13-1) a 53 per cent chance of victory.

Blythe was largely unsuccessful after it  left the Southern Section and joined the San Diego Section with El Centro Central, El Centro Southwest, Calexico Vincent Memorial, Calexico, and Brawley, the entire Imperial Valley League, in 2000.

Wally Grant arrived as head coach in 2019 and the Yellowjackets were 6-6 in their final year in the Imperial Valley circuit.  They moved to the more accommodating Manzanita League in 2020.

The Manzanita got a new name in 2021 and Grant’s scrappers have become Desert League kings, going 11-3 in 2021 and 13-1 this season.