What a day!
I had appealed to the group for good attendance since Rube Foster, my old man, was coming out to watch, and the two times before he had come out, we ended up only being able to do batting practice. The third time pays for all in this case, as we had ample players and an amazing —bordering on sweltering— day.
As you no doubt surmise if you have been an avid reader of this little rag, I wanted to pitch a complete game, which meant a certain amount of assholery, since we were sitting 2 players at our high point. Luckily my team was comprised of decent people and I got to pitch as much as I wanted to.
The sleeper story of the game was the emergence of Nate as a dominant pitching force. For 4 innings he held us scoreless, scattering 1 hit and 2 "I guess that was somewhere between a hit and error". We went down in order the first two innings, and could not get started.
The homers on the other hand, were raring to go from the first and began what would be a dazzling spell of baseball numerology. The score was 2-0 in the 2nd inning, 4-0 in the 4th, 5-1 in the 5th, 6-3 in the 6th, and 7-5 in the 7th.
I had a rough go of it early on, the homers were teeing off on me, an when they weren't hitting rockets to center field, they hit ground balls to SS where Mitch encountered a dazzling display of shitty hops, one after another. Seriously, I think he had about 6 bad hops, some run of the mill, some scary near misses with his face. Once that stopped happening, our defense got a lot better. For both teams, the double play was a weapon, I think I counted 5-6 double plays between the two teams.
Nate gave way to HR, then McG, then Erasto, and all of them pitched well. HR was locked in at first but lost his grip on the control for a little while and we played the time-honored game of "Is it a strike or is it going to hit me in the neck?"
As usual, I plodded along, getting warmer with each inning, and by the end I was where I wanted to be, minimum pitches, maximum outs. Never was easy, I think I had two innings without a baserunner, and I got out of at least 2 bases loaded jams, but the homers were threatening the entire game. If we had won the game, I would have felt bad, our team never looked like winners. We finished the game early by our standards and decided to go one more, since it was only 3:20. Our team mustered up a little ginger to plate a run, but could not do more and the final was a much deserved win for the homers, 7-6.
Highlights
* Nate was a menace on the mound and at the plate, 3 hits, 2 doubles, about 4 RBIs
* Adam had my number all day, sending one line drive after another to left field
* The homers also hit 4 balls down the 3rd baseline for hits
* Sean tracked a ball down in the outfield when I really needed it
* Tim was a stalwart at 2nd for the double plays and had a nice knock
* McG, Mike N, Gabe, Nate, Powell, Lynch all had well struck balls
* My knuckleball was stupidly bad at the beginning of the game and was my saving grace by the end
* Lots of foul balls
* Gabe turned on my inside fastballs 3 times in a row and got a lot of barrel, that's not supposed to happen
* Nick Smith stole a base and Anna made the mistake of swinging and fouling it off. We think Nick should have been allowed to keep the base, since he had it stolen well before the swing.
* I had what I thought was sure-fire double to right until it came down right where JT was standing
* Not only is Sean a great catcher, but he compliments you and makes you feel really good about yourself and your pitching
* The crazy lady that was monologuing in the stands throughout the game also was listening to a really nice selection of classical music.
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