The Sun Is Shining

We have a new VP of Sales where I work. He is very gung-ho. Fist bumps abound. He is a good guy as far as sales guys goes. He may even bring the company to the promised land of success and plenty. He lives to work - to make deals, and to win. I probably would have done better in my career if I invested that kind of energy into my job. But I work to live - not the other way around. I don't get like that until I am on a softball field. I love to win. As my dad taught me, "it's not whether you win or lose - it's how you win."

I'm on three teams that finished playoffs in the last month.

One went 12-0 in the regular season, and blew it against the fourth place team. Simply put, we choked. But we had a lot to celebrate - the undefeated season, great team chemistry, and we know we will be back.

The second team is in a league with the equivalent of the Boomers in it. We are a very good team. We lost five games last year, including double elimination playoffs, and four were to them. This year, we lost the opener to them and then reeled off eleven straight wins. In the last game of the regular season, we were down to them, 11-2 after 2 1/2 innings, then scored 25 unanswered runs to win going away. In the second game of the playoffs we shut them down and won 8-4. It was all set up for the upset; they would have to beat us twice on the final day. Well, they beat us once by six, then they blew us out in the penultimate game, 26-8. That hurt.

Which brings me to Sunshine Saloon. We had a season of promise - we improved. Started out 3-1. But we couldn't close out games and lost (or even tied) close ones down the stretch and finished fourth, and only three teams made the playoffs.

Or was it four? They added a playoff game, and suddenly we had the honor of getting drubbed by the Boomers so they could have batting practice for the Championship Game to follow.

Except that's not what happened. We gave them everything they could handle. We got behind in the first, but answered with the max five in the second (Reg with a huge Grand Slam) and took a 10-5 lead into the bottom of the third. They tied it up and then defense kicked in. They barely beat us in the end, by one run, 12-11. If we had just gotten a couple more key hits, we could have won. They were on the run.

It was not to be. But it is said that we took it out of them and they lost the Championship game to State Roofing.

I have never felt as good losing as in that game. It was almost as good as taking them down completely. We are on the rise, and they better watch their backs.

And Dad, better amend that saying. Sometimes, sometimes, it is how you lose that counts.

See you Wednesday.

The Usual Victims

Last weekend was a tough weekend for JFT, which is now essentially the same team as the Coneheads. We had the highest mountain to climb - beat the Grand Pinky Poobahs of Walnut Creek Senior League in the playoffs. David and Goliath and all that. We gave them a scare - winning the last regular season game with 25 unanswered runs and then taking our first game against them last Saturday to set up a Sunday in which they would have to beat us twice - which of course the history books will tell you they did. It hurt. We had perhaps our best chance, certainly our best to date, and we couldn't close it out. Wait 'til next year.

In the mean time, the Coneheads are getting near the end of the regular season as well. We have been very up and down - fortunately we are not the only team. But we needed something to ease the pain when we took the turf Monday, and the scheduler was kind - they gave us the Usual Suspects to cure our hangover. These poor schleps are one of the handful of teams in the Orinda league that keep coming out every year to win once or twice against the other poor schlep teams, and then go home. Good for them, I respect that. Couldn't do it, but I respect them for it.

Monday night was the Usual Crushing. We scored twenty runs in the first three innings before they could even crack the scoreboard, and the end result was 25-1 before they cried uncle (score was reported 24-1 but does it really matter?). The defensive highlight (besides a couple of the Usual Chuck gems), was when a guy tried to go home on a delay 'steal' with two outs (why wasn't he running?) on a grounder to short - Chuck made a rare offline throw to me at first, and although I was heads up to get the ball off quickly to home, it was Gerry that made the great play. With my sore candy-ass arm, all I could do was one hop it to him on the turf, and he gathered it into his body and held on. It would have doubled their run output.

The rest was all Conehead offense. Sting had two booming home runs to the right center gap. The first was legit. In the case of the second one, the 'gap' was the right center fielder, who really couldn't catch anything. Reggie sheepishly said 'I'll take it' when he came home, and yes we will, any time. Gotta love the turf, cause when the fielder blows it, it's really blown. Conehead!

Ol' G continues to be the hottest hitter on the team - he matched Sting's blasts with one of his own. Sting and Markley led the team with a perfect 4-4, but G and several others had three hits - Lefty and Chopper (both with two doubles), Dizzy D and Chuck. Nice to see Markley regain his stroke to right - Mexico must have done him some good. Someone else should have been 3-4 with a walk but we'll get to that.

Lefty now leads the team with average batting the opposite way - in his case of course righty. Although, ahem, there is an asterisk. Another lefty on the team, not mentioning any names, hit a clean 'single' to left right handed, and Dizzy D, must have been in awe or something at second base - he watched it get to the left fielder and tiptoed into third only to get forced out. The Conehead Unhit.

But the batter's not bitter, much, because now he knows he's better and fitter than Derek. And Betty Botter bought a bit of bitter butter. And he has this forum in which to vent. Really? Really? Really!

(Footrace anytime Derek, I would have to say that besides the 70 year old with two knee replacements, you are officially the slowest on the team).

(Now Chopper, don't be bringing up when I did the same thing to you).

Ok, I'm better now.

So we come to the last two games of the season, and due to several teams inconsistency, including us, it is quite a race, at least from third to seventh place. We are now tied with three teams for third place, with St. Mo's just behind. some of the interesting results:

St. Mo's beat Cal Gaels in one of the earlier unreported games. They have had some season - they have beaten us, the Gaels, and the Scouts, but lost to the Areolas and the Reds.

The Gaels beat the Waitlisters Monday. They are now tied for first with one loss. This leaves the door slightly open for us to get to first. Realistically the Waitlisters, who have the easiest finish will not lose two. But if we win out we have a chance to pass the Gaels (Broncos). The Scouts will probably end up at least tied with us, and they have tiebreaker so they would probably end up second.

There's more but I won't bore you with it. Including a very interesting tie-breaker rule if head to head is even unique to this league. The main thing is we need to continue to build a Head of steam going into the playoffs, and it starts tomorrow night against the Areolas (eight o'clock at Wilder ONE). They are also 6-3 this season but they haven't played many of the top teams, and they finish against the Scouts, so it's time to put them behind us. Then we will deal with the Broncos, er Gaels.

No Chuck this week. Will be strange.

Milestone:

Chuck        1500 ab (#1), how appropriate, why don't you take a day off?

Big Moments

In any team athletic competition, there is an ebb and flow to a game, it turns this way and that until the final push...sometimes great drama at the end, sometimes not. But it seems that at some point in the game, there is that one moment, when some play happens and you just know by the result of that play how this game is going to go. Especially in the playoffs.

It happened yesterday while we watched Advance Construction take on Pinky's (note - sipping our beers after winning our two games). Advance, a heavy underdog, was in the game, and had it tied up in something like the fifth inning. One of Pinky's slashers was up with a couple of guys on base and I think there were two outs - and the shortstop went out and played short left field. His gambit worked perfectly as the hitter smashed the ball right to him - granted it was hard hit - but it went off his glove, a run or two scored, it opened the floodgates, and Advance never recovered.

Likewise in our game, the was a Moment in our game against Pinky's. In a surprising low scoring game, we had gone up 2-0, and then the umps killed our rally with a bad call when Chopper ran into Knight rounding second. Pinky's wasn't exactly tearing the cover off the ball, but crept back to 3-1 then 3-2 and took a lead in the bottom of the fifth 4-3. Between the bad call on Chopper (which nullified a run in addition to killing the rally) and the bad 'no-tag' on Greg in the fourth, we were beginning to wonder what do we have to overcome to beat these guys? It's bad enough that we have to shut them down, but we must overcome every bad call too?

At any rate it came to be that in the top of the sixth, we tied it on hits by Randy, Haz, and Timmy, but had the bases loaded and two outs. Up strode Chuck, our defensive whiz and heart of the team. Chuck has been struggling, at least in his mind, which means his average is in the same realm as the rest of us. But on this pitch, trying to hit a line drive to just give us a run to take the lead, he caught one and froze Mark Hayes in center field and before he could do anything about it, it was over his head and the double plated three runs.

There was still the matter of getting six outs from Pinky's to make sure there was no comeback, but at that moment you just knew this game was over. As it turned out it ended emphatically with a G to Chuck to D double play.

It sets us up with the advantage of winning just one of two, and we can end the tournament by winning the first game today. Most of you won't read this until after the game or games today - I don't know what will happen. But I do know that after we have drubbed Pinky's two straight, and Advance taking them to the limit yesterday in the elimination game, doubt has crept in, and the swagger is gone. David is gonna take down Goliath!

See you in an hour.

The Ale That Cures Ya

The Mr. Conehead trophy is over there, staring at me. Mocking me. It's Larry's now, but it remains on the mantle. It's giving me a different kind of stink-eye, one that doesn't get all sweet and emotional when the season is over, and brings charms from across the world for luck. This one is just constant, it keeps staring at me, accusing me - how could I allow the Coneheads to get to the two thirds point of the season with three losses! Three losses, how dare you! That's the total of all last year!

The low point was unconventional in that it occurred in a win. It actually happened on that cold Thursday night at Wilder 1 at 8:00 against the President's Club. The winds were howling, our fans were freezing. We managed to score all of five runs, and escaped with our lives and our health and a 5-4 win. We hit a very unConehead .414 as a team that night. Usually the low point doesn't come in a win, so we will take it. 

So it was no surprise that we got clocked against the Old Scouts the next Monday, 20-8. Another makeshift outfield. Some key defensive mistakes which gave the Scouts their version of a Conehead inning. It was really over by the second. The Scouts took a 12-3 lead and suddenly coming back with nine runs seemed like a foreign concept. We scored one run in the last four innings.

But the beautiful thing about the bottom of the curve is that it is the bottom. And at the bottom we were still over .500, and in this year, where the Wailisters are undefeated and Areolas had only one loss til this week, anything is still possible.

There were signs to believe in - Chuck and Ol' G and Chopper made one out between them. If the rest of us just returned to normal (and some just returned), anything was possible.

And just in time, on cue, the (former Santa Maria) Reds showed up. A warmer clime at Wilder Monday night. Conehead inning in the first to go up 6-0.11-0 by the top of the third. Derek and Chopper each 4-4, and Haz matched Chopper's team leading four RBIs on three hits. We were downright cocky be the sixth and moved positions around with a 17-2 lead, and gave up five runs. But it did give us the defensive highlight of the night, Chopper just nailing a smash to his left playing third on the turf, gunning a short hop to career outfielder Gene playing first, which he scooped up like he had been doing it his whole life (well there was a popup over my head that I made look really difficult due to age and slowness and Gerry yelling "yours Heffe, yours," with extreme panic in his voice). And of course our comic relief on a mostly routine popup to the catcher, which he ignominiously dropped, and who was....Sting! Doink! Back to the outfield with you sir!

So all is not lost in Orinda this season...remember 2004, we were 8-6 in the regular season, and didn't lose again through the playoffs and all of that fall season.

Three games left, third place is not out of sight, but it's not going to matter much whether we finish 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th. It's all about getting in a groove going into the playoffs now. Starts tomorrow night against the Usual Saps, er Suspects.

Milestones:
7/8
Ol' G        350 h (#14)
Markley    50 g (#22)
Chopper   20 2b (#23)
7/11
Chopper   250 ab (#19)
7/15
Pope         800 ab (#8)
Ol' G        600 ab (#14)
7/22
Joe           80 bb (#7)
Sting         350 r (#11)

Cliche

We love cliches. Well, as a writer you hate cliches, but in sports the cliche proves the rule.

In Transdyn's case, here it is, stolen from football:

On any given Tuesday in the playoffs, anyone can beat anyone. Or, in our case the damn Ringers can beat us.

We had a tremendous season. I mean how many times do you go 12-0? And in dominant fashion. There was one weird game, the one when Jason got hurt and we had about three guys show up late, we only won 10-8. But other than that, we flat out dominated. We won one game by three over the true next best team (and eventual playoff champs) the Brew Brothers, and no other game by less than seven. My strongest recollections of the season were guys patiently taking pitches until they got theirs and then smashing it somewhere there was no one to catch it. Guys unselfishly letting the next guy be the hero. And Sir Guy inducing poor swings, or guys making diving catches. And of course, Monty getting twelve straight hits or whatever it was.

It was assumed that we would make the championship game. But the Ringers had other ideas. They put up six on us in the first, but this didn't even phase us, and we answered with 15. And therein was our downfall. We stopped scoring after that, in fact only two the next three innings. We can speculate on why - my pet theory is that we were so used to walking against their horrible pitcher, we were lulled to sleep, and he started suddenly throwing strikes. Or we started swinging at crap, I'm not sure. Last time we played them he walked twelve of us and this time nine. Maybe we just did lose patience after getting a lead.

But you have to give the Ringers credit - they hit around to get back in the game after our big inning, and then to take a lead they did not give up; We certainly had our chances.

So the other cliche is what is the silver lining. Well, we proved we can go 12-0 and it's awfully tough to go undefeated all the way through the playoffs. Now we can focus on the other goal, the one we have every season - be the last team standing. We haven't won the playoffs in two years, so it is time.

And the other is picking up Donnie and Rene. We thought losing RB would be a huge deal, but we didn't skip a beat with them, and even though we might lose Donnie if his old team re-forms, I think we hooked Rene for years to come.

Stats highlights: Tim setting records for at bats (50) and hits (38), and Derek tying the record for RBIs in a season (34). And the team smashed the records for team batting average (.630 over last fall's .604) and OBP (.652). Nice!

Two weeks we re-start the quest for double cotton. Longest 'between season' in memory. I need my bibimbap! See you there!

Milestones:

Sir Guy      200 rbi (#8)
Hama        150 ab (#24)

Crank It Up

I was in a daze all week, well maybe for the last couple. The hint of things to come when Transdyn, my Tuesday team, after going 12-0 in the regular season, then got our lunch handed to us in the playoffs by the fourth place team. To that point, my teams were on cloud nine - Transdyn was 12-0, JFT had won about 10 in a row, heady days.

Then last Sunday it got ugly. I played in a charity tournament, the same one in July called Softball for the World's Children (equipment and fees donated to children that need help) I have played in for years.

We lost four in a row. I came back to the East Bay for JFT to lay our egg last week against pesky Corona, losing 9-3. Oh and five in one single day of softball. Then the Coneheads lost Monday and my Wednesday team, although making a valiant effort, came up short as underdogs in the playoffs by one run.

0-7 in a week. How do you do that? They said I was cranky all week. Can you believe that?

And we were staring up at Pinky's Pizza, who hadn't even had a close game all season, and came in 13-0 to our 11-2.

The game started as expected. Pinky's was blasting it to right, to center, to left, shaved bats or not, the singles hitters were hitting line drives, and before we knew it, it was 11-2 going into the bottom of the third. In the mean time, we are taking strike three, and hitting into double plays.

And then something happened. I don't know what triggered it...somewhere deep down we were just mad as hell and not going to take it any more. Arrogant Pinky's decided to go with three outfielders and five infielders, daring us to hit gaps.

So there was nothing to do but do it. Talk about crankin it up - we batted around two innings in a row, while shutting down the juggernaut twice, and in the end we sent eight guys to the plate in the bottom of the sixth, and they all scored. Chopper ended it with a home run to right - I am not sure if the slaughter rule was called or if we ran out of time, but the great Pink Dragon was finally slayed.

You could argue that it means nothing. Thanks to losing to Corona's last week, we couldn't catch Pinky's in the standings (which is a shame because we took the head to head run differential advantage with our outburst), and ended up the regular season a game behind them. The game was meaningless technically.

But for us it had all the meaning in the world. For one thing, we had to prove to ourselves that we can beat these guys after taking it on the chin five times since they showed up in the league. Last year they accounted for four of our total of five losses. This year our only loss before week 13. We needed to show both teams what we can do.

For another thing, we have been in a funk offensively and to a degree defensively. We broke out of that in a big way against a quality team tonight - try 25 unanswered runs, and we weren't finished when time and/or the score ran out. We might still be out there if they hadn't called the game.

It will be a challenge next weekend in the playoffs, no doubt. Playoff tournaments are different, and Pinky's is a tested tournament team. But now they have something different to think about - watch out for JFT when we awaken out of our slumber.

Everyone contributed, Chopper had the walkoff home run, and a triple and six RBIs. Only my snail-like running kept him from a perfect game. Chuck, Reg, Heffe, Haz, and Dizzy D made no outs between them. Tim and Haz had a couple of very clutch hits in our innings when we batted around, and Gene started both off with singles. Lefty and Greg had nine RBIs between them.

On defense as usual Chuck made a couple of great stops and the Knight turned an 11-3 DP. Gene made a fantastic catch in his inning in right field to cut off a rally with no runs.

What this underscored is that these guys really just want to come out and hit only. To them playing defense is a nuisance. We can beat them by making them play defense, whether it is on one of my bloopers or Derek's laser shots, if we make them stretch, they can't handle it. And if we play our strongest defense, it will take away some of their hitting prowess.

Ready? Just five days from now, more or less. As Reg said, we are due!

Milestones:
6/16
Haz              10 2b (#11)
Dizzy D        50 rbi (#13)
7/07 - None
7/14
Chopper       10 2b (#12)
7/21
Lefty            20 sf (#1)
Knight          300 ab (#5)
Tim              100 g (#7)
Joe              20 bb (#7)

What's In A Name?

The Orinda Summer league started out topsy turvy, well sort of. At least for three of the dominant teams from the last several years - the Coneheads, Old Scouts, and Bay Alarm. We lost our first two, the Scouts are 1-3!

And Bay Alarm? Who the hell are they?

Of course you know that they were once the runner up Pennini's late of last year's finals. I just looked up last year's results - actually the Waitlisters and St. Mo's hot starts are no fluke - they ended up last season making the Elite Four (Coneheads, Pennini's, Old Scouts and Cal Bronco) into the Big 6 with records of 9-5 and 10-4 respectively. Pennini's dominated the regular season at 13-0-1, the only blemish a tie with Cal Bronco. The Waitlisters eliminated both Cal Bronco and the Old Scouts last year and you know what we did to Pennini's.

But Pennini's - they are no more. The funniest thing that happened at the Managers' meeting was that the manager of the returning Wrecking Crew said they had Bay Alarm as a sponsor. Does this mean that Pennini's stole the sponsorship? They at least stole the name.

Ah but Karma will get you...Bay Alarm seems to be a shell of their former selves, and we beat them badly 15-1 Monday.

We started off well enough. Four straight hits, and before you knew it, it was 3-0. And then we shut down. One run in the next four innings. Where did you hide the Coneheads? It didn't matter as Joe had the Alarms reaching and popping up and grounding out. Our defense was steady, a great play here by Chuck and Heffe actually got off the ground to make a leaping catch on a high throw, and managed to come down on the base in time. The only threat Pen..er Bay Alarm had was the fabulous Mark Hayes, and Joe pitched him outside and the results were can of corn to Sting in LC, and a grounder to Chuck as SS. He did get a triple but was stranded at third.

And so it came to the top of the sixth, we were only up 4-1 and Joe was nervous. But we finally, finally put together a Conehead inning - Six straight hits including a gapper by Dizzy D, and then six more hits with two outs to bring in the last six runs. If Knight hadn't gotten greedy and got thrown out at the plate, we might still be batting.

Bay Alarm had no answer, just slunk off into the night, and we finally had a meaningful win. Don't count us out just yet.

Sting led the way with four sharp hits, D had two doubles out of three hits, and Knight, Joe (who burned the drawn in outfield) and Heffe also notched three. Knight and Joe led the game with three RBIs.

Milestones:

Chuck        120 bb (#1)
Heffe          1300 ab (#2)
Joe             700 h (#4)
Don            300 g (#5)
D                40 2b (#15)
Knight        100 rbi (#21)