Marty McSlugger (not)

Well, last week was our weekly softball game and our first real test of the season. We were playing Exelon on their home field, a beautiful facility called PECO field outside of the city. Other than it being their ‘home field’, it’s easily the best ballpark we play in all year. Fitting that it would be the site of our best game all year as well – and my best game of the season.

The Exelon team came out slugging – with an ungodly springy bat – and were pounding homers not only into the outfield but into the trees (by comparison, our best hitter, using a normal bat was easily 50′ short of the trees). I’m not saying that the bats made the difference, but had Bryl used their bats he would have destroyed the ball – or killed the pitcher, one of the two.

All night, we traded the lead. 2-0 lead for us in the top half of the 1st. 2-3 at the bottom. 5-3 at the bottom of the 2nd. 6-7 at the end of the third. And so forth. And then it came down to the top of the 7th, and final inning with us down by 5, we exploded for 6 runs to take the lead. They came back with a single tally to tie it up, 19-19. Extra innings.

We made the most of our top half of the inning, scoring 3 more to make it 22-19. All we had to do was hold them. It turned out that in our effect to protect the lead, we made a couple small errors, but it was ‘small ball’ that ended up killing us. An easily 2nd out wasn’t, so the subsequent ‘3rd out’ was actually only 2. An easy run got them within one, and then a towering homer drove the tying and winning runs in to end the game, 23-22.

But I was happy with how we played, and how I played. I took over 3rd base for our injured coach/3B, who slipped onto 1st to minimize the strain on his torn rotator cuff. I did surprisingly well despite my not having played there all season. My box score:
Batting: 4-5, 2R, 5RBI | Fielding: 5CH, 1PO, 2A
SEASON – Batting: 12-21, 7R, 6RBI, .571 | Fielding: 40CH, 27PO, 2A, 2E, .950

Granted, I only had 4 singles, but 2 of those could have been extra bases but there were people ahead of me on the basepaths. And I also had a sacrifice fly that brought in one of those 5 RBI, so all-in-all, I’m happy with my performance (finally). And like I said, we played a solid game overall. As Jake said, “If you’re going to lose, this is the best possible way.” It almost felt like a win since Exelon is one of the ‘biggies’ in the league. And if we could almost beat them, we might just be able to take a game or two from Katz or Harmelin to put us into the playoffs. Next game – Thursday night.