Oh Tom. Oh Tom. If only you hadn't said anything...
Many ball players are superstitious. And Tom had to go and mention it in front of Charlie - "Hey, you've got a shutout going!"
Let's face it, it's really tough to throw a shutout in slow pitch softball. But Charlie had the Leo's tamed, putting up zeroes for the first six innings, until Tom called up the jinx. In the end, after a couple of unearned runs, they got all of two more in Brian's innings, and the final score came out 17-4.
They had some help. The Crows turned three double plays in the first four innings. Randy was in the middle of all of them. Two of them were started by Charlie on the mound himself, and Tom turned a round the horn 5-11-3 job in the third.
The third basemen had a game - Tom made a great stab on a hot shot down the line and fired to first to nip a runner, and Don cut one off going into the 5-6 hole in the fifth in his inning at 3B. As usual on cue Anthony made a fine running catch in the fifth and Dave did his best imitation in LC in the eighth.
On offense, the Crows had 29 hits, but only three doubles for extra base hits. What we did was string together a lot of singles. In the first, we hit four straight with two outs to produce five runs. And we bookended that with a five spot in our last hitting inning, the eighth, when seven of eight batters hit singles.
Clay was perfect (4-4). Brian shook off his "new to the team" slump with three RBIs on three hits. We knew he had that in him. Anthony and Dave joined with three hits. But the hit of the game was an opposite field slasher by Tom that eluded the right fielder. The only question was whether Tom would get a triple or go all the way when - the ball disappeared, and the right fielder threw his arms up. Someone left the gate open in deepest RF and the ball found the gap. Dave went back to third and Tom to second, ground rule. They both did score thanks to singles by Aram and Don, but if the score were 15-14 instead of 15-4 at the time, we might have screamed bloody murder.
But all's well that ended well, that is, the scoring when Tom crossed the plate, and soon the Leo's roar turned into a whimper.
Now for a week off, and then back to it against the once again defeated so far Hornets, let's get 'em!