4/22/12- Big Rec

Parking wasn't especially horrible but it as enough to allow for a trickle in effect.  I was late, but not because of parking, just cuz I barely got permission to leave.  Mrs. Paige runs a tight schedule sometimes....

We had 22 by the time the latecomers arrived, and Brian Phelps was on the mound, dealing.  His mother was in the crowd, so I guess we know where that extra 3 mph and tricky movement was coming from.  Hey, who among us doesn't want to impress his mother with his baseball skills?  To her credit, she stayed for the whole game,which was steeped in fog and wind, a classic SF summer day.  Snyder started for the homers and continued his headhunting ways, beaning Carter in the middle of the spine early in the game.

On paper, the homers were a formidable team, but our play lacked cohesiveness.  We started out neck and neck with the visiting squad, trading runs for runs, we were down 3-1, then came back and tied it up, and then, in true MBC style, the roof caved in.  Greg had pitched a brilliant 4 innings, and Tony came in for relief, but was cut short by a knee injury on the slightly embarrassing error on the basepaths (hope it feels better and your Hawaiian surf trip is not affected!).  So in comes Satch, still not quite warm, but ready to go.  And it felt good, the weather was very conducive to the knuckleball, being heavy air and all.

The problem was, with the loss of Tony, the natural flow of our defense was all out of whack.  We had outfielders playing infield, infielders playing other infield positions than their own, and a general lack of confidence in what we were doing.  Cue the pop fly.  We dropped several.  Cue the throw around, we threw several.  Cue the triple.  The visitors had a few.  After celebrating that we finally had gotten an out after about 20 minutes, we started to settle down, and eventually the inning came to an end.  The damage, however, had been done to the tune of 7 runs.  Yikes.

We had come back once, so there was no reason we couldn't do it again, except of course, this time.  Phelps stayed locked in and never let up.  Johnny came in for relief, and then Carter, and we fared no better against them.  I wanted to keep playing, since it was to be my final game as a SF resident, but eventually, everyone just wanted to go home.  So we did.  Final score: 12-3?

Highlights:


* Brian Phelps, big time pitching, big time hitting (moonshots), great game.  Your mom was heckling us the whole time, that's why we lost....

* Richie and Jay had the big hits and started to signal our doom

* Carter is officially the new Bob, having amassed some really impressive HBP's in the last few months.  Congrats!

* Adam had a number of real hard luck pop up attempts but he finally caught one at the end

* Wilson, Bob's new guy, came out and looked like an athletic Brian Girgus.  He seemed to know what he was doing, and how to back up a play (I will preempt the expected peanut gallery commentary and say Yes, I should take lessons)

* Duane made a flub play at short, and then threw the guy out at first with an impressive hurry up throw (hope the arm is ok)

* Twice we bench coached for our base runners to stop, and twice they ignored us and did alright.  Maybe we should reevaluate our decision tree?

* Bob got hosed at the plate, with the help of a great relay from JT, to Tony to Adam, it was a thing of beauty.  I didn't think we had a chance to get him, but got him we did.

* The grass was so thick in the infield, it really threw off the normal ground ball

* Chris Powell played second base, which was a first, his excuse was that he played a double header on Saturday....

* It is decided that Milo needs to start playing baseball ASAP, so he can start falling on something soft like grass and dirt for a change.  Hope he feels better.

* The pink bat got a lot of use and a lot of hits

* The catchers did a good job of blocking the ball, not many passed balls

* The knuckle ball laid waste to a lot of hitters, could be considered a knuckle outing

* Tony had some nasty hops off the lip of the infield

* A case could be made for me loafing to second, however, with Carter's clean fielding of the ground ball at SS, I was pretty sure that if I pushed it, I would have been injured and out, as opposed to just out.  But I hear ya, not my best moment, especially following my one hard hit of the day

Make sure to give Greg some money, he has been funding the permits for the last few weeks.

S. Paige