Red's manager, Larry Rafferty, is a mild mannered guy. When we blew a seven run inning in the top of the ninth, he did not utter a single negative word to the team. He is a credit to managers everywhere.
On the way home however, I happened upon a rebroadcast of the great "Playoffs" meltdown post game comments by the great Jim Mora. Here is how he would have seen our ninth inning (edited for your enjoyment):
"Well, I’ll start off by saying this: do not blame that game on the coach, OK? I don’t care who you play — whether it’s a high school team, a junior college team, a college team — much less an Creaker team. When you make errors and walk guys and don't hit in clutch situations— you ain’t going to beat anybody I just talked about. Anybody. All right? And that was a disgraceful performance in my opinion. We threw that game. We gave it away by doing that. We gave them the friggin’ game. In my opinion, that sucked. Ah. You know? Holy crap! I don’t know who the hell we think we are when we do something like that. Unbelievable. And we’ve still got twenty games left, so there’s no telling how many we’ll have. That’s pitiful! I mean, it’s absolutely pitiful to perform like that. Pitiful!"
It doesn't quite come off on the written page so here is a link:
But, luckily, we have Larry, not Jim Mora, and there is a lot of Creaker season left.
The headline is Royal came back with a 10 run ninth to upend Red, 19-16. We had been in control ever since taking our first lead 6-5 in the bottom of the third. We held Royal to two runs in the middle six innings, but failed to build an insurmountable lead as we only were up 16-9 going into the ninth.
We were not without highlights, on offense or defense. LT Thompson hit two bombs for a double and triple, and three RBIs. The bottom half of the order (Al Kidwell, Tony Gorgone, Howard Davis, Larry Fogli, Bob Muegge, Bill Marthinsen, Chuck Breese, and Larry Rafferty) put together a one out five run fourth to give us a (not permanent) cushion at 11-5. Kevin Kane, Rich Brown, LT, Al, Muegge, and Coach Larry all had three hits.
In those middle innings our defense discovered itself. Roger Vaverka made several stops up the middle on one hop shots (he knows just when to close his eyes) for outs, and shortly after one of them we turned a rover to second to first DP. Rich caught all three outs one inning. Kevin in RC made a fine running catch on a smash up the middle. It was a game saver at the time. And Larry F made a great backpeddling grab on an eighth inning blooper to shallow right to seemingly put Royal away.
But it was not to be. Every blooper and bleeder Royal hit in the ninth found grass or a bad hop and you know the rest. They were gracious enough to give me a post-game Guinness so I am not bitter.
Much.
No comments:
Post a Comment