It's time to talk about my other team, Sunshine Saloon. My mother always taught me, if you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything. Unfortunately my life is riddled with instances when I did not listen to my mother. But that is another story.
Sunshine Saloon, which is semi sponsored by the best sports bar in town, plays over 50 in Pleasanton. We have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory many times. Base running mistakes, mental errors in the field, lack of clutch hitting, balls clanking off our gloves. These were our specialties. We took pride in them.
We scored exactly seven runs in six of eight games in one stretch last season. You don't often win with seven runs in softball, although we did win one of those, the last one by a score of 7-1.
There were a few times we played a complete game, offense, defense, you know, those are the two major components of the game of softball. Then we would revert the next week to our old habits. It's been a little frustrating. I won't admit it, but there were times I was literally frothing at the mouth in those games.
Now all of the sudden we are getting better. Old Dogs, who said no new tricks. Last week we came within one run against the dominant team in the league, losing on a walkoff hit, the score just 13-12.
Well, we have arrived after this week. We played an unbelieveable game, and won 23-0. Yes you read that right, 23-0. That is, we scored 23 out of a possible 25 runs. In Senior ball you have a five run limit until the last inning. We scored 5-5-3-5-5. And we allowed zero, nil, nada, zilch, and none. And then the game was over.
And, this is the best part - we did this without our regular pitcher, Sir Guy, who is easily one of the best pitchers in the league, and our star shortstop Mark.
Now granted, we beat nominally the worst team in the league called Deja Vu. But they have two wins this season, and they humiliated us once last season. In fact we were tied with them at 2-3 going into the game. Well we can strut now - we are the masters of our domain now. Who else in the league owns a 23-0 shutout???
We hit .829 as a team. That is unheard of. We had three guys go 4-4 (Tom, Hef and Larry - sounds like a nursery rhyme, does that make me a what?). Two went 3-3 (Darrell and the other Mark), and everyone else had two hits. It was truly a rout.
And Larry, filling in for Sir Guy on the hill, had each batter claiming Deja Vu. They would pop up, or hit a soft line drive to SS, and think they had just seen it, deja vu all over again. Because they had.
And here is the kicker. WE DID NOT MAKE ONE ERROR. That is a rarity even for the best teams in softball. We are not pros out there. But we made every single play in this game.
And now we are only a game and a half out of first place.
Did I dream this? I guess we will find out next Wednesday, when we try to do it all over again...
Sunshine Saloon, which is semi sponsored by the best sports bar in town, plays over 50 in Pleasanton. We have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory many times. Base running mistakes, mental errors in the field, lack of clutch hitting, balls clanking off our gloves. These were our specialties. We took pride in them.
We scored exactly seven runs in six of eight games in one stretch last season. You don't often win with seven runs in softball, although we did win one of those, the last one by a score of 7-1.
There were a few times we played a complete game, offense, defense, you know, those are the two major components of the game of softball. Then we would revert the next week to our old habits. It's been a little frustrating. I won't admit it, but there were times I was literally frothing at the mouth in those games.
Now all of the sudden we are getting better. Old Dogs, who said no new tricks. Last week we came within one run against the dominant team in the league, losing on a walkoff hit, the score just 13-12.
Well, we have arrived after this week. We played an unbelieveable game, and won 23-0. Yes you read that right, 23-0. That is, we scored 23 out of a possible 25 runs. In Senior ball you have a five run limit until the last inning. We scored 5-5-3-5-5. And we allowed zero, nil, nada, zilch, and none. And then the game was over.
And, this is the best part - we did this without our regular pitcher, Sir Guy, who is easily one of the best pitchers in the league, and our star shortstop Mark.
Now granted, we beat nominally the worst team in the league called Deja Vu. But they have two wins this season, and they humiliated us once last season. In fact we were tied with them at 2-3 going into the game. Well we can strut now - we are the masters of our domain now. Who else in the league owns a 23-0 shutout???
We hit .829 as a team. That is unheard of. We had three guys go 4-4 (Tom, Hef and Larry - sounds like a nursery rhyme, does that make me a what?). Two went 3-3 (Darrell and the other Mark), and everyone else had two hits. It was truly a rout.
And Larry, filling in for Sir Guy on the hill, had each batter claiming Deja Vu. They would pop up, or hit a soft line drive to SS, and think they had just seen it, deja vu all over again. Because they had.
And here is the kicker. WE DID NOT MAKE ONE ERROR. That is a rarity even for the best teams in softball. We are not pros out there. But we made every single play in this game.
And now we are only a game and a half out of first place.
Did I dream this? I guess we will find out next Wednesday, when we try to do it all over again...
No comments:
Post a Comment