Dark Green's New Old Not-so-secret Weapon

You might think the streaky Dark Forest Green juggernaut is in a bad spot going into the playoffs. A few weeks ago we were knocking on the door of the two teams tied at the top. But unfortunately the latest streak is a losing one, three games. And our shortstop and cleanup hitter is going AWOL to vacation in Greece for the first two weeks of the playoffs.

And yet, we now have a not very well kept secret weapon - our octogenarian power hitter extraordinaire Mike Howard. The opposition cringes when he steps onto the field. You might have thought it was because he is the most feared pitcher in the league, but now he has added another wrinkle to the mix - smashed extra base hits down the third base line. Grown men fall down chasing them. Lucky for Gray, Charlie Uhlman saved the day or that hit may have led to an entirely different outcome in the game yesterday, in which our ninth inning rally came up short and we lost 20-17.

Our story, and we are sticking to it, is that we didn't want to show Gray too much, as we will meet again next week in the first round. So we only had two big innings, the first and the last, scoring five runs in both. I thought the curse of the first only covered the visiting team but this game we proved otherwise. After shutting Gray out in the top half, seven hits (including doubles by Leo Kay, Michael Callahan, and Bill Jeha) and a walk tallied five runs in the bottom half. Gray chipped away, and then it was a seesaw battle that saw four lead changes between the third and seventh innings, settling at 12-10 the Bad Guys. Gray picked the right time to get their first and only five run inning, the eighth, and suddenly 17-10 looked like a huge deficit. We made a valiant attempt answering with two in the eighth, but they added three on in the top of the ninth to get a comfortable lead.

Then it was Howard's turn to set our torch on fire. His epic shot down the line gave us the chance as we turned over the lineup. We got a two out RBI single from Jeff Olsen, a two run double from Jeha, and a two run single from Shel Perham. But it proved to be too little too late, and the third out was made on a well hit but routine fly ball.

Olsen (HR, four runs, three RBIs), Jeha (three doubles, five RBIs), and Perham (four RBIs), the heart of the order, were all 4-5. Heffe was 3-4, Kay and Dick Stanley were 3-5. JD Dills was 2-3 plus a walk.

We turned an unorthodox SS(Jeha)-C(Frank Coppa)-3B(Howard Davis) double play in the fourth. Olsen in LC made a great running catch in the sixth. Michael Callahan, not to be outdone, made a diving grab in LF on the very next play. Davis turned a step on third throw to rover Helen Kostoff covering second DP to end the top of the ninth and keep Gray from getting the open inning out of hand. Kostoff handled every grounder up the middle flawlessly.

If we play our best, we have the hitting and the defensive talent to go deep into the playoffs. Time to find out which Dark Green team will show up. And of course, we have pitcher extraordinaire and now power hitter Mike Howard to get us that much further!