Although the amateur baseball season’s been going for a solid two months now; it’s finally going to hit its high point very soon.

The two Austin teams — the Blue Sox and Greyhounds — will finally take each other on for the first time this summer on Friday at 8 p.m. at Marcusen Park and the two teams will face again the following Wednesday, Aug. 4 at 7:30 p.m. at Marcusen again.

As always, the Blue Sox-Hounds games will have big impact on the Section 2B playoff scene.

Right now, the Blue Sox (22-12 overall, 3-0 Section 2B) are in control and looking to lock up a top-seed in the section tournament, which begins Sunday, Aug. 8.

They’ve already swept the Rochester Royals, but they’ll probably need to beat the Hounds (10-10 overall, 0-1 Section 2B) at least once to lock up the No. 1 spot in the postseason.

The Blue Sox have a good combination of speed (Nate Johnson, Darin Wagner, and Andy Swank can all bring it in the field and on the base-paths), pitching (Joe Huffman and Nels Nelson have been solid), and even slugging (Dan Swift and Craig Selk give the team two heavy-hitting leftys).

But the next two weeks will tell us much more about the Hounds, who’ve only played six times since hosting their tournament at the end of June.

The Hounds can definitely hit the ball — Matt Cano’s hitting .412 with 20 RBIs, Nick Rohne’s hitting .400, John Frein’s hitting .344 and Bryan Toov is hitting .354.

But the biggest question with the Hounds, who also have a doubleheader with the Royals in Rochester Saturday, is pitching. Ten different players have thrown for them this season and only two have thrown in more than seven games — John Kirby (2-2, 4.33 ERA) and John Halverson (2-2, 5.32 ERA).

Dave Meyer has normally been the ace, but he just made his two-inning debut last week and their other top hurler Zach Schara (3-1, 3.94 ERA) hasn’t pitched much this past month.

It’ll be very interesting to see if those pitchers can wipe off the rust or if somebody else can step up for the Hounds against the Blue Sox.

Here’s hoping for a good old fashioned pitcher’s duel — we haven’t seen too many of those this summer.