Yes, I'd say the denial lasted about five extremely acute seconds and shared a vaguely similar emotional pitch to. . .
. . . "Whaaaaaaaaaaa....???"
What? What was your reaction to that call at the plate? After the denial, yeah you're damn right I went to anger, and right soon after that into bargaining, wherein I tried to find some shred of understanding within myself that could account for such an unaccountable play.
I think most of you saw the depression stage at Rock Bar after the game. I'm on acceptance now, though! Ayooo!
*** This intro has been brought to you by The Five Stages of PCHL Grief ***
It's hard to even begin to think about summing up this one. It was like a hallucinatory dream where time is bent and frozen and fast-forwarded and the sky never really changed color much which only further provoked that eternal, ethereal anti-awareness covering us all like a giant coastal shroud.
What I don't want to do is point fingers. That's not helpful to anyone. And yes, that was a blown call at the plate on an extremely fine and totally unexpected relay that allowed them to tie the game (again) but . . . we can't control what the umpires call. As much as we'd like to, you know it doesn't work like that.
What we can control, is baserunning, untimely errors, and walks. As a group, we play as good if not better defense than anyone in the league, so I don't need to harp too much on the defense aspect. And errors are going to happen. They're mistakes; it happens. You cross your fingers and hope it's not at a critical moment, like when the winning run has been walked to third base by a pitcher who's thrown 500 pitches and 13 innings.
Walks, too, are, of course, unfortunate. But I don't expect all you guys to go out there and throw perfect games. It'd be nice to limit the free bases we give out but it would also be nice if we had had a bullpen we could have put full faith in on Sunday. Sometimes them's the breaks.
But absolutely, absolutely, what is quickly becoming our nasty little Achilles heel is our baserunning. And I have no idea how to fix it. It's like I see guys going when they shouldn't be, and holding when they should be going. On Sunday, three different guys made baserunning blunders in scoring position in a game where we eventually scored only four runs. That . . . is not a recipe for success. Most times we're gonna get away with that. On Sunday, we didn't.
I don't want to get in your heads, because I have a feeling that's exactly what's twisting you up to begin with. I'm wondering if maybe we need a smaller group of baserunning coaches out there. But that's not it, either, is it? When you're on the bases, it's just you your instincts.
We need to calibrate our instincts, here, guys.
(I guess at least you're getting on base.)
1-877-KRON-4-KIDZ PLAYER OF THE GAME: RMac. I wonder if he still has an arm. Dude just went full gamer out there and almost got us to squeak it out. There are complete game loses, and then there's RMac on Sunday. What a stud. We'll get you that next one, brother, I promise.
(Don't fuck up the next one)
DRIVE OF THE GAME: Uh, everything Rickey did. The book is in the equipment bag, which is in the shed, which is not at all in front of me. But Rickey killed it, going 4-6 with at least one double. Hot Flesh, y'all. Hot. Flesh.
Ugh, I need to take a shower now.
PLAY OF THE GAME: Who cares. The relay was actually the play on which the game hinged, so, sure, PotG right there. BC lining up and positioning himself perfectly to catch and throw the ball right to his cutoff man, who then fired a ROCKET home. Right to the glove. Two full, disgusting steps in front of the runner. Safe.
Infield quietly turned two more double plays, but in the aftermath of the loss, who gives a shit amirite??
***
This has been another installment of Andy's Corner.
***
Nah, not this time. If anything, it's me for writing this garbage. I got one thing on my mind at this point and it starts with Gerle and ends with Creek, so I'm starting my vacation early. Did I phone this one in? Maybe a little bit. The kind of mental effort it would take to reconstruct properly all 13 innings is just, no. And why would I when Andy does it so well in 12 words?
Look, we're still in first place (for now ((those Dealers are lurking though, jeez))). And thanks to the guys who agreed to do your umping duty. Represent us well. You just saw a live tutorial of what NOT to do!
***
NEXT GAME
Saturday 10 June
Berkeley News
@
29ERS
Big Rec
Noon
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