4/1/18 West Sunset

Easter Sunday and April Fools in the one day, and what a day it was.  Glorious weather, warm but not too hot, the field was in immaculate condition, and we had 20 players show up.  How can you go wrong?

The teams may have been a little lopsided, but on the whole, it was a pretty good split.  Chris Powell started for the visitors and Satch, so hungry to play ball that he could hardly stand it, went for the homers.  We shut down the first inning in about 8 pitches, and then went to town to the tune of 5 runs.  We were feeling pretty good about ourselves, until the visitors roared back and tied it up with their own barrage of runs, making it a 5-5 affair.

We traded zeroes for a few innings, and then the homers struck again for another 5 runs, and never looked back.  Chris had given way to New guy Chris, who was a bit wild.  He was then replaced by Abe, who I think I have only seen throw one other time.  It was a pitching by committee for the visitors, for sure.  Satch ended up throwing a  complete game for the homers, which was very nice to air out the arm for a lot of innings.  Special thanks to Tony for letting me keep going, even though I know he wanted to throw.

We tacked on a few more, the visitors had another mini-barrage, but it was too little too late, and with a ground ball to SS we ended the game in a tidy 2.5 hours.

Final score: 14-8

Highlights:

* What an amazing day, other than the sun which temporarily blinded more than a few fielders.

* Thanks to Bob, Ed, Gaspar, Don, Chris for donning the tools of ignorance

* Adam tried the ol' rufus goofus of leaving early and trying to get picked off of first to give the man on third a chance to run home.  Unfortunately, he didn't realize that there was a runner on second too.  He made it back safely.

* Urano had a great day at SS, making play after play with a smooth precision.

* Derek made a great catch in right field after it was obvious that he could not see it in the sun.  It was headed right for him, so at the last second he saw it enough to catch it.

* Additional thanks to Derek's special lady friend who watched the entire game

* RBI Ed is back!

* Bob was HBP, though he tried so little to get out of the way that it was almost batter's interference.

* Big flies were hit by James, Dave, Chris P., Satch.  Should have had the cones out.

* Nick Smith had no luck at first all day, his infield could not throw him a decent ball for an out, he was jumping, and digging, and pulled off the bag every time.

* Speaking of, we have decided that a ball that hits the wall behind 1st, and bounces back is a live ball.  If it goes past the wall to the fence area it is out of bounds.

* We had a couple of good 2-out rallies

* I think I struck out five for the day, the change up was working really well, as was the curve, with the exception of the second inning, when the visitors were squaring up on everything I threw.

* I think James won the biggest hit, he almost reached the other field, and we all thought Loren was going to catch it Willie Mays style-but it ended up right at the fringe of the infield grass. James got a triple because he isn't a fat bag of slow like me.

* Bob told some new guy on his team to tell me to go fuck myself, but he never did.  So I am owed.

*  I think 5 people got hit by pitches, which is more than usual.  Urano and Tony both took one off the knee but seemed to shake it off.

* The grass on the infield is almost too good, you don't expect that a low ground ball will stay low.

* Thanks to everyone that showed up, I would have been super bummed to have to do...gulp...batting practice.

Here are Ed Sidawi's action photos for the day, as well as a slo-mo of Urano's hit/ error off of Chris Powell:

 

S. Paige