Something Strange in Danville

We should have known how weird the game was going to be when, in the bottom of the second, Dave hit the right center field gap and the fielder kicked the ball all the way to foul territory. I think he was trying to kick it into the soccer goal out there in right field, so he could claim it was a ground rule double as Dave was racing around the bases. Never you mind it was a three run homer, and settled our lead at 6-2 after two.

We scored at least two in each of the first five innings to build an 18-7 lead. In the fifth, none other than Wolfpack owner/GM JP led off with a smash down the left field line. It was hit so hard that the Vintage left fielder watched it and neglected to go after it. John didn't know quite what to do. And then everyone started yelling "Run, John, Run!" and he hobbled past second, and third and all the way home. These were two of only three extra base hits we had all game, and whoda thunk it would be Dave and John?

Along the way we experienced one of the strangest plays I have ever seen, and seemingly could only happen in senior softball. It was so strange I made a mess of it in the scorebook and I am not even sure who was at bat but I think it was Dave who hit a bases loaded popup near second base. As soon as he hit it I remember thinking, no one is getting that, and sure enough the Vintage infielders, instead of trying to catch it started yelling "Infield Fly". Well our umpire was having none of that, as it clearly was not a routine play for any of the 65+ infielders. But our runners froze except the one at third, who thankfully did score. So ultimately, I'm not sure who came out ahead - we had a run but they put out the runners forced at third and second.

And so we sat pretty at 18-7 after six, and all was well. Except it was a strange day in Danville. Marc came in to close out the game, and Vintage suddenly remembered they knew how to hit. We didn't really make defensive mistakes, they just hit the ball. It took the manager too long to relieve Marc, who really didn't do anything different than our other pitchers, but sometimes you just have to change things up to stop a rally. At long last JP came back in to stop the bleeding, and we still led 18-16.

The mark of a good team is what do you do when faced with adversity. I have been in games like this one and the team that is ahead just loses all the momentum and never recovers. But not Wednesday in Danville. We responded with our third five spot. JP start this rally too, and six of the next seven batters hit singles to plate the five.

JP came back in, and he couldn't close out the game. But Chris, who had started, managed to finish the 23-19 win.

There was some great defense along the way. Selwyn made a couple of running catches, including a one of the shoestring variety. Ditto Paul L in left and then he moved to right center and nabbed another tough chance. But the play of the day was a grounder (to second?) and Johnny G stretched all the way out to cut down a hitter in the late innings after the score was tight.

Johnny G drove in a run every time up for a total of five, and ended two of the five run innings with a hit as he went 4-4. Similarly, Marc was 4-4 and drove in runs on three of his hits. Paul D rounded out the trio of four hit batters, had the only double in our lineup, and drove in three. Paul L, Chris, and Nick had three hits apiece.

Maybe it was the odd warm temperature. Maybe it was the 12:00 game. Let's just say we are 1-0 in bizarro games.

Emptying the Hornets' Nest

First they were the Renegades. When they played over 50 Rec League in Pleasanton they were Boomer's Bangers, then Ritt's Boys. On Tuesday and Thursday mornings, they held pickup games, the Spartans against the Trojans.

Whatever their name, they were a bunch of tournament players that slummed in the Rec Leagues and they usually won and had our number especially.

But not today.

Our relentless hitting up and down the lineup including I don't know how many two out hits, and very good defense save one really really bad inning, and pitchers that re-discovered the strike zone just in time, put them on their heels and kept them there until they just ran out of time to come back. And as it turned out, there was a screw up and we only batted seven times ourselves.

So to say the score was 25-15 and it wasn't that close is quite an understatement.

I can't help myself, here is a list: Four two out hits in the third. Three in the fourth. Five in the fifth. Seven in the sixth. Four in the seventh. The Hornets should feel lucky that we didn't get or need our open inning - we would probably still be batting!

On defense, Ladd and Selwyn were running all over the place on the left side of the outfield, catching this and that. Wilbur was, as usual, a vacuum cleaner at second. Heffe made a falling down scoop at a key moment at first base. Les somehow placed himself right where line drives up the middle went to die, including on the past out. As did Marc at SS a couple of times.

Yeah they were hurting but I don't care who was missing on their side - we dominated after spotting them a 7-2 lead in the second inning.

Billy hit perhaps the slowest home run in the history of Danville, a two run job in the sixth. Selwyn managed to get on base three times in the beginning of the game on what we would call 'errors' but there aren't such things in senior ball so we call them 'hits'. But he earned them by hitting a grand slam gapper in the seventh that put the final nail in the Hornet's Nest.

Marc joined Billy with a 5-5 day. John Look matched Selwyn with four hits, a perfect 4-4. Ladd, Paul and Heffe all had three hits. Everyone else had at least a hit.

Keep this up while I am enjoying Mezcal in Oaxaca next week. Beat Leo's!

Orange Comeback Tuesday: 13-12 Royal Walk-off and 18-14 White-Wash

Each game was a microcosm of our year so far. In the first game against Royal, we charged out to an 11-2 lead after four, and Royal was on their heels. Then in the top of the fifth, The men in Blue charged all the way back, thanks to the hitting they are capable of combined with a one inning defensive meltdown by the Orange. Then they got the shutdown inning they needed. In the sixth, we had more shaky defense but Royal could only plate a single run. In the bottom half it looked grim when the first two hitters made outs. But the top of the order, Ron Schwab, Mark Edelstone, Mike Saindon, and Greg Wilson smacked four straight hits, and we walked off with two runs.

Edelstone had three hits with a double and a triple, Saindon had three including a triple and Wilson had three including a double. The top four had 10 of our 13 RBIs.

Schwab, Jay Chafetz and the Coach had two hits apiece. Chafetz made any number of great catches in LF and Edelstone robbed Helen Kostoff in shallow LC Willie Mays style on a sinking line drive. The first baseman scooped one in the dirt backhanded to steal an out in the same inning, and Howard Davis, who pitched all 12 innings today, made a great play on the third out that inning.

In the day cap, Orange scored three in the top of the first then went to sleep for three innings. Going into the top of the fifth we trailed 8-4. But we batted around in the fifth to take a one run lead 9-8, and after a shutdown bottom half, batted 15 hitters and more or less put the game away as we went ahead 18-9. White's sharpshooters came back with six runs, but in the end they had dug too big a hole. Final was 18-14.

A word about Davis. He pitched lights out all day, He had batters off balance in both games, and I think he had but one walk in the doubleheader. He started the season fourth on the depth chart of Orange pitchers, but worked his way up the ladder, and today with all the other pitchers missing, he really came through for us. And to boot, after we came back against White in the fifth, in the bottom half, he stabbed a shot up the middle and started a 1-11-3 double play to essentially take them out of the game.

Against White, Vince Franceschi was 4-4, and Chafetz and Lamont "LT" Thompson were each 3-3 with a sac fly each and co-led the team with four RBIs. Schwab also had three hits including two doubles, and Kravin rounded out those with three hits. Everyone else had two hits except Saindon and he had a sac fly and a walk and a hit. Great team effort on offense and defense.

It comes down to next week - we need some help from Scarlet and Royal, and it starts with going up against the juggernaut Purple - but we know and they know we have beaten them three of four so far this year. Fun fun fun!

Orange Squeezes Purple 17-15

Bottom of the seventh (in a game shortened from the beginning by agreement), two outs, 17-15, Mark Pitzlin on second and Paul Lisi on first as the tying run. Gary Tryhorn up as the winning run. Raul Delgado on deck. A gapper ties it, and the Delgado wins it for Purple with a long ball.

That's the way the script reads, except that's not the way real life worked out. You know Orange is doing something right, or living right, or just got lucky, but Tryhorn flied out to Mark Edelstone in left center and it was game over.

What we did right is what Edelstone did. Catch the routine ones. The outfield - Brian Black, Edelstone, Jay Chafetz, and Vince Franceschi made every catch that was catchable, and hustled in to hold the mostly speedy Purple to one base at a time.

Due to a makeshift infield, the game started off rough. We started out with a solid three run first but  defensive lapses and the usual good hitting by Purple propelled them to a 10-4 lead through three innings. It was getting ugly.

But we settled down on defense. Mark Narciso pretty much held Purple down. Except for a four run outburst in the sixth, they only scored two runs he rest of the way.

And so the table was set for a comeback. We burst open in the fifth. After a leadoff double by Steve Sloat, we made two outs. Then with two outs and our backs against the wall, we got consecutive hits from Mike Saindon, Greg Wilson, Narciso, Franceschi, Chafetz, the Coach, and finally a bomb by Lamont Thompson to tie it up at 10.

We followed that with a one out rally in the sixth, again started by Sloat. This time the big hit was a two run triple over the left fielder's head by Edelstone. Purple answered with four to re-take a lead at 15-13, but we answered right back with another two out rally to plate four in the last inning, again all with two outs. Clutch hits came from Art Oller, Sloat (again), Black and Edelstone.

Sloat stood out with a 4-4 day. Chafetz, Edelstone, Franceschi, Saindon and Wilson all had three knocks. Multiple hit games were enjoyed by Black, Kravin, and Narciso. Everyone had at least one hit. Everyone but Kravin scored a run, and ironically everyone drove in at least one run except Wilson, who has been our RBI leader all season.

There were no webgems on defense, but kudos to Wilson for filling in well at 3B and Saindon, Sloat and Thompson (who had not played together in today's positions all season) as they worked out their early problems and got more solid up the middle as the game went on.

It was a meaningless game, except for the fact that we have given Purple three of the four losses they've had all season. Coppa and company have something to think about with the playoffs coming. I just hope we are both in it when we play them in our last game of the playoffs October 5th. Maybe it will matter, maybe not, all there is left is the play the games!

The Cliff of Lake George

Last week my Creaker Team Orange, which enjoys good team camaraderie, talked about holding a team barbeque at the end of the season to celebrate our time together.

Then last night, in our weekly zoom, my good friends from back east decided, somewhat in jest, that we should meet for a road trip to stay in the last remaining Howard Johnson's Lodge, which is in the resort town of Lake George in upstate New York (one of the participants lives in nearby Albany, NY).

So my dream combined the two themes. Here it goes:

Team Orange signed up to play in a tournament in Lake George and stayed at Ho Jos. While we were in between games, we walked into a park which overlooked the lake, and we stood atop a very high cliff. Our pitcher, Mark, who in the dream was from Lake George, offered $300 to anyone that would jump into the lake from on top of the cliff; he said it was a local rite of passage growing up in Lake George. He said he would also give out $10 to anyone that would even go into the lake, because it was very cold (this took place in early spring). There was a path down to the lake from where we stood. A couple of my teammates took Mark up on this. There was one player, a woman, who was seriously considering jumping. I tried to talk her out of it. I said, "One small movement in the wrong direction, you could land awkwardly, and break your neck! Not something you want to do at our age!"

We finally talked her out of it, and then Mark declared he was only joking, and would have called her off if she decided to jump. He said no one had ever jumped from that height.

The next day, we played in the finals of the tournament. In the championship game, we took a one run lead in the top of the seventh. In the bottom half, with two outs, the other team had the tying run on third, and the winning run on second. With two and a half strikes (in softball you get one foul ball with two strikes and then on the next foul ball you can strike out), the batter hit a pop fly up the first base line, which bounced and then started behaving oddly (note - in the dream the dimensions were distorted, and the first baseman had no chance to get the ball. And normally I would be playing first but in the dream I was watching this from the third base dugout). The ball rolled foul, and almost stopped and our team started celebrating. But then out of nowhere, it improbably took a sharp right turn into fair territory and the other team commenced whooping it up, because by that time both runners had crossed the plate, having run with two outs on contact, and the batter had gotten to first base safely. Then the ball, not quite stopped, turned left again and started rolling into foul territory again, and the whole celebration started again on our side of the field. For some reason, in the dream you weren't allowed to pick up the ball before it settled in foul territory, which you would in real life. In any event this process repeated itself again and again, with players from both sides crowding around the ball to see what it would do. Finally, after about the third or fourth cycle zigging this way and zagging that, the ball settled down for good in foul ground, and we had our victory. What a bizarre way to win a championship!

That's all there was to the dream, and I am not sure if there are any life lessons from it, but there you have it. Maybe just that we should all visit Ho Jo's on all you can eat clam strip night, and go from there.

The Orange Streaks On, 15-11 over Scarlet

It was a key moment in the game. The opposing manager Dave Rose came up with a runner on and one out. He hit a pop up near the first base dugout. The slow footed first baseman pulled up his gut and got on his horse and got almost all the way to the dugout. And then - he reached out and got a glove on it, tried to catch it with his ample midsection, and then his arm, and then his mitt again. But alas, it popped out. Rose followed with a key hit and Scarlet was in business. But Howard Davis shut down the top of the Red lineup with minimal damage and Scarlet could only narrow the lead to 13-11. They tie us up there and it's game on. We got the two the first baseman let score back in the bottom of the eighth and it was 15-11 going into the ninth. And Davis induced three popups (two on the infield) and it was game over, home team wins.

A different tone was set in the first. Scarlet hit it where we wasn't and netted five. We answered with five of our own - seven straight hits after a flyout to open the inning. Greg Wilson had a two run double and Heffe hit the middle gap for the last run.

Pitching and defense took over for the next three innings, won by Big Red 3-2. We got one third out when Art Oller hustled in on a single, threw a strike to Ron Schwab, who replicated the perfect throw home to nail Rose by a half step, trying to score from second. In the third, the 3-1 putout of the year, that same first baseman leading pitcher Mark Narciso perfectly on a slow grounder, who neatly stabbed the edge of the bag just ahead of the runner. Except, the umpire ruled otherwise. C'est la vie, I guess there won't be an ESPN highlight on that one. Narciso made several other tough plays in his five innings on the bump - he stabbed one with the bases loaded and got the third out at third base, and on one play he slowed a hot shot ticketed for center field just enough that it went right to Wilson at rover who completed the double play.

That was one of three Orange double plays - the others being Narciso to Davis (rover) to Bob Carver at first and then in his one inning at SS. Mike Saindon took a grounder to second himself and fired to first to complete the twin killing.

The Orange offense shows how balanced our latest winning streak (three) is. Only Mark Edelstone had three hits. Nine others had two hits, and everyone had at least one. We did not hit long balls today - Greg Wilson had two doubles, and heffe had a third (Steve Sloat thinks I am still running to second), and that was it for extra base hits. But the consistency was there to get runs home when needed, and pitching and defense took care of the rest. A good win against a good team.

It was a fierce battle for playoff positioning - three teams were within a half game of third place, including these two. Orange leapfrogged both others - but wait - it's a round robin end of season tournament, no seeding. Oops - never mind - anyway well we now have bragging rights for third place with one week to go...

Orange White Washes White, 26-13

This is a story about loyalty.

All season, after Creaker Ball, I have gone to my favorite taco joint in Pleasant Hill for Taco Tuesday. I get enough tacos for lunch and dinner for me and my girlfriend. She is a teacher - she was home on Zoom through summer school but now is back in the classroom. But we have continued the tradition, except I just get her enough tacos for dinner only.

Well, my place in PH was slipping - they were slow to answer the phone (I always ordered ahead). And they were slow, slow slow to get the food out. I think they changed management. This coincided with my discovery of one of those Top Ten Tacos in the Bay area Chronicle lists, and there was one on it in Concord nearby on Monument Blvd. that was all rave reviews. I decided to try it today. After I collected my food, I drove out along the strip mall and pow! a truck just backs up right into my car, crushing the front right fender and wheel well and bumper and various other parts and pieces, and rendering my car un-drivable.  So I spent the whole afternoon, when I should have been celebrating the Orange victory over White today, dealing with insurance, the tow truck, the body shop, and car rental. All because I was not loyal to my taco shop. Live and Learn.

In the mean time, Lamont Thompson, who thought his softball days were over two months ago, tried to return to his Scarlet team (he played for them last week), but they had replaced him on the roster (as they should have), and we picked him up, since we were down to 13 bodies. All he did today was hit a single, double, and triple (the mini-cycle) for his new team, including the three run bases loaded double that put us ahead to stay in the fifth. So I am glad his loyalty went from Scarlet to Team Orange!

He was not the only one that hit. Greg Wilson hit another bomb - his ninth of the season (he must be the league leader?) and added a triple for a 4-4 day with four RBIs. Mark Edelstone was 5-5, and had two home runs taken away because the fifth run of the fourth and eighth innings scored on his hits ahead of him. He had seven RBIs. Recently anointed leadoff hitter Ron Schwab was 3-4 plus a walk setting the table every other inning. Brian Black continued his comeback from his recent slump with a 3-4 day. Bob Carver brought hits down from his vacation in Alaska, also going 3-4, as was Howard Davis.

The defense started and ended with pitching. We were shaky on defense the first few innings, and it cost starter Mark Narciso some unearned runs. Once we settled down, he held the tough White lineup to one run over his last two innings. And along the way he made several of the finest plays of the day on comebacker-smashes that he stabbed. Jay Chafetz made his usual assortment of great catches, whether in left field or right center. We turned at least two double plays - one started by Schwab at SS, and one started by Mike Saindon at 3B.

Finally, our new late inning specialist super-closer Davis came into the game in the sixth, and held White to one run over four innings while we added on 11 runs to salt away the game.

Another team win for the Orange Crush! We stayed loyal through our losing streak!

I guess I will return to my old Taco place. Never mind the wait - it was a lot faster than what I went through today!

(Although I have to say the burrito I had while I waited for the tow truck was really really good).