Monday, October 3, 2022

10/2/22 Cop Field



Summer has come to SF!  A beautiful sunny day in the city, and enough people to play a game, who could ask for more?  Sean and I went head to head, complete game style, and while I will say that I felt like I threw a decent game, the score would not agree with me.  The mound at Cop Field is an abomination, and we should do something about it.  I will stop there.

The teams had a real seesaw battle for the first few frames, 1-0, 2-1, 3-2, 4-4.  We thought this was going to be the way the whole game.  But no.  In addition to pitching well, Sean and crew hit a few gappers that cleared the bases, more than once.    

The force I didn't think I would have to reckon with was Marcie.  She put wood to the ball every at bat, and had 2 hits and 2 RBIs on the day.  While I didn't feel great about it, we picked her off at first on a heads up play by Anna, who moved quickly to the bag and watched me as I delayed long enough for Marcie to lull to sleep.  I gotta take the outs wherever I can find them these days, but a big cap tip to Marcie on the day, not to mention a great catch she made in right on a sky ball.

Our scoring dried up completely, and the visitors kept tacking on runs.  Craig, a Scotsman who had only played cricket before, got steadily better over the course of the game, and put a hurt on a lot of balls that were way out of the zone.

The night is coming earlier, and fall is in the air.  The last 2 innings were a struggle with the sun so low in the sky, but we made it.  I struck out looking on a ball right down the middle to end the game.  My team tried to form a rallying cry that the pitch was low, since a backwards K is no way to end a game. It wasn't, though, it was perfect, and I froze up.  I own that, and hats off to Sean for throwing it on a 1-2 count.

Final: 12-4?

Highlights:

* The visitors put in the work and made the plays

* Sean pitched a hell of a game

* My team didn't ever fall apart, the scoring was all legit.

* Brad, in center field, made a couple of great catches

* Lynch likes playing 3rd, so we swapped SS as a fill in.  As Sean said, My team is doing pretty well for not having a shortstop.

* Marcie's grunt with her first hit was a powerful one

* Lynch swung at a 2 strike pitch that was around his eyeballs and hit it squarely to the opposite field.

* Greg and Nick W also caught the whole game, congrats to them!

* My hitting was schizophrenic all day, I had a nice long single to open, and then I struck out, then I got robbed on a frozen rope that Powell somehow caught, then I hit a weak groundball that I lazied up the line and might have made it if I had been running, then I struck out again.

* Anna had a challenging day at 1st, there were several throws that pulled her off the bag and into the baseline.

* Lattig brought him out and he and Craig seemed to have worked out a mutually beneficial program for not catching each others fly balls when filling in on defense.

* Sean laid out for one as did Alejandro, but neither quite made it.

* My curve ball was not working.  Then in the 7th, everything stopped working for a bit and I threw 9 balls in a row.  

* Powell had our biggest hit, and scored at least 2 of our runs

* We did pull off a classic double play to snuff a rally

* Adam showed up late and gave me a real battle in a 2 strike count, I think something like 7 foul balls.  He finally got a nice single.  Turns out, Greg told him that it was a 1-run game when he came up to bat, when in fact it was a 7 run game at that point.  Adam took it to heart apparently.

* Get well soon, Tony!

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