Ignominy

There are certain words I love to find the opportunity to use in my blog. As I am want to do (which is also such a phrase), I will lead with a subplot involving me. One such word is: Ignominious. As in, "Heffe ignominiously looked at a called third strike to end the at bat, the inning, the game and the season!"

Yesterday, Team Black Shirts seemed to play out the game like we were looking forward to the post game Helen's Shots and Dave's Margaritas more than the actual game. We stood in first place in the non-existent standings and Team Four seemed intent on winning to tie us to end the season, and tip your cap, they brought it to the field, resulting in a 24-15 drubbing. Every time we threatened to make it a game they piled on five more runs.

I took on the job as Winter Coordinator (and one man Placement Committee) with one main goal and one selfish goal. The main goal was, of course to get the most balanced in the teams' talent I could.  If you look at the results in the non-existent standings, you would have to say I did a pretty good job. Just look at the talent we faced yesterday - their lineup is pretty daunting.

But selfishly, my goal was not to load my team but to create a team with the best chemistry I could find. And our winning games was largely a product of that. As Dave said in his season ending email, "We had a good defense, a strong lineup, a great attitude and a post game that was the envy of the league."

An interesting stat: We had only two players that missed more than two games in the rain shortened season, and they both had injury problems. Now maybe it's because we have no other life in retirement or just love the game, sometimes it's hard to tell. But we have a team full of gamers who liked to play together and simply put, showed up. At least one of the other teams could barely field a team yesterday.

In the game, we trailed early (9-2 after three) and then managed to mount a comeback to tie the score at 14 in the top of the sixth. But from there it was all Team Blue until they put us down quietly in the eighth and final inning.

Sloat led the way with four RBIs. He and Greg had triples for the big blows of the day. And Helen was one of three players to hit doubles, her first of the season! She was joined by Mike and Marty. Greg, Johnny and Marty each had three hits.

Helen very nearly actually got off the ground to snag a hard line drive up the middle. Steve Rousso made perhaps the catch of the season in a dive in short right center. We turned one double play, David Peterson to Helen to Heffe.

Our best inning was the five run sixth, when after a leadoff walk to Coach Dave, we had six straight hits including Sloat's triple and Helen's double.

Marty nosed out Dave for the team batting title, .818 to .791, both pretty impressive. Mike knocked in 33 runs, way ahead of the runner up. Kenji led us with eight doubles, and in only six games. Brian made the most of leading off to score 24 runs.

Nine players hit above .700. Not sure if I have ever been on a team with that kind of performance.

A note about the standings, in case Dave Kinkead ever mentions it: Yes they tied us at 7-4 but they fell short in runs scored and in run differential which are usually the tiebreakers.

Overall, Black Shirts was a really fun team and the season was very successful. Wish we could keep this team together!