Gold Sinks toward the Bottom, Falls 19-23 to Gray.

Gold made crucial mistakes at the important time in the game, and fell to Gray 23-19. It was close until Howard the Giant Killer put one over the outfield in the eighth to salt away a win for Gray.

There were seven lead changes through the first six innings, and we had every chance to add on after taking a 14-12 after five. Instead Gray got hot and we went cold despite the hot weather and they won going away.

There were, ahem, some questionable calls, as there always are, but we made two of them on our own base runners.

The lower middle of the order actually carried us along. Between Tom Sciarrino (3-3, with a booming double), Andy Steinberg (4-4 with 3 RBIs, Woody Whitlatch (3-3 plus a bases loaded walk for 3 RBIs), and Donn King (3-4 with the final team leading 3 RBIs) we had a solid 13-14 in that part of the order.

Dick Stanley had another great game, going 4-5 with two doubles, and Willie Hollis and the number two hitter hitter chipped in with three knocks. Everyone had at least one hit, and almost everyone had an RBI.

On defense, the only plays I can remember are a great catch of a sinking liner at second by Chuck Howlett, and a nifty 6-11-3 double play we turned. Perhaps that says it all, we made too many blunders on defense to win the game.

A TC Classic in Concord

I'll get to today's ND game in a bit, but I wanted to mention a classic comeback in yesterday's TC game at Baldwin Park. Pleasant Hill visited the Concord guys in this match-up. These two teams do not get much press here, but should as many of the players overlap into Creaker land.

Pleasant Hill gave it up last week to the Lamorinda Lasers, giving them their first win in a couple of years, in one of the poetic justice games of all time. It is noted elsewhere.

Yesterday it looked to be more of the same. Concord came out hitting and it was not because we were down to our fourth string pitcher or our defense - they were just crushing the ball. After five innings, the score was 16-8 and it seemed like a forgone conclusion who would win.

Then it happened. We just started unloading up and down the lineup. Before the Concord Blue could blink, we batted around and tied it at 16 by catch up rule, and then held them to zero in the bottom half.

All of the sudden we believed. It was now a three inning game. In those innings PH outscored Concord 19-8 (in all 27-8 the last four innings) and won going away, 35-24. They were shellshocked.

I won't go into who had the best games because it was truly up and down the lineup. The guilty were Tom Thares, Mike Byrnes, Paul Lisi, Terry Estrada, Art Estrada, Bob Eddy, Pete Cordova, Michael George Brown, Neal Popp, Nelson Low, Greg Ennis, Jim Heinrich (in his season debut off injured reserve) and yours truly. Tony Sherpa coached excellently. Art in particular had a great game in relief of Pete who was pressed into duty since our two other pitchers were missing, and Art cannot get to games until a couple of innings in.

We even had a near brawl, which I will not go into. Fun Times!