A good word of advice might be to keep your distance from the Oakville junior varsity American Legion baseball team.

Failure to do so might result in severe burns since Oakville currently is one of the hottest teams in the area with a record of 21-7.

Oakville just returned from the Cape Girardeau wooden bat tournament and not only walked away with the championship, but also a 5-0 mark in tournament play.

“We played some good teams down there in Cape,” Oakville head coach Matt Boyer told the Call. “We hit the ball really well despite using wooden bats.

In the championship game against Scott County, Oakville found itself down 3-1 after the first inning, but rallied back in the third and slugged its way to an 8-7 victory.

“They (Scott County) always have a good program,” Boyer said. “They went up 3-1 in the first and we ended up tying them in the third.”

Oakville starting pitcher Brett Deters threw four innings, in which he gave up seven runs on seven hits. He also walked five and struck out three in his fifth win of the 2004 season.

“Brett didn’t mix up his pitches in the beginning, but once he did, he really kept them off balance,” Boyer said. “He really pitched a good game for us.”

Relieving Deters in the fifth inning was Clayton Camp, who slammed the door on Scott County with zero runs and one hit in three innings pitched.

Camp also retired five batters via strikeout in the win.

“He (Camp) really came in and shut them down for us,” Boyer said. “He started the game at catcher and I brought him in for relief because I didn’t want to mess with my infield.”

Center fielder Adam Boyer (4-5, 2 RBI), Blake Carrigan (2-3) and left fielder Louie Haseltine (2-4, 2 RBI) were just a few hot hitters of the game.

In fact, the Oakville head coach believes he could point to every player on the team and designate each as a hero at some point during the tournament.

“There were a lot of heroes in this tournament,” Boyer said. “Everybody contributed and we had a different hero with each inning of the tournament.”

Oakville is back in action this today — July 1 — as it plays Florissant at McCluer North Senior High.

The game is set for a 5:45 p.m. start.