Vintage Vintage

I played a lot of years in Pleasanton on Sunday and Tuesday nights. One year my Tuesday league had eight teams. And we had sort of a bad season, going 3-6-1. But playoffs came and for the only time in Pleasanton league history that I know of, the powers that be said all teams make the playoffs and there would be two divisions and two declared 'Champions'.

We went out and kicked ass in the 'Lower' division and took home the Cotton.

That's what we need in the Danville League. Let's face it, there are two divisions, the Hornets/Leos and Crows/Vintage. If we end up third we should get an award, and Don should talk to the league about it.

That's because in our second great matchup with Vintage this season we came out on top 17-15 after winning the first game by a run. We are now up 2-0 in the season within a season.

Having previously played for the Wolfpack in Winter ball here, I can say in the years I have played in Danville there is one constant - there will be a call that goes Vintage's way because their umpires do not know how to make a call against their own team if a play is close or is in their minds open to 'interpretation'. Such a play happened in the second inning when one of their base runners stormed right at Mike at third base when he was cocking his arm to throw to second to try for a double play. Runner obviously should have been called out. Their argument was the runner going to second would have been safe. Weak, weak, weak and not to mention that is not the intent or meaning of the rule. There is no 'interpretation'. They ended up scoring more runs, but it just fought off the inevitable as it turned out.

It always happens with that team. It was vintage Vintage. Yet, it seemed to wake us up and we came charging back from the 10-2 deficit we had gifted them with some tough luck pitching and on defense. It was not a roar but we chipped and chipped away and by the top of the sixth we tied it at ten. Then when they answered with two in in the bottom half, we responded with the only five run inning of the game in the seventh. They tied it again in the eighth, but we squeezed two across in the ninth and then had our fifth shutdown inning to close it out 17-15.

Much of the credit goes to Don's pitching, as he settled us down after falling behind. But a lot of that was due to several plays up the middle by Howard at rover and Bruce at SS. And then a couple of times Anthony fired to second on a 'single' to get a force out on some old slow guys, including on the last play of the game to nail the victory.

It was truly a team game, especially on offense. Al, Mike, Anthony, Steve, Bruce, David C, and Howard all had three hits. AND COACH DON, who also walked. David had the biggest hit of the game, a two run triple on the fifth. Anthony had a two out two RBI hit to end the five run inning. Al had a two out two run single in the fourth.

Hopefully you guys can get a win against Leo's or the Hornets while I am on the East Coast. In any case I will see you for the third act of Vintage Vintage in three weeks.

Kiss My Smelly Big Feet

In a very competitive game, both Big Feet and the Coneheads had chances to put away the other team, so maybe it ended appropriately in a tie at 14-14.

The Coneheads sprang out of the box with a three run first as Lefty, Randy and D singled to start the game and it was off from there. Then Big Feet came roaring back with a six run bottom half, and we were back on our heels.

But we had seven straight hits in the second and before you knew it, we were up 10-6. Gene made a great catch in left in the bottom of the second and it helped produce the first of three shutdown innings that saved the game. The biggest hit of the rally was a two run single by Derek, and he was just warming up. In the third we loaded the bases with one out and he promptly cleared them with a deep shot to the fence.

Now we were up 13-6, but Big Feet would not go away. They answered with four and only a great play at third base by D (5-4 putout) for the third out kept them from breaking it open.

Sadly our offense shut down at that point. Big Feet scored another four to take a lead into the last inning. But Derek wasn't done yet. He deposited the ball over the center field fence to tie it at 14. Unfortunately, we couldn't muster enough offense to even squeeze one more run out.

It looked bad as the home team had the heart of their order coming up, but Joe (who also had started a 1-6-3 double play earlier) pitched great and got three very routine outs with no further damage done.

Derek had the monster game with 4-4, both of our extra base hits, and six of the RBIs. Lefty, Randy, and Haze had three hits apiece.

Kiss this.

Milestones:

Derek        30 2b (#7)

Larry         100 r (#14)

We're Back! on the Road Again - Orange 23 - Purple 13

Orange put together another complete game today, dominating in all phases over Purple 23-13.

Orange dared the curse of the first in this one - we scored the maximum in the top of the inning. The big blow was a 3-run gapper with the bases loaded by pitcher Mark Narciso. It cleared the bases for our fifth run and we hadn't even made an out yet.

Purple never came closer than four runs. There was a mini-drought by both teams in the middle innings, and after five it was only 8-4, anyone's game. But the Orange Blizzard woke up and we scored five in each of the next three innings to put it away.

We had a small collection of miscues in the field, but we more than made up for it with some stellar plays. In the third center fielder Greg Wilson made a great running catch for the third out. In the next inning, right fielder Vince Francesci came up clean on a one hop line drive single, and quickly hit rover Steve Sloat, who turned in a flash to fire a bullet to third to nail the speedy Mark Pitzlin trying to steal an extra base.

In the fifth Sloat one-upped himself by snagging a hot shot up the middle, stepping on second and winging an accurate throw to first to double up the other Purple speedster, Chip Sharpe. And then Jay  Chafetz launched into left center and literally stabbed a ball out of the air for the third out. He later ranged far into foul territory for another great running catch.

But the play of the game was a bases loaded no out smash (in the seventh when the game was still not completely out of reach for Purple) to temporary shortstop Brian Black, who plays wherever you ask. He turned to third base and got the runner going there, and third baseman Howard Davis wheeled and threw home to injured outfielder turned catcher Mark Edelstone, who made a great stretch and the second double play in as many innings was ours.

Davis also pitched the middle three innings and held the Purple monsters to just four runs and I think all three of the runs in the sixth were unearned. Narciso battled some wildness but held Purple to just nine runs in his six innings, including a one-two-three  ninth when we flip-flopped.

Wilson led the team with a 4-4 game but he would admit it was not his usual hitting display - two of them were classic Creaker infield pop ups that fell in no man's land.  Black, Edelstone, Francesci, Mike Saindon, Gabe Tanaka (who had the biggest bomb, a right center gapper for our fifth run in the seventh), and Bob Carver all had three hits. Coach Kravin was two for three plus a bases loaded walk, and that included a two out two run single to close the five run eighth, and he led the team with four RBIs. Everyone else had at least one hit.

Looking forward to the next half - the teams are well balanced and it should be a great race to the finish.

Flat!

In an otherwise perfect defensive game, one mental mistake by the Coneheads in the fourth inning with two outs opened the dam for a two out four run rally by the DeGen R-8 Elite, and they went on to beat us in a very tight game, 9-7. James went deep into the 5-6 hole to snag a hot shot, but no one covered second for the force. By the time James threw to first, he threw off balance and the first baseman couldn't stretch far enough to get the out (the batter was probably safe anyway). 

The game started off oddly. On a marginally flat pitch, Marc Hamanaka struck out looking. You know what, with two strikes, swing the bat on a close pitch if you don't hear the ump call "Flat". The rest of the game, Umpire Terry Mason seemed determined to show that he was consistent - another of their hitters was called out on a flat pitch, and there were several flat ones called on us. But the Elite were more and more pissed off, and therefore the more in our favor the umpiring seemed to go.

Joe did a masterful job of going with what the umpire wanted to call, and holding the Elite to nine runs is very impressive, especially considering no more than five were earned.

In the end, the Heads couldn't muster enough offensive power to defeat the Elite. I kept thinking there would be a walk-off hit but it was not meant to be.

The defense was spectacular. In the first, D turned a 5U-2 double play to end the inning when the bases were loaded. Joe started not one, but two 1-6-3 double plays on shots up the middle. In the fifth he threw three pitched, flyouts to Haze in right and Darren in right center sandwiched around a popup to the mound. Charley made a nice stop in the 3-4 hole to get the third out in the third. Chauncey made a great "Willie Mays" Johnson running basket catch in the sixth. Randy and the right side outfielders made several good running catches.

James had another great day at the plate, 4-4 with two doubles. Darren was 3-3, and Heffe was 1-1 with two walks. But once again, we proved scoring under ten runs will not win you many softball games as we also hit into three double plays ourselves.

Milestones:

None

On Any Given Sun...er Tuesday, Scarlet 19 - Orange 12

I've been telling Dave Rose all year that his team has as much talent as any team in the league. I forgot to tell him not to bring it out against Orange.

Orange had run the table the last five games but we were caught dead in our tracks and had a relapse to lose this one. We kept thinking throughout the game that we would come back and win dramatically in the bottom of the ninth, but it just wasn't our day.

Put simply, Scarlet hit the ball, mostly line drive hits, and we didn't. Scarlet caught the ball, and we had a few defensive lapses at key times. We walked batters, Scarlet only one. It's a simple game.

Scarlet dominated from the beginning, putting up nine runs in the first two innings, and we could never quite get that catch-up inning we needed. The closest we got was 16-9 after six, and that was that.

Brian Black and Mark Edelstone were each 4-4, the latter with two run scoring doubles and four RBIs altogether. Mike Saindon had three RBIs on three hits. Steve Sloat and Heffe had a couple of hits in three plate appearances and the latter had the only other extra base hit, a double leading off the ninth.

Defensively, Greg Wilson made a great catch in right center to save a run in the first, as did Jay Chafetz in right field in the fourth. Ron Schwab started a SS to (rover) Sloat to Kravin DP in the seventh, and Gabe Tanaka started a 2B to (rover Wilson) to Kravin DP. These plays helped keep Scarlet from completely running away with it, but didn't make enough of a difference, given our lack of offensive punch today.

We've now split the (first half) season series with each team, with Purple pending next week.

Damn Lucky Hitters

Many of you old farts will remember the group King Crimson, an English progressive rock band from the 60s and early 70s. Predating the group they were Giles Giles and Fripp, which was a trio of three of the main guys in King Crimson. There's a satirical song on their one single album, called The Sun is Shining, that mimics the crooners of the previous generation. It goes like this:

The sun is shining, but it's raining in my heart, 

So please come back dear, and we'll make a brand new start.

Because of you the flowers will not bloom [(will not bloom)]

Because of you the clouds obscure the moon [(obscure the moon)]

The day will come, I hope it's very soon [(very soon)]

The day that brings the sun right into June [(right into June)]

And so on.

In Lefty's case, it goes like this:

The sun is shining, and it's left center in my eye, 

So please take me out coach, before another fly makes me cry.

And so on.

After the Coneheads staked out an early 8-1 lead, Lefty found himself in left center field.

Let me just say I love Lefty's defense. But tonight, the sun got the best of him as he was forced into left center when Rich pulled up lame with a hamstring injury on his double in the bottom of the third. The next inning, Advance Construction found Lefty a few times and put together their only threat to the game when they nearly tied it (8-6). And the next inning it was more of the same when he switched with Pope in left, and then Chopper did his best Jose Canseco imitation as he dropped one off his head, and suddenly our lead was down to 9-8.

It was pretty scary.

But we straightened out our defense, and even though we allowed Advance to tie us in the top of the seventh, we pushed one across in the bottom half on a walkoff sac fly by Darren.

Along the way we really played some outstanding defense, especially by shortstop James. He dove for a third out liner to end the first and kept AC scoreless. He grabbed a shallow left popup and doubled off the runner at second in the fifth. And he turned quickly on a feed from rover Haze to fire to first for another double play in the sixth. And to top it off, he snared the hot line drive with the lead run at third to end the top of the seventh to preserve the tie to that point.

Add to that a strikeout of the veteran sneaky Advance pitcher Bill Eppinga by Joe, and a tough catch in left center by Pope in the same sun and we actually had a pretty good game defensively.

Now about the offense. Let's just say that all you big time smashers at the top of the lineup got more bloop hits today than I usually get all season - and I get a lot! You guys have all the advantage with those outfielders all spread out and deep. I say, more power to you! Because it's more power to the Coneheads! But we all know who hit three line drives tonight, even though I couldn't stretch my single to center into a double on a boot.

The bleeders played in our favor tonight in the penultimate inning as Pope, James and Joe blooped our way to bases loaded with the winning run on third and no outs. And after Advance brought the outfield in, of course Chopper hit the best ball of the inning and lined out directly to the left fielder. But Darren knew what to do and managed a fly deep enough that Pope easily scored the winning run, final score 10-9.

Pope was 4-4 with a double and a triple. James had two doubles in his three knocks and Joe also had three hits. Larry (sincere thanks for showing up and giving us a full team) started his season with a triple. Lefty and Heffe and Darren each had two hits.

Suddenly we leapt over two teams into second place at 2-2! And the season is definitely looking up! We did this without G, Derek, Randy, Charley, and Gene - that's a lot of firepower. And they'll all be back soon.

Milestones:

Pope        150 ab (#20)

Orange Crush Strangles White 25-6

In a perfect world, there is some comic relief. Every day. My Dad used to say, "have some fun every day." And it takes a big man to play the clown, whether by design or happenstance. Regardless of intent, I am willing to provide such service for my team.

In Dennis Perrone's highlight of the year, I sent a ball up the middle, and he fielded it on one short-hop. He was so surprised, he stepped on second for the force out, except there was no one on first to force. There was a runner on third, and he broke for home. Dennis started to go that way but - yours truly was so stunned at how hard he had hit it and how nonchalantly Dennis had picked it, when I saw Dennis make the phantom out at second, I stopped to admire the goings-on. And then Dennis could very nonchalantly throw to first to get an easy third out. And my teammates roared. 

And roared. And I think White did too.

Of course, when your team is up 20-5 in the fifth, it's easy to find humor in the coach's lack of hustle and brains.

So, rewind back to square one, Orange spotted White the Curse of the First, relapsing into some early season lack of defense. but we responded with five of our own in the bottom half, and never looked back. Mike Saindon and Greg Wilson hit back to back bombs for a triple and home run, respectively, and we were off to the races. We then scored 3, 5, 5, 2, 4, and 1, and except for a single run in the sixth, we shut out White the rest of the way. Final score was 25-6 after we flipped and flopped and gave up our last two at bats.

Highlights included Mark Edelstone hitting three gappers for two doubles and a triple and six RBIs, Art Oller, Steve Sloat, and Brian Black going 4-4. Edelstone, Saindon, Wilson, and pitcher Mark Narciso all collected three hits. Each of the rest of the lineup had two hits, so no one was left out of the fun.

Narciso, pitched 8 strong innings, throwing strikes despite the gusty wind, and kept White's great hitters off balance. Howard Davis made his season debut after an eight week road trip, and allowed just one unearned run in his one inning. Gabe Tanaka made several highlight stops at 2B after a rough one in the first. Sloat caught a screaming line drive in the later innings keeping the ball from decapitating him, and also grabbed a much tougher chance out of the air when he wandered into the outfield on a softly hit pop-up. The first baseman picked one out of the dirt, and stopped a hard hit grounder for an out. Wilson tracked one down in the RC gap after a long run, and in his one inning at rover also grabbed a hard liner up the middle and knocked down a grounder to his left, stayed with it, and gunned down the batter at first.

But the web gem was Edelstone going to his knees in shallow dead center to pick a ball before it touched green with the bases loaded and two outs in the fifth. That catch changed to tone of the game.

I do want to congratulate White for playing hard and having fun despite the lopsided score. I'm not sure I would have been such a good sport as their players were, and kudos to them.

Every week someone else steps up on this team. Who's next?

Sweet 16

The play of the game for me: I was sitting in my car, getting ready to leave, minding my own business. The car door was still open, I was talking to Julia.

All the sudden I hear the sound of a ball hitting a car, and the next thing I know, there is a ball bouncing off my car door and landing at my foot by the brake. I picked it cleanly!

Reggie from Big Feet came over to retrieve it. He saw it hit my car on the inbound, and said it looked like I got lucky because there was no dent where it hit.

I have to say I have parked at the dog park parking lot for 100% of the games I have played on Field 5 in the last five years at least. Tonight I was a little early so I parked way down the line on the outside. I think it's back to the dog park!

Now back to the game.

In my other life, I was a mathematician. I know, big surprise. So I like numerical sequences.

Especially this one: 2, 9, 16. That's the number of runs we have scored in the first three games. So the next three will be 23, 30, 37. I like this trend!

Finally shaking off the pandemic rust, the Coneheads  put together a combination of solid defense and timely offense to dominate first place Big Feet tonight.

The Feet dropped two on us in the first and it didn't look good when we left the bases loaded in the bottom half. But Joe started his way to a great game in the top of the second when he stopped a smash up the middle, before it hit the ground, and calmly and quickly flipped the ball to first where all I had to do was tap the runner who was slow to get back to the bag, for the double play.

After that, we nearly batted around in the bottom half of the second. Rich had the hit of the game when he cleared the loaded bases with a double to give us the lead at 3-2, and we never relinquished it. We scored three with no outs and importantly scored another three with two outs when Joe and James hit back to back doubles. We never looked back, adding two in the third on a Jeff Hazel Coneheadish double, and six more in the fourth. Chauncey started that rally off with a gapper triple, and after Heffe brought him in and Lefty singled, Joe tripled home two more.

Joe had a big game. He dominated the Big Feet big and little hitters. He stopped another smash up the middle. All told he was 4-4 with two doubles and a triple. Lefty, James, and Gene added three hits each, and everyone had at least one. Rich made the catch of the game with the bases loaded and no outs in the sixth, and James ranged far into shallow left/foul ground to catch the last two outs.

Milestones:

Game 1:

Heffe        650 ab (#2)

Gene        250 h (#9)

Randy      350 ab (#12)

Game 2:

None

Game 3:

Chauncey  50 h (#23)

Three for the price of one, Orange 26 - Royal 11

 After the Orange team had a victory beer, I moseyed over to the Royal pod to gloat.

John Preston said, "Here comes Kravin to gloat."

I was trying not to gloat.

Doug and Gary and Gerry and others said, "You can gloat now."

And I was trying not to gloat!

Well so here goes: No one wants to play Orange right now, we are on a roll, four wins in a row, including taking down two undefeated teams.

Way to jinx us for next week Heff.

This game was actually way closer than the score indicates. It was one of those three games in one games. In the first three innings we scored five twice, and zero in the third, while the talented Royals tallied 4, 1. and 5. So after three innings it was knotted up at 10 and it looked like a 31-30 game.

Thirteen of our first 15 batters got hits. The Marks, Narciso and Edelstone both ended an inning driving in the last runs with a double. I'm sure the scorecard on the other side looked similar.

And then an amazing thing happened - all the bats went silent on both teams. We scratched over two runs in the fifth, and Royal one in the sixth but for innings 4-7 the score was 2-1.

So it was that we took our very slim one run lead into the top of the eighth. Royal got two quick outs. Then Vince Francesci singled, and Mike Saindon doubled and up strode the secret weapon, Greg Wilson, the big lefty. He planted a long line drive way over the right fielder's head for a three run homer. And when we got back to back doubles by Ron Schwab and Narciso and a single from Ike Garcia, it seemed that the game was over.

Royal threatened in the last two innings but didn't score. We batted around in the open ninth and piled on another nine runs for the final score of 26-11 so it looked like a blowout, but really wasn't. We did dominate the last two innings 14-0.

Along the way we had plenty of good defense, which has really been the hallmark of our turnaround. Jay Chafetz made a great catch robbing Gary Namanny with two outs and the bases loaded in the second. Steve Sloat and Gabe Tanaka played two really high hop grounders into outs in the fourth and sixth. Saindon went to his knees at third base to stop a ball ticketed to left field to get a force out at second in the eighth. Then Francesci gunned down a runner at second on a clean single to right and Bob Carver snared a fading hard hit line shot up the middle for the third out.

The play of the day, though came in the fifth. On a little looper in no man's land in the infield, Schwab scooped it up before it touched the ground, and then shot the ball to second to turn a double play.

Narciso was 5-5 with six RBIs, Francesci was 4-4 plus a walk, and Chafetz, Edelstone, Saindon, Wilson (five RBIs), Schwab, Sloat and Carver all had three hits. Tanaka took two walks for the team to go with his hit, something he probably rarely does. Narciso also pitched the middle three innings, allowing just one run, and Garcia allowed zero the last three innings.

It was a great way to spend a Tuesday morning!