Garde Burgess had an early idea how Concord Post 21’s American Legion baseball season was going to play out.

During one of the team’s first practices, he pulled his nine pitchers aside and asked each one how many high school innings they’d pitched. Aside from ace Mitch Philibert, the answer was five – total.

“I thought that was a pretty telling statistic,” said Burgess. “I pretty much had spring training with my players during the district season. I was out there working on mechanics with them before, during and after games.”

It came as no coincidence, then, that Philibert notched three of Concord’s four wins. He would have had six had it not been for three blown leads by the bullpen, said Burgess. Still, the coach is quick to point out the team is young, and most of the players return in 2009, many the season after that as well.

“They’ll do a lot better next year, that’s for sure, but there’s no doubt any extra pitching experience we can get will help. That was definitely our weakness,” he said.

The bats, on the other hand, boomed.

Post 21 averaged double-digit hits per game.

“A lot of games we’d have 16 hits, but we lost the game because we had given up 12 walks,” said Burgess. “Of course, you know if you give up those kind of base runners, you’re going to lose a lot of games.”

Still, Concord put runs on the board in all but one game, though Burgess noted the players often got into trouble on the base paths.

Mark Sullivan of Concord and Hooksett’s Matt French, said the coach, led the team in hitting.

French, in fact, went 16- for-19 his last four games, and would have produced even more throughout the season had it not been for a hamstring injury that caused him to miss several games.

Others contributing include Hopkinton’s Thomas Johnson and Evan Levy; Bow’s Dan Yvars; Pembroke Academy’s Zachary Cogswell, Connor Moroney and Doug Turnbull; Goffstown’s Matthew O’Brien; Daniel Solomon, Benjamin Thurston, Ryan Wakefield, Tucker White, Nicholas Comtois and John Boudrais.

“They all got along really well, which is kind of unusual with a team compiled of kids from so many different areas of New Hampshire,” said Burgess.”This was a very good bunch of guys, probably one of the most delightful bunch of guys with some of the most unique personalities I’ve ever coached.”