Red Scare

In another dominant performance, the Warriors smothered the Utah Jazz 121-95, and swept them away in their semifinal playoff series 4-0.

Wait...wrong game...that was last night...

In the Red-Forest game this morning, we had our chances and made a strong comeback to tie it in the eighth, only to lose a heart breaker in a one run ninth 14-13. Unfortunately, the wrong team scored the one run.

We will win a game this season, I just know it.

It started out well enough. After some tight defense in the top of the first, we put up four in our half. Three came on a deep blast to right field by newcomer James Del Rio, our latest addition, thank you placement committee. He touched them all and followed Al Kidwell and Rich Brown around the bases.

But somehow after that, we were shut out five of the next six innings. I'd like to blame it on our hitters for grounding into four double play grounders, but I have to give credit to the Forest defense - they made the plays to complete them, and Sandy Zimmerman made the pitches he needed to.

The only scoring before the eighth occurred when Randy Crase brought home Rich Brown (who had doubled) and Kevin Kane. Kevin led us with a perfect 4-4 day, including a double. Rich and a lefty further down in the lineup had the only other extra base hits, also doubles. LT Thompson also was perfect with three hits in three ABs.

On defense, our pitching made most of the outs routine, but there were a couple of exceptions. In the second there was a classic Creaker play, a soft floating line drive to the 5-6 hole. LT was playing short and moved over to try to snag it before it could find the ground. I thought we had switched reality to slow motion, I wanted to press the play button, the whole thing seemed like quarter speed. But LT made the play!

In the fifth, James charged to field a looper to left with a runner on first, and flung it wildly toward second. It was on target but it short hopped the rover covering. Luckily the guy had played some first base in his life, and was able to dig it out.

In the eighth, down 13-6, after a rare fly out by Rich leading off, we had nine hits sandwiched around one sacrifice fly. Crase, Del Rio, Kravin, Howard Davis, LT, Bill Marthinsen, Roger Vaverka, Tony Gorgone, and Larry Fogli all drove in a run and/or scored in the rally, and Bob Muegge put the capper on with a flare to left to tie the score at 13. It gave us hope, always dangerous.

When we held Forest to just the one run in the top of the ninth, we were feeling pretty good about our chances to break through with a win, or at least a tie, but it just wasn't meant to be. We ended up with the tying run at second, and the winning run at first but a fly out ended the game.

What did Yogi say? Just wait til next half season?