G. O. M.

I owe the inspiration for this post to my partner in crime Julia.

We were speeding down to Phoenix for Thanksgiving with my sister and her family.

Now Julia gets a little nervous in a car, in general. So my driving method (perfectly safe as far as I am concerned), which may be a little aggressive and fast (unlike my base running for example) tends to make her do things like scream or grip the door tightly. Or both.

I try to calm her down by explaining something I heard I think in traffic school about the benefit of riding motorcycles ten mph faster than the traffic around you. That is, if you are passing everyone, it eliminates 50% of the cars (the ones you passed) as candidates to strike you and cause you harm. I have taken this to heart whenever I am in a car or on a motorcycle.

This does not soothe Julia. Instead, she offers, "You drive like a Grandpa on Meth!"

And when I reflected on this (after the laughter subsided), I thought about the comment in the context of our Conehead softball season and year. We need to play like Grandpas on Meth (GOM), if we are to return to our former glory. We just had a year without Cotton. Unacceptable.

Think about it. Think about Sting. Before he got hurt (and I am sure when he comes back), he played and will play like a GOM. But even though we are mostly old enough to be grandpas, most of us don't all have the ability to generate that level of adrenaline like Sting does. So - this off season I expect each and every one of you to start taking and build up the level in your system the stimulant of your choice (dex or bennies or meth or crank, glass, chalk, redneck cocaine, yellow powder, yellow barn, Tina, Tick-Tock, Go, Spoosh, or Scootie) so that by first pitch in the spring we are hitting on all 8 cylinders. or 200. Whatever, what we want is for the fans in the stands to cry out - Look! They are playing like Grandpas on Meth!

Guaranteed to win or die trying!

And then, we can change our team name - the COKEHEADS! Teams everywhere will be so intimidated, they will just lay down before us.

Amen.

I should stop now, but I have to say something about the season and year that did just pass. It was kind of a lost year from a cotton standpoint, but there were some highlights and some fun.

Johnny had a monster fall season. He hit .773, and some of his few outs were loud. Patrick had the best season taking into consideration both sides of the ballgame - .750 and who knows how many runners gunned down that kept us in games. Pope hit the long ball like no other time - he obliterated the record for home runs in a calendar year since we went to shortened seasons in 2013. He doubled the previous record with twelve dingers, and drove in the second highest number of runs in that period with 52. Led the team the team in runs, hits, doubles, game winners, SFs, slugging, on base and overall batting average.

But perhaps the most intangible best hitter all year was Ol' G. I don't have quite the metrics to prove it, but it seemed like every time we needed a hit to drive in an important run, it was G who delivered.

In the playoffs the stars were Gene and Chopper. Neither made an out. Gene walked four times to go with four hits, netting six RBIs to lead the team. Chopper hit a blast for a triple one for one of our few extra base hits.

So get some rest  but work out in the off-season, get ready for the spring, AND EAT YOUR BENNIES!

Milestones:
10/30 Game 1:
Gene      100 bb (#4)
Ol' G      950 ab (#9)
D            600 ab (#15)
Chopper 250 r (#16)
Randy    20 bb (#20)
Patrick   50 ab (#40)

10/30 Game 2:
Pope       800 rbi (#1)
Randy    100 rbi (#24)

11/6:
Pope       750 h (#5)
Patrick    10 bb (#25)

Life on the Edge

For the Coneheads, the Playoffs started last week. In fact, they really started five weeks ago when we started the season ignominiously 0-3. We couldn't afford to lose more than one game and we didn't.

Last Monday, we completed our push for the Playoffs with a close victory over the Hawks, with the winner going to the playoffs and the loser done for the year. It took grit and determination in yet another game where are bats were mysteriously absent to some degree, but we just hit enough and played enough defense to come out on top.

The defensive highlights as usual featured in no particular order, Chuck's glove, Bruce's arm, and Patrick's legs. Chuck played a terrible hop in the first into an out and helped us keep the Hawks  off the board. After that, we took a 3-0 lead in the bottom half and never really looked back or gave up the lead, even though the Hawks were never far behind in the rear view mirror, coming back to 3-2 and 5-3 and 6-4 before falling by the final score of 8-5.

In the third, Bruce gunned out a runner with a fourteen hop but on the mark throw from left, and the runner was still out by a step and a half. After that, the Hawks played a lot more conservative on the bases, so the play had an even greater effect than one out or one run. In the fourth, Chuck fielded a high hopper at third, and would have had a tough play at first. But he saw out of the corner of his eye the runner at third inexplicably take off, and had the presence of mind to throw a strike home to nail him at the plate. That's two runs in a three run game. Finally in the sixth Patrick laid out to grab a sinking liner to kill the Hawks comeback that inning - again when they were close they couldn't score.

On offense, Knight and Heffe were both 3-3 and five others had multiple hit games. Two key blows were Patrick's two run bases loaded single in the first to give us the lead we never gave up, and Lefty's two run double in the third to make it 5-2. Heffe provided two clutch insurance hits with two out RBI singles in the fourth and sixth.

Now we start out 0-0 just like the other playoffs teams. It's up to us to rediscover our bats, and keep up the effort on defense, but even though we are pretty old in the tooth, and banged up injury-wise, we've overcome adversity before and can do it again! Will we play into November?

Milestones:
10/16:
Knight        100 g (#21)

10/23:
None

Back in the High Life

Left for dead, the Coneheads rose up from the hibernating through a 0-3 start to claim three straight victories, including Monday night gutting it out against the defending Champions Cream and Clear, 17-12.

We are right in the thick of the race at 3-3 believe it or not. The two teams at the top both lost, and now there is a three way tie for first, with us just a game behind in fourth, the final playoff spot.

Don't poke the bear, we always say!

(That's us, do I have to explain?)

Last week we simply crushed Reeelaax 26-12. We included the first true Conehead inning in a while, scoring 12 in the third to put the game out of each early. Pope and Chopper lead the way with a homer and a double and five RBIs each, and Ol' G continued his sizzling year with a 5-5 night.

Monday night, though, was a much bigger challenge. C&C had owned us for a bit, but we put it on them with an eight run top of the first. Ten of the twelve in our lineup hit safely.

Those boys can hit but it makes a difference when you play the whole game from behind - it puts more pressure on anyone.

More importantly, in the third and fourth we added on. Four in the third, highlighted by Chopper's bases loaded double. In the fifth, seven straight hits produced the five that counted, and Johnny was safe but there was a bad call, and I am completely objective in this matter.

Larry held C&C to eight runs in four innings, no small feat, and Joe came in for the save. They were aided by the return of the vaunted Conehead defense. Ol' G picked a hot shot at second in the second. Patrick simply gunned down a would be run in the third from medium center field - Chuck at the dish made a great pickup of the hot throw. And Larry made a life saving stab at a shot up the middle.

Can it be? Can we make it four in a row? Tune in next week.

Milestones:
10/2
Heffe      450 g (#3)
D            300 r (#14)

10/9
Chuck     1900 ab (#1)
Chopper  50 2b (#17)
Heffe      20 sf (#16)

Scarlet Sees Red, then Red Raises 21-19

In a collective senior moment, Big Red and Scarlet forgot that today's consolation game was totally meaningless and dueled to the end, with Red prevailing 21-19.

It started with both teams hot each gaining the "curse of the first" with five runs. Red stayed ahead or tied through six, but Scarlet wouldn't lay down, and took leads of 16-14 and 19-16 in the top of the seventh and eighth, respectively. But Red responded each time, and in the bottom of the eighth, after the bottom of the order turned it over to the top with three runs in and the score tied, Rich Brown put Red ahead to stay with a two run single. Scarlet couldn't answer the bell in the ninth, and suddenly the season was over.

Everyone had a hit but the top of the lineup did most of the damage. Kevin Kane went out in style with a perfect 5-5 day including a triple. Mark Pitzlin led the team with four RBIs on a double and a home run. James Del Rio also was perfect at 4-4, including two doubles and a home run. Nah, we didn't miss him last week when he was suspended. Much. Oh Well.

Randy Crase, Mr. Consistency, was also 4-4 with a double, and Lamont LT Thompson rounded out the hitters with perfect days, 4-4 with a double and three RBIs. Brown and Tony Gorgone had three hits, and Kravin got a clutch double in the third.

On defense, it was a tale of two games. At times, we reverted to our former error prone selves, but we put up enough good plays in this game to ultimately make a difference. In the second, Del Rio made perhaps the play of the game, snagging a sinking line drive up the middle and flipping it to LT who alertly covered second and got the runner there who had taken off too quickly.

If there would be gold gloves given out, my nominee at 2B would be Gorgone, who made play after play, including handling a tough grounder in the sixth to hold Scarlet to one run. Del Rio also showed his range by going into shallow left to catch a blooper that seemed destined to fall. But not. And finally Pitzlin made one of his signature running catches on a shallow fly in the fifth.

What a season for Red, from the depths of last place to the top of the heap in the second half and then the disappointment of losing the first round of the playoffs, when expectations were so high. We all learned from it, even in our advanced ages, and appreciated going out with a win all that much more. We also went out for pizza, at Pinky's Pizza to enjoy the season just a little more. Special thanks to Mark Pitzlin for bringing post game beer and soda every week, and injecting a winning spirit into this team. And to Larry Rafferty for keeping it together through the tough first half and leading us to the undefeated second half. But - let me remind you one more time Larry - in the games you missed, we never lost, the Co-manager went the whole year without a loss. And there you have it!

Red Finish Undefeated, 19-17 over Navy

As I sit here twelve hours later, one sight and one sound stand out from today's game between the best two Creaker teams this half. One was exhilarating, and the other was a dud.

The sight was the end of the game. After Red let the seemingly unsinkable Navy storm back to tie us at 17 going into the bottom of the eighth, and we took a precarious two run lead going into the unlimited ninth, Navy had a couple runners on with one out. Even though we had last ups, the game was hanging in the balance.

Crack - a sharp grounder up the middle. Tony Gorgone, our second baseman lunged to his right and on one hop stabbed at the ball, backhanded, and it stuck in his glove. He flipped it to Al Kidwell covering second, and Al fired as hard as he could to first. The runner was out by two steps, game over. It happened so fast, it was hard to believe at first. Then everyone slapped hands and agreed we all something great go down.

The sound was much earlier in the game. It didn't make much sense we were playing on Field 3 with Field 5 open, and I had a sense of dread that our last two games were there, what with the harsh penalty for hitting one over the fence. It proved to be prescient. James Del Rio came up in the third, and tried to hit a line drive to the opposite field. But he got a little under it, and it hit the top of the fence. But instead of dropping back down onto the field of play, it kept going, and the sound is ball hitting wood - thwack! - it next hit the telephone pole sticking above the fence and then slid down on the other side.

We will see what Leadership decides - the rule simply states that the player is suspended, with no guideline for how long. It does not even say he is suspended for the entirety of the game. I may be biased, but I personally would hope that the Creakers would want all teams at full strength for the playoffs. If I were our opponent, I would want to beat the best the other team has to offer. It's not like Del Rio picked a fight or cheated or performed any other criminal act - he merely hit a ball too hard on a field not designed to be played on with Senior bats in the hands of powerful men.

Navy jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first but we answered with five, highlighted by Del Rio's triple. In the third, before the dreaded 'out' by Del Rio, Mark Pitzlin hit a gapper to right center good for two runs. After Randy Crase plated Mark, we had built a 9-4 lead. It closed up to 11-8 in the next inning but after a shutdown top of the sixth, the top of the lineup again produced five. Included were extra base blasts by Rich Brown (triple, one run), Pitzlin (double, one run) and the closer, Lamont 'LT' Thompson, a booming double for the last two runs.

The rest is Bob Muegge being Muegge, one run allowed over three innings until the eighth when we faltered. In that inning our defense relapsed and Navy is just too good to not take advantage. But that just set the stage for Gorgone's dramatic play to end it.

Pitzlin was 4-4 with four RBIs and four runs scored. Yours truly also reached safely four times, but there was some, ahem, Navy help involved and some generous score-keeping. Kevin Kane continued to be leadoff hitter extraordinaire, going 3-3 and a sac fly. Bill Marthinsen and Crase, two models of consistency, rounded out those with three or more hits. A true team effort as we hit .681 as a team with everyone having at least one hit and all but one with an RBI. That's 18 RBIs for 14 guys - pretty well balanced (the actual game winning run scored on a double play, so there was no RBI).

Next up, we seek to continue this roll we are on to the end of the playoffs.

Chicken Little

The Coneheads started 0-3, as I said in my previous post, unprecedented. We had lost three in a row (once) but never at the beginning of the season in the Modern era of Conehead ball (post 1997), and never had we lost four in a row.

I was like Chicken Little running around screaming "The sky is falling, the sky is falling!"

Joe, who never found a hope that couldn't be dashed, was convinced that the sky was not only falling but in fact had already fallen, and crushed us.

And then a funny thing happened. I got to the field and if you looked at each team warming up, you couldn't tell which team was 3-0 (the Snorts) and which was 0-3 (Coneheads). Our guys were laughing and talking just like it was any other game.

We are either a team of dumb goofs or maybe, just maybe, this is why we are the Coneheads - we never give up.

More importantly then we went out and proved we are not an 0-3 team, coming back to win 14-11.

Oh we had our all too frequent bad inning - we gave away four unearned runs in the top of the first. We left the bases loaded in two of our five innings, hit into a bases loaded double play, failed to score on confusion with the base coach, and left at least two on in every inning.

But after falling behind 8-2 we started playing defense and got enough clutch hits to score every  inning and overcome the Snorts.Patrick made the catch of the game look easy as he tracked down a deep fly Willie Mays style over his shoulder. His Dad leaped high for a liner over first base for an out. Gene made a couple of great catches, one on a knuckler toward him and one in the RC gap. Johnny threw out a runner at home. and Lefty also ranged into the RF gap to gather in a well hit ball.

It also didn't hurt that Larry got two scoreless inning in the middle of the game.

In the third, we had a mini-Conehead inning (five runs) to close the gap to 10-9. We nearly batted around and nearly everyone had a hit (including Gene who had a 'hit' but a runner got forced out from the outfield). Clutch two out RBI hits from the bottom of the order. Everyone batted except Pope, who promptly led off the next inning with a solo blast for a homer. That tied it and later in the inning Chuck put us ahead to stay with a run scoring single. The top of the order gave us a four run cushion in the fifth, and Joe came in to close the deal despite a bases loaded walk to the cleanup hitter (he wanted to get lower in the order according to him) (ahem).

Knight was 3-3 with a line drive single that nearly took the head off the third baseman, and a LC gap double. Johnny stayed hot, also 3-3 and Pope kept pace, also with three hits. Heffe broke out of his slump with a 2-2 plus a walk that ignited our last rally. Lefty had the other extra base hit, a double among his 2-3 plus a walk evening. Larry led the team with three RBIs on two hits.

It's not too late as it turns out to come back to make the playoffs this season if we play like that. Baby steps. Stay dumb and happy!

Milestones:

8/28:

Lefty        300 h (#18)

9/11:

Pope         50 3b (#2)
Lefty        450 ab (#19)

Knight     20 bb (#19)

9/18:

Pope        140 hr (#1)

9/25:
Pope        1100 ab (#6)

Unprecedented

Of course before Joe even sent the email a out our 0-3 start I had already done the research. In fact, I had started a blog post – called it “Unprecedented”.

But I didn’t finish it. I could say I have been too busy getting ready to move but that is not it. I just have a hard time writing about losing, unless there is some compelling angle to it.

At any rate, here is what I said (note the optimism!):

The bad news - we started the season 0-3, unprecedented in my 18 years on the Coneheads.

The good news, the silver lining - I hit the archives, and the last time (and I think only) time we lost three in a row in that time was in 2004. We ended that season 8-6, and then reeled off 15 wins in a row to take the Orinda playoffs and go undefeated through the Walnut Creek fall season and playoffs.

And in 2013, we started the Orinda season 0-2, and then finished 8-3. What’s more, that was the year we spotted St. Mo’s a win in the first game of the playoffs, and then took six in a row to win the championship.

We were however, a lot younger then and we played OLD Monday night…(to be continued)

Or not.

So there you have it. It’s up to us to play better and turn the season around. Maybe we are getting too old for this league but we still have tremendous talent if we put our minds to it.

My two (non-coach) cents.

Milestones:

8/28:

Lefty        300 h (#18)

9/11:

Pope         50 3b (#2)
Lefty        450 ab (#19)

Knight     20 bb (#19)

9/18:

Pope        140 hr (#1)