Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Game 7: Helping Hands

With the loses we sustained during the past week, I was forced to call in the reserves. As it turned out, Jimmy and Jon (who had said all along they could play if needed) were able to fill in quite nicely.

At the plate, we had a pretty good night. Michael got us started off with a nice line drive to left and we kept going from there with lots of good solid base hits and a couple of bombs by Josh and Luke. Thankfully we play our games on the larger fields at Veteran's Park these days, rather than those at Central Park, because Luke hit a towering drive that short-hopped the fence in right-center that would have easily cleared the fence at Central. It just happened to be the hit that drive in the clinching (put us over the 10-run run-rule) run.

Defensively, we played a solid game and never game the opposition a chance to rally for that big inning that seems to plague us at times. Even on the few plays that we were unable to turn into outs, we smothered the ball and kept it close to prevent runners from advancing.

We were also the beneficiaries of nice work in the pitching department. Chris through a complete game, and seemed to have many of their hitters off balance. There were very few hard hit balls and several cue shots off the end of the bat. As is very important in slow pitch softball, he also through a lot of strikes, which forces the hitter to swing at less than perfect pitches (at least from their point of view).

It was a good game with good results. Lots of fun, no injuries, and a W to boot (Final score 17-7). We also had a nice turnout in the stands, thanks to all the families that braved the craziness of the ballpark to support those of us on the field. We were also able to enjoy Norval presence once again, and we are thankful for his encouragement and oversite.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Games 5 & 6: Two Bad

The first game didn't start off to so well, as the opposition got off to a fast start, while it took us a couple of innings to get going. Overall it wasn't a bad game, but we were bitten by the bad inning, and depite a late rally we were not able to recover. I believe the final score in this one was 6-14.

The second game was one of the best games we have ever been a part off on both sides. Each team played good defense and hit the ball well. Were it not for an off target throw from our left fielder, I think we would have pulled this one out. I am going to have a serious talk with him, and hopefully this won't be an issue again. I think this was just about the most fun we have had as a team in a losing effort. Both sides played good, clean, exciting softball, with good sportsmanship on both sides. The final score in this one was a hard fought 10-11.

Despite our best efforts, we dropped both games of our double-header to fall to 2-4 on the season with two games left to play. It would be nice to finish 4-4 by running the table the rest of the way.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Game 4: Electricly Burned

Not to ruin the suspense, but it is much easier (and more fun) to write about our victories that it is to summarize our loses.

This particular game went much like many of our losses in the past have gone. We played pretty well for the most part, but one bad inning with a couple of mistakes followed by a couple of big hits left us trying to play catch-up. It was unfortunate that we played, probably our worst game of the season against the best team we have play so far.

We hit the ball reasonably well throughout the game. I think Josh even had a couple of round-trippers instead of his customary one. We did have some issues on the bases, however, and kind of shot ourselves in the foot a couple of times. Most of the time, though, it was a matter of the other teams defense making plays. We had several hard hit balls to the left side of the infield (3B and SS) that were caught and turned into outs.

Defensively we had a rather rough, at least measured by the other games this season, outing, but mostly those errors only put us in bad shape to handle the bombs to the fence that a couple of guys on the other team were hitting. It was also not our best pitching night of the season, but I think we should have helped him out a little more than we did.

We put a little rally together with two outs in the bottom of the last inning. However, it wasn't enough to overcome the deficit we had accumulated, and we came up short against the Britt Rice Ballers with a final score of 11-17. Much like the A&M vs. OSU game on Saturday, with a few plays going a different way, this game would have had a much different result.