Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Greatest Games Ever Part II - Hosed

In my original team's infancy, when we started out in the Pleasanton league, we had two arch-rival teams, The Hosers and the Outlaws. We thought the Outlaws were a gang of thugs - they looked the part and had the attitude. Later, amazingly, on the weekend after the Loma Prieta earthquake, we discovered that in fact they were Alameda County Sheriffs - they forfeited that game because they were busy helping clean up the mess from the earthquake.

But the Hosers, or the Hosebags as we affectionately called them - they were always trying to pick a fight with us, especially a couple of their players.

One game, we were comfortably ahead, something like 14-5, and it was getting late for them to come back. We usually had their number (hehe).

They had a little rally going. A runner on second I know, and maybe another one on third. A guy hits a grounder and our fielder decides to get the sure out at first. The throw is a little high - I have to stretch to get it. The batter decides at that moment that he didn't get enough hitting when he played high school football, and turns into a middle linebacker. He barrels into me, and I do a complete flip (but not an elegant landing, would not have gotten a good score if it were the Olympics). The ball is dislodged from my glove, and rolls a few feet away. The runner made a turn toward second base, and our second baseman, the Gun, is yelling at me to tag him out. So I go rushing at him with the ball.

Only the umpire did not hear Gun yelling this, so he thinks I am going to fight the guy for upending me (which he deserved but after all I am a pacifist).

In the mean time, the runner from second rounded third, and seeing the commotion, never stopped. Heads up, really. Except - our catcher is standing on home plate, also focused on what is happening at first base. Like a statue. And the guy coming in from third just blindsides poor Oil Can, and knocks him over.

The umpire sees this is now getting out of hand, and immediately runs to the guy who knocked me over, and says "Yer out of the game." And then to me too - "Yer out!" and then he wheels to home plate and to the third guy says "And yer outta here too."

And the Hosebags, who were short a player to start, now were down to 7 players, and that meant that they forfeited the game. We would have won anyway, but hehe, I was glad to sacrifice myself to get that win.

No comments:

Post a Comment