Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Emptying the Hornets' Nest

First they were the Renegades. When they played over 50 Rec League in Pleasanton they were Boomer's Bangers, then Ritt's Boys. On Tuesday and Thursday mornings, they held pickup games, the Spartans against the Trojans.

Whatever their name, they were a bunch of tournament players that slummed in the Rec Leagues and they usually won and had our number especially.

But not today.

Our relentless hitting up and down the lineup including I don't know how many two out hits, and very good defense save one really really bad inning, and pitchers that re-discovered the strike zone just in time, put them on their heels and kept them there until they just ran out of time to come back. And as it turned out, there was a screw up and we only batted seven times ourselves.

So to say the score was 25-15 and it wasn't that close is quite an understatement.

I can't help myself, here is a list: Four two out hits in the third. Three in the fourth. Five in the fifth. Seven in the sixth. Four in the seventh. The Hornets should feel lucky that we didn't get or need our open inning - we would probably still be batting!

On defense, Ladd and Selwyn were running all over the place on the left side of the outfield, catching this and that. Wilbur was, as usual, a vacuum cleaner at second. Heffe made a falling down scoop at a key moment at first base. Les somehow placed himself right where line drives up the middle went to die, including on the past out. As did Marc at SS a couple of times.

Yeah they were hurting but I don't care who was missing on their side - we dominated after spotting them a 7-2 lead in the second inning.

Billy hit perhaps the slowest home run in the history of Danville, a two run job in the sixth. Selwyn managed to get on base three times in the beginning of the game on what we would call 'errors' but there aren't such things in senior ball so we call them 'hits'. But he earned them by hitting a grand slam gapper in the seventh that put the final nail in the Hornet's Nest.

Marc joined Billy with a 5-5 day. John Look matched Selwyn with four hits, a perfect 4-4. Ladd, Paul and Heffe all had three hits. Everyone else had at least a hit.

Keep this up while I am enjoying Mezcal in Oaxaca next week. Beat Leo's!