Satch was off in the woods, nabbing German Brown trout and enjoying the outdoors, but the game got along just fine without me (some might say it was better....but they would be jerks). In any case, Mike Gaspar was there, and he filed this report:
Well it was an epic day for baseball.
After many months of foggy Sundays we finally had a hot sunny day to throw the old pill around. to add to the great weather we had 18 guys for the entire game. sean took the mound for the home team. and after missing a week hewas raring to go. although he labored in the first, he retired the side unscathed.
Tony rojas took the bump for the visitors and had the full arsenal of pitches working. after a quick couple of innings the home team put two on the board thanks to some good situational hitting and some not so good fielding by the visitors. the home tacked on a run in the third.
Meanwhile, sean got into a groove and shut out the visitors for the first four innings. getting good d and some k's mixed in as well. they broke through in the 5th when nick scored on a errant pick off attempt at second. the visitors tacked on single runs in 6th and 7th as well.
mike latting took over for tony in the 7th and gave up a couple of runs but kept it close which set up the top of the 9th with the visitors down 5-3. Noah, having relieved sean in the 8th was throwing strikes but thevisitors were hitting them.
A little foggy on the details but i know mitch, mike l. and john carey had big hits. in the end the visitors pushed across three runs and went ahead for good. greg pitched a perfect bottom of the ninth for the win.
Highlights:
- both starters pitched great
- sean's single that he thought was and out that could have been a triple (but he did have at least one rbi)
- james was on the winning team for a change and had an rbi to help the cause
- the game had a family feel to it as two generations of carey's and uncle (jt) and nephew (owen) played.
- the amazing weather (even in balboa park 'hood) all in all a great game and a fine way to spend a sunday afternoon.
-there's been talk of a t.i. game (double header?) for labor day weekend.
So there you have it folks, sounds like I missed a doozy, congrats to James, who has now improved his record to 2-13, and a big Howdy to John Carey, welcome back and nice work with the stick!
A great day for a ball game...if you live in SF anyway. Anywhere else in the world and you would be wondering, why am I freezing my ass off and yet, still muggy and warm? Well, another glorious week at the Cop Field, full of shotgun-loading cops and drunk Latin baseball players, and the MBC somewhere in the middle trying to get a game going. Luckily we had more than enough people, some 22 or so, and with a mighty gallop, we took the field once more.
Of all people, Brian the Circus Girgus wanted to start on the bump, and while we have seen a real spectrum of outcomes from this, the MBC is all about what you can do today, not what you did yesterday or five years ago (unless it was being an asshole, then history does matter.) Brian struggled a little to start off, but that is to be expected when pitching in the concrete and bone dust that is the Cop Field mound. The visitors ran up a few, but we answered back with some of our own and the game was underway. We faced Dustin Skiles, fresh from ACL rehab, and while claiming not a 100%, he was doing fine. He managed to keep Satch limited to one hit for the game, and had a few more strikeouts peppered into his repertoire.
This game, as most do, came down to defense and timely hitting. The infield was slow as molasses in January, and still had the crazy hops element, which added some excitement. In addition, there was a group of geese eating in the outfield for the whole game, and no amount of yelling or threatening seemed to do any good.
The game see-sawed, I remember it being 5-5 in the fifth inning and Circus exited with a ND. Satch came in to mop up and James took the reins for the visitors. Then the homers broke loose for a couple and it stayed 7-5 into the 8th. We padded our column into the 9th, and while the visitors managed to scrap a few, the top of the 9th saw no comeback and the game was 10-7.
But wait! So many people, why wouldn’t we play an extra inning? Just for fun. The rationale being of course that half the people could leave and we would still have enough to fill the diamond. And so we did (as Lattig put on his shoes and shook his head), and the visitors made it interesting, with a run scored and men on 1st and 3rd, representing the tying runs. But Brian Phelps, that cagey lefty was able to stave off the attack and the visitors were turned away once more. Cue fog, wind, Advil and beer.
Highlights
* Johnny almost was arrested for animal cruelty for the double he cracked into the flock of geese.
* Brian Phelps back from Italy, Dustin back from surgery, Stoner back from daddy duty, John Spack back from where ever he was, welcome home!
* We had a couple of nice relays, one at home that got a runner.
* Tony left us for a punk rock game and party, then came back when they didn't get their shit organized. Thanks Tony!
* Bob pissed on another ball, and hustled like he was 20 years old
* There was some sort of situation that warranted a team discussion, I forget the particulars, but I know I scored and had to go back to third, legs don’t need that. EDITORS NOTE: It was brought to my attention that the situation was the catcher not calling the ball fair or foul, and as such, the play was ruled safe at first, runner to 3rd. Ed, the catcher, claimed it was due to his rookie status as backstop, I think James' 28 balls in the dirt meted out enough punishment to make up for it
* D-Ski and Noah brought a friend out, and I don’t just mean the Colt 45’s and Jameson
* I bought a new wood bat at West Coast Sports and while I didn’t get a legit hit with it, I crushed one to center that felt really good.
* Both teams had some great situational hitting to right field
* Circus did it with the arm and the bat
* Thanks to the platoon of catchers we had out there, Noah, Bob, Mike, John Spack and Ed, who caught for the first time, and had a real natural instinct for blocking the ball, which he had a lot of opportunities to do
* Adam Pfahler played 3rd base for the first time in a long while
* It has been agreed that played 2nd is just weird, the perspective is all screwy and no one gets used to it.
Editors Note: When playing extra innings, or just in general, the course of base runners should be to ensure that people get at bats. Now we have all been picked off at one time or another, but come on, bouncing off the bag, trying to freak out the pitcher is a moot point. Even if he gets flustered and balks, we don’t count it, it just slows down the game and takes away concentration that may be needed to throw strikes (this is the MBC after all). So, let’s all be heads up there, take a big secondary lead if you have to be active, know where the SS and 2nd are playing (base coaches, who’s got that kind of energy?) and not ruin someone’s at bat.
We showed up at the field and there were a lot of baseball players there, which ordinarily would have been a good thing except that it wasn't our team, and they had the field already. Strangely, we talked it out with them and while they were not too happy with giving up the field, they did so pretty easily. It seems they had come from Hayward to play a doubleheader to determine who would enter the playoffs, and the first game had decided that, so they second was going to be just for the hell of it anyway. With one exception, they were all fine with letting us use the field, and while we warmed up, the winners took off, and the losers started drinking in the parking lot. On the drive over, the windshield wipers had to be employed due to the nasty fog and mist that covered all of the Sunset. Yet somehow, it wasn't really cold and it wasn't really hot.
Johnny dashed out to the bump and started for the homers, backed by a team of sluggers that rivaled some of the best lineups we have put together. We tried our best to get something started and we scored one in the first, but then as Satch settled in to the bottom of the first, we quickly realized that we were grossly overmatched. The line up for the homers was formidable, they had Nick Smith, Johnny, Sean, Lattig, Chris, Bob, Mitch, Cagle. And they quickly made us sorry, starting the series of long innings for us.
By the time we had played through five, we were down by quite a few, and Chris and Sean and Mitch and Bob had doubles and triples, some of them had more than one. We were doing our best to keep it close, and at one point we made a some pretty great plays to stop rallies before they got embarrassing, including a relay play at the plate from a long ball in the outfield.
However, it just wasn't meant to be for us, and as we got into the 9th, and needed to mount a rally, but we weren't quite able to conjure up a comeback. So instead we talked the homers into sticking around for a 10th inning. Unfortunately, our team pretty much left us, so we had to rely on the homers play defense for us, and damn if they didn't lock it down. We got three quick outs and then got another chance. Sean comes in to throw his extra inning of work, and gives us the nasty stuff, and down we went, with one extra out for Tony so that all four of our remaining players got a chance to hit, he got a single, and then we packed it in.
The ballers in the parking lot were still there, listening to a pre-season football game, which showed what kind of guys they were. The captain of the team had progressed from surly to very drunk and surly, and mad dogged me as we left the lot and headed back into the rainy mist.
Highlights
* Johnny pitched a great complete game, and kept us off balance with his mixture of guile and locations.
* Cagle and Chris made some amazing plays on ground balls at third and short, simply amazing.
* Girgus made for a very reliable center fielder for the whole game, with a few exceptions in the getting out of the way of the falling fly ball rather than blocking it
