Monday, April 13, 2015

4/12/15 West Sunset

What a day for a ballgame.  The wind that was supposed to descend on us never came and we enjoyed warm, even hot sunny weather the entire game.  We had 21 players, and what seemed like a good match up went sideways early.

Satch and Sean squared off, and Sean shut us down in the first.  Satch managed to limit the damage to one run in the first and one in the second, but the writing was on the wall, something was going on with the defense.  The third proved to be THAT inning.  We had about 6 chances at fly balls and couldn't catch them.  Add to that missed foul out opportunities and legitimate hits and the score after the 3rd was 7-0.  I managed to record strikeouts for all three outs, but I would have been a lot happier with a quick inning.

Sean continued to throw effective ball, and we were pretty powerless until we started to hit the ball on the ground and make the other team actually play defense.  Then they had their bad inning and suddenly we had a good game.  For a little while.....

Storm came in for the visitors and had some trouble with the strike zone, Sean kept at it for the homers.  Carter came in the 8th, as we were clinging to our smallest deficit, eager for a comeback-Cinderella story, the score 9-8.

I fucked it up.

There I said it, all the bad humors I had been waving away through the beginnings of the game came back to me in spades.  I had a bunch of opportunities to make plays at SS, and I pretty much screwed them all up.  We managed to get two outs (which was the theme for the day) and then every time I had a chance to get that last out, I couldn't do it.  Sean hit a perfect squib pop up that I was right on line for except that I was playing in and it sailed over my head.   John McGrath deked me perfectly on a ground ball, staying between me and the ball just long enough for me to lose sight of it completely and then have it go through my legs.  I got a ground ball from Bob that I should have thrown to first, and I threw to second instead, not in time.  I got another ground ball and I threw it to 3rd, a hurried bad throw that went right by Elvin.  Finally I managed to get an out at first, although Storm had to make a good stretch to ensure that we got the out....ugly, in fact, fugly.

So our close comeback turned into 14-8.

Mike Gaspar tried everything he could to get us into a rally, including one of the best jumps we have seen, but with Gastone on to close it out, we were over-matched (I managed to strike out too) and the game came to an end with no one even entertaining the thought of extra innings.

Highlights:

* Sean pitched a great game

* Thanks to Carter, Bob, Gaspar, Greg for catching

* New guy Josh had a good game and timely hits

* Mitch made two errors in center, which is unheard of and goes to show that the defense and the outfield in particular was jinxed yesterday

* Sonny and I both smoked the ball.... right at some one....

* Gaspar and Adam were the only guys that were hitting like they knew what they were doing

* Nick Smith was back, and his usual high quality self

* Abe was doing it with the glove and the bat, just like the game at Crocker Amazon

* We kept hoping with all our pop ups that the other team would start dropping them, but other than Tony's one crucial drop that started our only rally, the homers kept it pretty tight, looking unsure at times, but effective.

* The homers definitely deserved to win, and I don't mean to disparage their hitting prowess, but it was hard to notice in the midst of our bumbling

* We had Greg picked off at second, but no one (especially me) bothered to get to the bag to try

* I did manage to strike out 7or 8 batters in 5 innings of work.

* James made a great throw from right, but the runner knew the rumors of his arm and chose not to test it.

* I recorded all three outs in the third and the fourth innings (the last one was a 1-3, do I get an out or assist on that?).

* Thanks to everyone who came out




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