It's the Shoes! Team Cuervo over Blue-Yellow, 25-18

Last week Team Cuervo donned our gleaming new yellow uniforms but it didn't help us in the game as we were missing so many key players.

This week my Co-Manager Chuck Howlett took all the rag tag shirts we had been wearing and exchanged them for new shoes - the brand name is Hitting Shoes.

And so, we came out slugging and didn't stop until the game was nearly out of reach. We scored five spots in the first, second, and fourth and fifth after taking a break in the third, and before Blue-Yellow could blink, we were up 20-8. Give them credit, they came roaring back in the top of the seventh with eight runs to narrow the margin to 23-17, but we tacked on two more in the eighth, and it was too steep a hill to climb in the open ninth inning, and the final score was 25-18.

Hitting heroes abounded, which is obvious when I tell you Gold hit .722 in the game. Dick Stanley continued his rampage through the league going 5-5 with four RBIs. Jim Alexander was right with him with a 5-5 day. Dan DeClercq was 4-5 with a triple and a double, and tied Stanley with team leading four RBis. Helen Kostoff was also perfect with a 4-4 game including three RBIs. Charlie Uhlman smashed some line drives and scored three and was also 4-5. Lead off hitter Willie Hollis and Dale Browne and Howlett all had three dingers, and all but one player had at least two, and that guy walked twice including one with the bases loaded for an RBI.

There were some spectacular plays on defense. Howlett set the tone for the day with a diving two out grab in the first to end B-Y's threat. We turned three double plays with Kostoff as the pivot in her rover position. Kostoff robbed Leslie Lafredo on a hot shot down the line in the fourth when she subbed for Alexander at 3B in his one inning out. Likewise Jay Edwards made a great play on a ball up the middle that inning when he replaced Helen at rover.

It was very encouraging how well Gold played when almost the whole team was present. Henceforth all vacations and tournaments are canceled for Team Cuervo players. Sorry, guys and gal.

Well We Looked Good in Losing - Orange over Gold 23-10

The long promised brand new Golden shirts finally arrived in Creakerland in time for our game with Orange Thursday, but the magic just wasn't in them as Cuervo Gold went down to the powerful Orange team 23-10. Only a late two run rally got us to double digits.

It is tough to write up a game where the team wasn't really in it from the beginning, but I wanted to single out some of our standouts' play. We were down 13-3 by the third inning and never got close than 15-7.

We actually didn't hit badly - the team batting average was above .500, and we had six extra base hits but we just didn't string together enough of them, and hit into too many double plays.

Willie Hollis and Dick Stanley led the way with four hits each, and each hit a double. Charlie Uhlman was right behind with three hits including a triple, and tied Stanley and Jay Edwards with three RBIs. Newcomer Tom Sciarrino also had three knocks and played an impeccable SS.

But the play of the game (possibly for both teams) was Uhlman ranging far to his right in left field to rob the new powerful rightie on Orange, to snag a hard liner that probably was destined for the fence. It proved my own personal adage - "Stick out your glove you never know what might happen."

As the famous Dodgers saying went (sorry Giants fans for calling up Dodgers lore) "Wait 'til next week!"

Gold's other manager Chuck started referring to our team as Team Cuervo, as in Cuervo Gold. It sounded like a cool name, summed up the ballers in us with a favorite post game treat. But then the new day glo Golden uniforms we were promised never showed up, even though by now we were supposed to be in Week 6. Last week, we tried being the psychedelic rainbow team, and it didn't work out so well. So this week we tried to each find anything that had Gold or Yellow in it. Since it ended in a narrow victory over the vaunted Purple Team (18-17 officially*, more on that later), I have made a unilateral decision - we will now be referred to as Zippy Josh and the Rag Tag Band, borrowed from a music group from around the turn of the century that had an album called Stupidville.

Oh the game - it was a tautly played back and forth chess match. Both teams had some great defense and some timely hits, and there were four or five lead changes.

We jumped out to an 8-2 lead after two. There were a bunch of clutch hits, Dick Stanley having the most clutch, a two run single for runs six and seven.

But it was defense that allowed us to keep the early lead. Chuck Howlett made a fine catch of a line drive in the first followed by Donn King claiming an errant throw in the dirt at first. In the second with a couple on and one out, Andy Steinberg snared a hot line drive and had the wherewithal to immediately fire to rover Helen Kostoff on the bag at second. Inning over.

Purple came roaring back to overtake us and go up 11-9 after five. We plated two in the sixth to tie it, and five in the 7th to go ahead where we stayed the rest of the game. The big hits were Steinberg's two run single, Stanley's double that pushed our five run seventh along, and Howlett's clutch single for the fifth run that inning.

Adding on when you have a lead is very important and in the eighth Dan DeClercq hit a two run triple to right and when he scored we took a four run lead to the bottom of the eighth.

Purple was somewhat bitten by the time limit rule. In the eighth I had to tell Manager Sloat that since it was 11:41 going into the bottom half, we would not have an open inning (unless we finished the inning in less than four minutes) because we could not by rule start an inning after 11:45. As it turned out it didn't matter because even if we had declared the eighth the open inning each team scored three, and when the last Purple player lined into Steinberg's glove it was game over.

Woody Whitlatch, who pitched the whole game, mostly got outs when they counted (many of the runs were unearned in Purple's big sixth inning six run comeback). He gets the game ball.

The hitting stars were Charlie Uhlman with four hits and three RBIs, Willie Hollis, Kostoff, Stanley, Heffe, Whitlatch, and Howlett, all with three hits.

Comic Relief Play of the Game was by yours truly for ending inning five with a backward K for the third out. It was my second straight Creaker game doing that as I finished the Winter league that way and missed Gold's first game last week. That must be some kind of record. Deep bow, thank you very much.

*When I got home, I discovered that we neglected to post one of our runs on the scoreboard, so the game should have been 19-17. That would have hurt if we had tied or Purple had finished their  comeback to beat us by a run. C'est la Vie.