While major league baseball players took a break last week for the All-Star Game, the stars of the Diocese of Arlington and Archdiocese of Washington took to the field at St. Leo Church in Fairfax for the third annual Potomac Cup Softball Challenge.

The diocesan seminarians — dubbed "More’s Men" — were hoping to recapture the cup after a devastating loss last year to Washington. Washington’s seminarians pummeled them by scoring nearly 30 runs and allowing Arlington only four.

Although Washington’s leadoff batter, Charles Gallagher, scored the first run of the game this year in the bottom of the first, Arlington’s leaders, Jason Weber and Will Schierer, both scored runs to close out the first inning with a lead.

The bottom of the third inning opened with the game’s only home run, hit by Arlington newcomer Tom Crowe. Arlington ended the inning with a three-run lead after a run scored by Charles Smith. Washington came back in the top of the fourth to tie the game with runs by Benjamin "Kaz" Kaczmarski, Lawrence Swink and William Hegedusich.

The tie didn’t last long, and Arlington pushed ahead in the bottom of the inning with another run by Crowe and one by Robert Wagner, who was considered the team’s powerhouse in the first Potomac Cup Challenge in 2003 when he hit three home runs.

Washington came back in the fifth; scoring three runs and leading by one, but Arlington returned in the bottom of the inning and Deacon Kevin Fimian and David Brown both earned runs. Both teams continued to play with strong defenses during last two innings, allowing no more runs.

Arlington won the game, 8-7.

"We consider ourselves very fortunate because those guys were scary," Fimian said. "Did you see how big they were?"

While bragging rights and custody of the Potomac Cup were two of the reasons for the softball game, Father Rob Panke, director of priest vocations for the Archdiocese of Washington, summed up the greatest reason for the game in a prayer when he thanked God for this opportunity to "grow in bonds of friendship and fraternity.

"We love doing this," Father Panke said about the annual event.

Deacon Gregory Thompson, who also coached the winning team of the first Potomac Cup Challenge, said his team was "blessed with some supreme pitching, superior play in the field, and two of our newer seminarians were great additions to our team."

Thompson said the real purpose of the game was for the seminarians to be able to get together and have a great time. "Hopefully the seminarians of the Diocese of Arlington and Archdiocese of Washington came closer together," he said.

The softball game and barbeque that followed were sponsored by the Fr. Francis J. Diamond Knights of Columbus from St. Leo Parish. The knights provided a scorekeeper and umpire for the game and prepared dinner for the seminarians.