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.