Crows Give Back in Black a Black Eye, 25-5

In our best season two years ago, we shut out the Diablos 18-0 one game. But since that season, wins have been hard to come by, and especially laughers like we had yesterday.

With two last minute cancellations, we were going to struggle with just ten players, but Don remained optimistic. "We've got the right ten!" (as I smirked back at him)

We start out with a shutout inning on defense in the top of the first. We came in from the field looking at each other, like "What do we do now?

Well, Brian knew what to do, get a base hit to start us off. And with Mark and Aram hitting two run hits, we had a 4-0 lead! Do we know how to play from ahead?

In the second, Mark smashed a two run double to put the exclamation point on our first five run inning of the season, and we duplicated that in the third, this time it was Joe with a two run triple that punctuated the inning.

Finally in the fourth we were held scoreless. Brian was worried, we have a habit of going silent on offense in the middle innings.

But now we have our new weapon on the mound. Tom was dealing, getting easy ground balls and lazy flies the whole game. Back in Black never came closer than 14-3 in the fifth. In the bottom of the sixth we notched a third five run inning, on consecutive hits by LT, Mark, Bob, Aram, Tom and Heffe. Finally we learned how to Add On. We even added four more in the seventh, in a rally featuring a lead off home run by Joe.

I didn't take notes on defense but there were very few errors, and really because of Tom's pitching, most of the outs were routine. Bob had a good game in RC running in on a couple of tough catches. Mark more than made up for an error when on the following play made an all out dive to grab a grounder in the hole and flipped to third for a force out. Lamont crashed in hard on a ball up the middle, and Heffe snagged his off balance throw off the turf, one of two he scooped. Tom made a couple of nice plays on ground balls up the middle ticketed for center field. We did turn one double play, abetted be a brain dead runner at second. LT caught a hard liner right at him at 2B, and the runner took off on contact, and was already halfway to third. LT flipped it to Mark covering for the easy DP.

Apologies to Joe - I was right the first time - he 'only' had four RBIs, so there was a five way tie for the team lead in RBIs: Joe, Dan, Mark, Aram and Heffe. Can't remember that ever happening before. Aram (pronouced 'Ai-ram') led us with a prefect 5-5 day including a double. Brian led the way at lead off with 4-5. Dan (two SF), Joe (triple, homer), Lamont, Mark (double), Bob (triple), Tom, and Heffe all contributed three hits.

This is something we need to contiune!