What a glorious day. We were all a little afraid of a low attendance, what with that other sport having its thing happening on the same day, but lo and behold, we not only had enough, we pushed the ranks beyond the usual. One small thing was the lacrosse tournament on the upper field and all the Cadillac Escalades taking up our parking spaces.
Additionally, thanks to bigmouth Ed Sidawi, we feared that his ominous "the grass is really tall and wet" comment was going to inhibit people's attendance, and sure he was right, but all in all, the day could not have been better. The grass was very slow in the infield, but the sun was shining and the air was dry. We tried to keep the ball off the grass as much as possible, and swapped out a lot to allow for drying, but hey, baseball in January, who cares what you have to do?
The game pitted Sean against Satch, and the visitors drew first blood and were in the midst of starting something big, when their rally just dissipated. It would be the first in a series of disappointments for them in the day. We homers scored an answering run to knot the game at
1-1. Then we tacked on another. Then the visitors laid into us for three and took back the lead.
It had all the makings of a see-saw battle until about the fifth inning, when, after Sean got two outs on two pitches, the homers put together a big two out rally and scored a bunch of runs, and then a bunch more the next inning. And the next. And the next. What had been nail biting turned into a laugher/crier.
Satch went the distance, as each start may be his last for a while, and Sean went seven and Will (AOY extraordinaire) went one. I wouldn't say the game was particularly ugly defensively, in fact the visitors had some real nice plays, but the homers were a hungry, hitting bunch, and Satch's change up was doing the duty on the bats of the visitors.
By the ninth, the sun was pretty blinding to the defense, and the wind had picked up a bit, the visitors managed a couple of runs and refused to go down easily, but down they did go eventually, and we all enjoyed another great game.
Final Score- 16-6?
Highlights
* 20 people on a 49er playoff day was a good sign
* Adam, back from cataract surgery, nursing a sore shoulder, doped on painkillers, laced the first pitch he saw to left for a solid hit. Last time i pity the guy.
* The visitors exchanged Liam for Rich....totally fair, right?
* That being said, Liam played a hell of a game, and fouled off some good pitches from 60 feet 6 inches.
* Don had a good day at the plate, and a blind day in center, his casual shrug of "Who knows where the hell the ball is" was pretty funny to watch, when it wasn't headed towards his face.
* New guy Tim did it with the glove and bat
* Mike Gaspar drove a line drive straight up the middle, that Sean snared, then did it again
* Bob caught the hardest hit ball of my day, in right field, then heckled me.
* Rich hit three balls to deep right, 2 were caught, one was a double. That is a successful day if you ask me.
* Chris Powell was also a victim of the caught line drive. Twice.
* Adam made some pretty plays at first as well as catching at least four foul outs.
* Brian Phelps showed up late, but he brought pork jerky, so all was well
* Ed has been hitting with a magic bat, and in the last two games is something like 12 for 14!
* Mitch hit all day and played third base the whole game!
* Sean hit Phelps right in the elbeebone (as Cleetus would say) and we requested ice from McGrath's wife. Then he hit a triple his next at bat.... He got some stitchmarks too!
* JT held up on a change up, but almost fell over the plate while on his tippee toes to do it.
* Will was a K victim twice, I believe. Maybe it's the guilt?
* Loren showed up later than usual
* We had an interesting play, with runners on first and second, the right fielder threw to third to get the lead runner rather than the short throw to second. In theory that is the right play, but rarely do we have people who can both throw and catch on that play to make it work.
Everyone pray for rain Sunday night through Thursday night....and then windy and sunny the rest of the time.
S. Paige
