2/17/13 West Sunset

A beautiful February day, warmer than it should have been, but not really warm.  We recruited two guys who were out playing catch and some late stragglers showed up and all of a sudden we had a game of 19.  The teams were divided up and some might say it was not exactly a fair split (Vic and Mitch should never be on the same team).  I got traded to the visitors while watching lil' Satch and waiting for Mrs. Paige to show up to relieve me.  I guess that is what happens if you aren't ready to go in the 1st.  

Tony started for the homers, fresh from his victory last week, and raring to give it another go.  He and Greg were the unstoppable battery once again, helped by Mitch in center and Stretch Presley at 1st.  Carter started for the visitors and it quickly became apparent that our defense was more of the 6-outs-an-inning genus.  Doc showed up around the 2nd and umpired the game, which seemed to hurt our chances more, as our paint the blacks and corner strikes became balls.  Once it got ugly, Satch was sent in for the visitors and Snyder got the opportunity to squander the homer's lead, which he didn't do!

But c'est la livre as the surrender monkeys say.

We scored two runs early on, one of them on a sliding play at home by Gaspar, who scored and didn't dislocated his shoulder a real win win.  And that was about it for us.  

The homers on the other hand were scoring more than the town floozy on pay day.  And I don't want to say that it was all due to errors, they had their fair share of hits, singles, doubles, triples, doubles, singles.  The homers may have forgotten they had the lead, as they continued to steal bases for most of the game.  They even tried a squeeze play with a 6 run lead!  Didn't work out and we had a little discussion about why that might not be the right call.  Then I hit Tony in the knee with a slider on the next pitch.  By Accident.  But it made for some good theater.

We played an extra inning at the end to try and get some runs back, and all it did was exacerbate the situation, as the homers scored about 8 runs in the bottom of the 9th.  There was about 6 legit hits in a row.  

We went down meekly in our final at bats, but the homers took pity on us with only 6 of our team members left, they gave us 6 outs and so we all got a final chance to hit.

Final Score: A kind 17-3.

Highlights:

* Everyone on the homers seemed to have a good game

* Thanks to Greg, Tim, Gaspar, Vic for catching

* Had one K but it was well needed to stop the bleeding

* JT played the sun drenched right field all day, and by the end, stood helplessly blind, while a ball sailed 30 feet to his left.

* One of the new guys almost robbed his buddy of a great hit.  Almost.

* Jay cursed his bad luck every at bat, to the tune of a 4-5 game.  Maybe I should start complaining as soon as I hit the ball, I could be hitting .850 soon.

* The homers defense was strong all day

* John McG risked life and limb to get a glove and ball out of a tree.  It was impressive, and he didn't die.

* Will ran through a Stop, Stop, Stop chorus from the bench, for the third out, when we could have used a big rally.  We got to start using third base coaches, or yell louder.

* Mitch hit a 3-2 curve to right for a triple, a pitch that was purposely a foot off the plate.

* Our only sure out of the game was a infield fly rule, that no one called until well after it was caught

* Carter and Bob were both HBP

Same time, same place.

S. Paige