I will not dwell on the fact of how frustrated I was yesterday, all I wanted to do was get to the game, my first in quite a while. Bay Bridge, no problem. Construction diversion at Fremont St, no problem. Getting the 3.5 miles from my apartment to the field, big problem....Usually the Sunday road closure thing is not an issue, but I guess the once a month when they shut down everything, including the Great Highway, it really cluster fucks everything.
In any case, by the time I got to the game it was the 6th inning, and apparently one of the most defensively strong games of all time. Sean and Johnny had been battling, trading great innings, the score stood tied 4-4.
I ended up on the home team, and was warming up in the infield while DJ Greg started his warm ups on the mound. At some point in the tosses, Bob threw one back while Greg was looking elsewhere, and it popped him right in the left eye. He laid face down for a while, but luckily, it was a glancing blow, and once he took a second to recognize he was alright, we got him resting comfortably. Always available as the short term solution, I took the mound and did the rest of my warming up there. The nice part about being gone for a month, is that the arm has a some real fastballs in it for a while, so I took advantage and threw some heat to offset the melted ice cream ball.
Phelps came in for the visitors, and threw well, but we still managed to advance a few and break the tie, we went up 7-4. We stayed there for the next few innings, and turned away the rally in the 9th to secure the win, that is to say, the win if we were going to stop at 9, which of course we weren't. The sun was shining, we had extra players, and no where else that we wanted to be.
Regulation Score 7-4, home team.
I think we played 5 extra innings, but I could be wrong. I know I bowed out after giving up a huge rally to the visitors, who all of sudden were driving my fastball all over the place. So in theory, I managed to win and lose the game, its always nice to be involved....the defense stayed pretty good for the whole game, although the chaotic in play throw around started to be a little more common.
Greg Snyder came in to escort the homers through the end of the game, and Will pitched for the visitors, both did great at shutting down the hitting, with a few exceptions. By the 13th?, we were starting to lose more players, so we begged the visitors to give us our finals ups, but not too much came of it, and we ended our day of baseball in the waning light of a sunny, hazy day.
Final Final Score, 13-8, visitors.
Highlights (from the 6th on)
* Bob got hit right after I got there, making it official
* A lot of people in general got hit with the ball, the backstop was sending balls caroming back at hitter and catcher alike
* We had a number of plays that would have been great if the throw was on, or the ball was caught
* Richie rifled one right back at me in the midst of the big rally, scoring two
* Jay had a nice day at the plate, line drives, as well as catching my line drive at 3rd, dammit! Now if we can just get him to stop cursing his bad luck after he hits a single.
* Rich sent one into the greenery in center field, and after a short debate, was awarded a home run, longest ball I have seen hit in a while
* Adam hit lefty and scorched one, unfortunately, I was in right field, and running blindly towards the shadow I thought was the ball. It turned out it was and I snared it.
* Jimmy had a good all around game as well, including two short porch grabs running backwards
* Sean had another dazzler play off the mound
* I was happy that my first at bat resulted in a long fly double (that Mitch almost caught....) and not an embarrassing K
* Almost had a legendary play, Bob hit a grounder and hustled his way to first. The ball was bobbled, but they still had time, the throw was off line, yet, Mitch, who was catching, had been tracking Bob down the line and almost had the ball and the tag!
* Theo and Milo were our fan squad for the whole game, urged on by Ed
* Thanks to Bob, Noah, Ed, Mitch, Adam and Greg for catching the extra long game
* Will struck out Carter (or vice versa.....) in dominant fashion
* Ed was picked off at third, and it was not pretty
* The Homers were playing hazy pretty much the whole game
* Back to back doubles really cemented the visitors rally
* Short porch hits were the key to getting through the defense in the later innings
* Thanks to everyone who made it out and stayed!
S. Paige
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