Itchy Red 27, Scratchy Gray 23

The Creaker Gray team had a great strategy to try to upset Creaker Red today. Take the field with eight of your best hitters, and no more. Get three opponents to play for your side in the field, and get them all tired out. Your hitters get up eight or nine times, staying very hot. Except it didn't quite work on versatile Red. No ambulances needed to be called; we avoided injury and death, largely. Although, I have to ask - why did our fielders only make errors when they played for our own team? Muegge - couldn't you have botched a play or two for Gray in right field or second base? No one would have questioned it if you made an error. Gray was like a persistent itch today. They have a lot of talent over there. They wouldn't go away; we led the whole game after giving them a zero in the top of the first, but could never get up by more than seven runs. They came back again and again, assisted in part by our mental and physical errors. In the end, even though we still had the hammer, Gray almost brought up the tying run with no one out in the top of the ninth. Generously a couple of plays ensued that pretty much define senior-challenged softball. First with the bases loaded, on a short fly to left, the Gray runner on third decided to tag up, but do it halfway to home. George Sayatovich's throw home and the relay back to third doubled him up. In between there was a popup half way to third that wouldn't roll foul. A couple of balls we should have charged but didn't and couldn't quite get runners out. Another popup half way in the no-man's land between the pitcher and the first base line that luckily did roll foul. The topper, though, was a botched force out at second, where the batter had given up and was walking toward his dugout and then, in a double senior moment, he had to race for the first base while the middle infielder belatedly made a wide throw to first. In true Kreaker Keystone Kop form, the runner from second then ran to third, forcing the runner on third to go homeward. The sore armed first baseman's throw, after he picked up the ball, was just a tad late at home, and rioting erupted all over the field. But then everyone realized it was almost lunch time, so we better finish the game. At that point Gray was finally polite enough to fly out to left to end the game. The real story of the victory, though, was another relentless assault by the Red lineup. In the first seven straight hits set the tone for our first five spot, highlighted by, of course a triple by Steve Alvarez. In the third, more of the same, with the final touch provided by Brian Black's would have been a homer triple (he would have been the sixth run). But - are you ready for this? In the 4th, Bob 'Stilts' Muegge went yard. I guess I should have told you to sit down. Yes, a legitimate shot to left that rolled and rolled and Bob just kept chugging along on his reconstructed knees. It was inspiring, and I am not just saying that. In fact it inspired Howard 'the Babe' Davis so much that in the next at bat, he clocked one over the left center fielder's head to go back to back. Today, Howard achieved that rarity (even in slow-pitch softball) - the cycle. And later, when Gray wouldn't go away, we really won the game by putting up back to back five run innings in the bottom of the seventh and eighth. In the seventh we had a sequence of consecutive extra base hits by Mike Fragoso, Alvarez, and Black, a clutch two run single by Mel Burman, and Davis completing the cycle and the scoring with a triple. In the eighth we got two out hits by Herb Moessing, the short armed first baseman, Hank McDermott, Fragoso and Alvarez. In all, Alvarez was 5-5 (he is hitting a whopping .897 for the season to lead the team), and four hits were provided by Kravin, McDermott, Fragoso, and Davis. Bring on the Green for our show down next week!