Dear Old Dad

It was Father's Day. It was also move in day, my Dad was moving in with us in his dotage.

Julia and I had bought a huge house on a good sized lot. There was a ton of room, plenty for us all to have space. The only thing was, it didn't have a garage. Instead, it had this humongous carport area, big enough to have like half a basketball court on it, and that was besides a covered area where we could park our cars. On the outside edge of the three lane driveway, there was a two story concrete wall, and in fact it was pointed in the middle so it was pretty tall.

Well, Dad shows up and he has a moving crew, and they start constructing a huge piece of plastic shelving, like we had in the basement of our house when I was growing up. When they are done we find out why - he has like tens of old beat up suitcases, the kind they had in the '50s all the way up to the more modern rolling ones. All different kinds. And the thing is, they are all empty.

We start to object. This is a hideous display, and we try to explain to him they are ugly and useless and will get destroyed anyway in the weather, so now we are going to have to cover the whole area. He gets agitated and upset. "It's all I have of her (my mom). Each of those suitcases is from a trip I took with her, and those memories are what I have."

We calmed down and let the crew pile all those pieces up high. You just can't sweat the small (well, large) things.

This is the dream I just had, so I guess my Dad visited me on Fathers' Day.

Miss you Dad,

Happy Fathers' Day all.

Modern Technology

I'm driving delivering food for Doordash yesterday, my 'retirement' job where I still don't know if I make any money, and I get an idea for the blog for the Conehead game.

Now, being old I am likely to forget the idea before I get home, so I want to save it while it is fresh, at least enough to jog my memory when I get back to it.

The light bulb goes off - I can voice text it in an email to myself, and then it will be close enough that I can refresh my memory later! Modern technology at its best!

So I perform the modern form of dictation. Here is what I meant to record:

"Wilder gap used to be a pristine part of the country between the Oakland hills and Orinda. Now it’s filled with luxury homes which (not sure, block the view?). But, to the Coneheads' benefit, Orinda got two beautiful softball fields, that is, beautiful when not full of young soccer players.

Paragraph

Well, I dedicate this post to the Wilder gap because we used it X times Monday to defeat the dangerous St. Mo's who always give us a good game. Chopper lead the way with two gap home runs although one of them was a squiggly turf hop over the right fielder's head but he had two (not sure) and one by Reggie and I forget who else."

Here is how it came out:

"Wilder gap used to be a pristine of the country between the Oakland hills and Orinda. Now it’s filled with luxury home which from my bank blotches of you. But, to the coneheads benefit, Orinda got two beautiful softball field, that is beautiful Wayne not Paul young soccer players. Paragraph well, I dedicate this post to the wilder gap because we used it X time Monday to defeat the dangerous Moz game. Chopper lead the way with two gap homerun although one of them what is a squigglyTurf cock over the right fielders head but he had to and drove in at the man of Ron would you mind by Reggie and I forget who else."

I can only say two things:

1) They want to have driverless cars?
2) Chopper's got to leave those squiggly turf cocks alone. And Beautiful Wayne the young soccer player.

The Gap

At the top of the Oakland hills in Sibley Regional Park lies Round Top, the volcano that spewed out the material that forms the East Bay Hills. If you hike to the top and look northeast, you get a view that used to be a pristine valley that I called the Wilder Gap. It was EBMUD watershed or something, that somehow was connected to the San Pablo and Upper San Leandro and Chabot and Lafayette reservoirs and drainage, beautiful open land.

Now of course there is a subdivision of upscale houses littering the Gap. Maybe someone thought this was a good idea, and after all, development is progress.

The good news for the Coneheads is that the City of Orinda, in order to appease whomever needed to be appeased for approving this project, had to build sports fields so we can think of this as a community asset. And now we get to play most of our games on these beautiful turf fields tucked in along the freeway.

In Monday night's game we redefined the Wilder Gap and that won the game over St. Mo's 18-14. Because if you hit a gap on those fields, the ball rolls forever and it is pretty much an automatic home run. Chopper led the way with two shots, although truth be told one of them was a springy bounce that went over the head of the right fielder, same effect. He was joined by Sting (solo shot) and Charley who brought in three runs with his. Sting's was a hard shot that was really a line drive that was hit so hard the outfielders had no chance of cutting it off. Charley's was more of a classic majestic gap fly over everyone.

Even though these hits accounted for only seven of our 18 runs, they came at key moments that propelled us to victory. Charley's and Chopper's first one came in the third inning and turned a 3-0 deficit into a 5-3 lead from which we never looked back. Sting's started off the fifth inning, and sparked us to a nine run Conehead inning that pretty much salted the victory; Even though St. Mo's rallied late to make the final score seem close, there was never really a threat that they would overtake us.

That was because every time they thought they had the monster shot themselves, they would hit a drive into left center and somehow Bruce would track it down and make one of his patented basket catches. There were some other highlights - Joe got a backward K, and Ol' G and Heffe made some nice grabs of popups behind the infield - but none compared with Bruce's rangy tracking.

Bruce and Sting led the way with four hits each, and Chopper, Haze, Gene and Heffe pitched in three apiece. The three big boppers (Sting, Chopper, and Charley) accounted for 11 RBIs altogether.

Good start to the season against a team that usually gives us fits. Think I'll go up to Round Top and cogitate on that.

Scarlet Beats the Heat and Orange, 14-9

Scarlet started the second season right where we left off the first with another good defensive battle, overcoming Orange 14-9.

Missing Scarlet's starting pitcher Chip Sharpe, Raymond Aguilera pitched a gem (including a backward K), going seven of the eight innings for the win. Charlie Uhlman came in for the middle inning to spell Ray and between them did not allow a run by Orange in the last four innings.

The first half of the game was seesaw, Orange up 1-0, Scarlet up 6-2, Orange 9-7 and then finally tied 9-9 after six. But Scarlet put up five in the top of the seventh and never looked back.

The pitchers were helped along the way with some stalwart defense. Helen Kostoff set the tone in the first with a snag off a hot corner shot, stepped on third and threw a strike to first for the DP. Art Miner closed the inning with a running catch in left.

In the fifth Gary Booth took a hard grounder and turned it into a force out, and made all three outs in the inning. In the sixth he started a double play where Gerry Dasey turned it and made yours truly actually bend over to scoop his dirty errant throw toward Field 3. And I held the base. In the last inning Kostoff snagged a line drive headed toward the dangerous foul ground outside the left field line where balls go to scoot to field five.

Speaking of which, our only home run came when Charlie Uhlman slammed a line shot just fair and it found the dirt and rolled all the way to field 5. He admired it for a moment (actually was thinking it was hooking foul) and then had to hustle around the bases.

Other than that we only had a couple of doubles for extra base hits; instead it was the three for four brigade that accounted for our 14 tun offense. The list included Miner, Dasey, Gary Namanny, Uhlman, Mike Nichols, Bob Shipway, and Gary Booth. Uhlman and Dasey led the way with 3 RBIs each, and Dasey getting the game winning knock in the five run seventh inning.

I think I saw the traded Raul Delgado (always Scarlet in his heart) shedding a tear as he prepped to play the following game against Green. Then while we enjoyed our post game refreshments, we watched him make the play of the year at second base, and sighed a sigh.

Mini Coneheads Sweep Away

Haze has been hot. How hot is he? He swept into the team lead in bases on balls in the nightcap tonight, with three straight walks. They just don't want to pitch to him, that's what it is. As it is he is hitting .647 for the season so far.

And Joe caught looking caught D for the team lead in Ks at one. Guess who's bringing beer next week?

And Chuck that old dog hobbled out there and got the save in both games and was the only perfect hitter, going 2-2.

But these weren't really the stories of the games. The story in the headlines is we rode Corona into the ground, shutting them out 14-0. Joe was masterful, and Chuck protected the shutout, and the defense was stout.

And in the daycap (it was still well over 90 degrees), the score ended up 17-13 over Who's On First, but it wasn't that close. We jumped on them for a 3-0 lead in the first but they answered with four. It looked like we might be in for a rough ride. But then the walking fools took over. Heffe, Haze and Joe all walked to start the winning rally, turning the lineup over and the top of the lineup did the rest, as Lefty, Sting, Chris and D all had RBI at bats after that. I always say, if the bottom of the order walks, we win!

Who's On First had a mini-rally in the last inning to close the gap but never really threatened to catch us. A Lefty to Chris to Chopper throw out ended the game on a play when they got their last two runs.

That's the sweep part. We had a lot of contributions from hitters but a few were really hot, and got mini-cycles. Haze in the first game hit the mini-cycle before the trifecta of walks in the second. And Ol' G and Chris replicated the feat in the second game.

Chris and G put on a hitting clinic, hitting gappers this way and that. Chris had four RBIs in the second game and G and Chopper were the two hitters with three hits in each game. Derek had an odd game two - he went 1-3 but had five RBIs. His hit was a bases loaded and bases clearing double (off the top of the fence to the opposite field), and he hit a sac fly that plated two runs. Sting and Charlie seemed to hit line drives every time up and ended up with five hits each for the day.

The defense was solid all day long. Chris was a vacuum sweeper at SS as was Charlie at rover. Heffe made a nice snag on a hot line drive. And each of the outfielders - Gene, Skip, Sting, Lefty, and Chopper all had at least one good grab. Gene, Skip and Sting in particular did well fighting off the tough Field 3 sun.

And then the Throw that ended it, the runner had no business testing Chris' gun still trailing by four runs. But he did and Chris did not disappoint, and Chopper stood his ground to end it.

We came within one half game of the division lead with the sweep, but Advance also swept their doubleheader to stay even with us. So next week goes a long way to determining who's in first and will settle tiebreaker issues with Advance. Should be fun.

Have a Night Kapsch

Well, now we've done it. We worked so hard to get into a position to get to the lower division, and now this.

We played an all around solid game with a somewhat depleted lineup (Warriors take note), and beat arch-rivals SOP 15-12.

The game had a little of everything. The defensive gem highlight, Nick gunning down a runner by inches at the plate with a laser throw (and Ump Hamilton actually got it right, unlike his high and low pitch calls), that was old school. And Rene did a great job picking the one hopper up.

Solid D all around. Gregg made a galloping catch in short left on a blooper. Bo and Nick made some running catches in the center fields. B placed himself perfectly on one batter in short left - and the hitter obliged by hitting the ball right to him. Bert and Coop made plays at third and second, not their normal positions. Heffe dropped a hard liner right in his glove but had the presence of mind to get a force at second for the all important first out with the bases loaded in the last inning. And even Tom got a putout at first without throwing the ball away.

The impressive thing about our hitting was we beat SOP without going to the long ball. There were a lot of sharp line drives. Bert, Cage and Bo each had four, and Bo's double was our only extra base hit. Nick drove in five with his hits and Bert four, and Bo and Nick led the way in scoring, three times each.

We even had some comic relief (some might say bonehead), with B "I can score from anywhere, any time" trying to steal home when the first baseman already had an overthrow in his glove. Out by six feet. At least.

But the difference may have been the bottom of the order. Coop, JT and Heffe all had two hit games (6 for 10), and my mantra is, "the bottom of the order hits, we win." And Rene had the base running highlight, somehow getting safely to second on my shallow liner to center with the center fielder practically standing next to second base. Even though we had just taken the lead, it opened the flood gates for the top of the order, who did their job and we never looked back, going up 12-5 at the time, after the eight run inning.

Finally, give Tom credit for keeping the formidable SOP lineup somewhat off balance. He walked a couple uncharacteristically, but it was because he was mixing his pitches up enough that they took a lot of awkward swings. And don't forget he was dealing with Mark Hamilton's 8-10 feet strike zone.

Oh well. Now we might as well keep playing better and get into the playoffs and win some cotton. If you insist. Maybe we will have a full squad one of these games too. One can dream.

Coneheads in Reverse, Backing It Up

You're 0-2 with a walk, albeit it was a bases loaded walk for an RBI. Everyone around you is hitting the crap out of the ball, or getting bloopers that fall in and bounders that bleed through, or getting a Conehead double on an error.

You could just keep doing what you're doing, the odds are that you'll get a line drive or something.

Instead if you're lefty Bruce, you go out of the box, literally in this case, to bat in the other box, right handed. And you smash the ball all the way to the left center fence.

That's how this game went from beginning to end, and the final score was 28-7, in four innings. We just ran out of time to do even more damage.

After taking a commanding 13-4 lead after three we nearly batted around twice in the fourth as we plated 15 runs. It kind of took out whatever drama there was to that point, he wrote understatedly.

WE HAD 18 STRAIGHT HITS in the frame. Is that how you spell RUST?

Haze had two doubles his first three times up and didn't even lead the team in doubles, because Randy had four in his first four ABs, 5-5 altogether and lead the team with 4 RBIs. Chris wasn't satisfied with his swing tonight. He was only 3-4 plus a sac fly. Sting was 4-4 with a double and a sac fly and only missed a second double or maybe a triple because we were going base to base in his last at bat when he split the center fielders. Chopper, Lefty, Haze were also all 4-4, Gene, Heffe and Johnny were all 3-4, and Charlie had a couple of hits and pitched a great game. Bruce was oh Bruce with his one lonely right handed hit, but he gave me my lead, so thanks!

Along the way there was some stellar defense. Gene set the tone with a great catch on a blast in the first inning, preventing the Polar Bears from denting the 5-0 lead we took our first time up. Charlie got a swinging K in the third inning. Randy hard charged a slow bouncer in the last inning and fired a bullet that nearly crossed up Heffe at first but he managed to hang on. Earlier someone had thrown a ball into foul territory over the first base bag and Heffe managed to drag his foot on the bag as he crossed into foul territory to catch it. And perhaps the play of the game was the last one - Johnny getting a great jump on a smash ticketed for right center and leaping to snag it for the last out.

And so we reversed the slowest start in the JFT version of the Coneheads that I can remember. We are now in a three way tie for second place, believe it or not, at 2-3. On the website it has us in second because thanks to this game we have the best run differential. In my tallying we are actually in third by tie-breakers but it doesn't matter - the league site states in plain English that all four teams will be in the playoffs. We can relax and just enjoy the games like we did tonight, and look what happens, because WE ARE THE CONEHEADS.