LAST GAME RESULTS:
29TH ST 29ERS
8
MISSION ST DEALERS
0
RECAP: On a particularly beautiful and almost too-pleasant Saturday afternoon (I can't lie, I felt a certain amount of, um, guilt, about how nice the weather was, as if we didn't deserve such soothing warm breezes in our fine city, much less at the frequently swampy and icy St. Mary's Field ((why I felt this way has probably something to do with my guilt-laden and confusing childhood within a religion well-known for producing that feeling in its followers, but more than likely everything to do with the funky turmoil in which I have found myself recently: a bizarre and annoying story I think most of you know by now))) we won a baseball game against a team who has not won baseball games recently.
Most of the recap for this one will come out in the POTG and newly-added Drive of the Game sections, but suffice it to say The Dealers did not bring their A-Game to this meeting. It's not my position to determine which letter grade they did bring, but any measure of A it wasn't, and unfortunately for them, we handed them their seventh consecutive loss. This was largely due to the glaringly obvious poor defense on display by the Dealer infield, an infield that made nine errors. Perhaps Justin Flowers was right when he said the final should have been something more to the tune of 2-0, but how can we know? Flowers, IMHO, performed under what I have come to know as his usual self, lacking whatever methamphetaminic prowess he possessed what I can only assume was merely hours (perhaps minutes) before the first pitch; a fact that Zack revealed to me in an aside around the third or fourth inning when he said, "Look, he's already losing gas" --- or something to that effect. Flowers' curve, which has always baffled and bound me, found my bat three times, albeit not once for hits. But it did seem to lack its characteristic "snap" --- Look, it's not like we pounded the ball to all corners of the field; it was once again a show of our razor sharp defense and ability to what some baseball personalities on television call "slow the game down" . . . or I think it's something like that. I don't really know, I don't get paid to analyze baseball, I just watch a lot of it, and think about it, and talk about it (probably too often) so if that gives me some sort of experience in interpreting the many banal clichés that sports' talking heads throw out there, okay. If not, it sounds good anyway.
We won handily 3/4ths of the way through the game, and at that point, it became about preserving Louie's no-hitter, even in the face of the cabal that was The Dealers, the fevered spokesman for which was clearly Vinnie, the heightened pitch his forming some Italian devil horns with his fingers and muttering some esoteric curse upon our whole bench but most directly and emphatically at Louie himself. We'll have to start keeping sage or crystals in the dugout to prevent anything like this from happening again, or prayerbooks and candles --- really, whatever your preferred form of spiritual amulet of protection, bring it.
PLAYER OF THE GAME: Lately, this has been the easiest part of writing these things, and this section in particular has largely written itself. Without question it was Louie, who was able to turn Saturday into not just another game, but a game with some legitimate intrigue involved. For those on both benches who were aware of what was underway, after the fourth or fifth inning there existed an acute feeling of playing with baited breath. During the sixth, it really started mounting. I was experiencing the condition we call "butterflies in the stomach," which I've just read is the body releasing adrenaline and pulling blood away from the stomach. The lack of blood in your stomach causes it to cease working temporarily, and gives rise to the weightless and nervous feelings we get. I usually just hope everything's doin its thang inside me, and so it was on this day, until, as mentioned above, Vinnie put his damning fat fingers in our general direction, and in the bottom of the seventh, Sam Bull (who else) hit what was recounted to me later as a "you-had-no-chance-at-it" line drive clean into right field.
Louie would continue to pitch marvelously (despite Sam's immediate and sort of shocking imperative to "EAT SHIT, LOUIE" as soon as he sauntered to first) to the last out of the game, giving up just one more hit to Gomez (a duck snort into right) along the way, all the while allowing only one Dealer to make it as far as third base, even that being with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, almost as a tease, as a mean older sibling or cousin offers candy to their younger relative and then shoves it in their own mouth and makes them (the younger one) watch them (the elder) chew it maliciously right in front of their eyes. (Ed.: Excuse the metaphor, it really isn't supposed to read like "taking candy from a baby.")
Louie's final line: 9IP, 2H, 0R, 0ER, 10K, 6BB. Proud of you, man. Nice to meet your folks, too!
 |
| The symbolism of the chain link fence is just beyond my grasp. I can't do all the work for you. |
PLAY OF THE GAME: While we played generally superb but fairly standard defense (as in, making the plays we are supposed to make i.e. grounders fielded cleanly and thrown gift-wrapped to first, fly balls caught sans confusion) one play stood out as truly spectacular. With Gantz manning left field, not his normal position but one he can clearly play with aplomb, and Eric "Spoon" Short up to bat, Spoon hit something between a hanging fly ball and a sinking, slicing liner that pulled Gantz all the way over to the foul line and necessitated his (Gantz's) graceful sliding backhand catch which kept extra bases from The Dealers and, more emotionally engaging, preserved Louie's no-hit bid for the first out of the sixth. I wish I had a .gif of it to watch over and over again, but instead I'm going to scroll down and watch Will falling in the batter's box a few more hundred times.
And since we're on the subject of Gantz, I just wanted to mention that I tried in vain many times to take a picture of the deep and ugly contusion on my back caused by the foul ball off his bat while I was nobly coaching third base, but the pictures are all too blurry and/or explicit to share on this family-friendly website.
DRIVE OF THE GAME: After being somewhat humiliated (ed.: That's assumed on my part. I should mention here that at no point did Dave ever tell me he felt any humiliation on his part for this) by the backhanded and casual trickery employed by the Dealer's third basemen when he dropped Dave's liner and proceeded to turn it into a double play, Dave had a chance to make a statement next time he stepped up to the plate. With the bases loaded, Dave sat on a hanging breaking ball and smashed it into left for his first (I suppose) "genuine" double of the season, and our only extra base hit all game. A clean, 2-RBI knock after assuming Bobby's usual position in the clean-up spot, all the more satisfying after Dave had said privately that he was "getting used to striking out" the week before. We can all learn a lot from Dave. I'm not sure exactly what yet, but we all sure as hell can.
JONATHAN SANCHEZ MISGUIDED COCKINESS OF THE GAME: Sam Bull. Sorry bud:
STATS
NEXT GAME:
At home 13 July v. Brians, with Zack Farwell taking the start
BUT . . .
in the meantime there is the "All-Star Game" on the fourth at Raimondi in Oakland, which starts at 2 I think. Whoever wants to show up can, it's essentially a fun pick-up game with food and beer and a "Home Run Derby" to follow.
God Bless Manifest Destiny
No comments:
Post a Comment