Two for Tuesday

I entered the park on the heels of Manny's magnificent grand slam. He's currently 3 away from Gehrig for all-time salamis. Castiglione and Trupiano kept repeating this fact. And it was done on no outs. I honestly wish I had seen it on TV, as I had to imagine the Manny swing, the Manny "hold onto the bat for a few seconds, while pointing in the general direction of eleven o'clock," concurrent with the Manny "eyes following the ball slowly" and finally the Manny "hand clapping, smile like a 5 year old on his birthday and jog the bases." David deserves a nod, too, for his 2 run homer as well as Mueller for his solo shot. It was at this point, that I turned the car off and grabbed my glove.

Because it was a late one, no one is in the mood for lollygagging. We all just wanted to play and go home. The mosquitoes were atrocious. Even after covering ourselves with bug spray, they wouldn't stop "loitering" about our persons. Just imagining what it would be like to sting if we didn't taste so repulsive. This field, we soon discovered was hard as a rock. This made stopping grounders difficult - they tend to gain momentum on this type of surface and if you don't grab them, singles could easily turn into a doubles.

Our opponents were the military green shirts. Or the muted olive shirts. For those of you in the graphics business, you could equate their shirt color with Pantone 385. They weren't bad, these greens. Their pitcher had a really deceiving delivery. It had the standard arc, but lost velocity quickly and 9 out of 10 ten times it bounced on the plate. We drew quite a few walks. When he got lucky, his pitch would just squeeze into the strike zone - but they appeared low from an angle. They were tough to hit because the way the pitch descended, it would naturally grab the inside part of your bat. We all have bruises on the outside part of our hands because of this.

One of their chicks had a stance that was a cross between Jeter (stirring upside down) and Sheffield (aggressive slapping in the air), plus she crouched down, I guess trying to intimidate our pitcher. Han, though, did not flinch. He pitched a ton of strikes last night, even though he couldn't see the plate very well (batter's shadow). We kept raking in the runs. We averaged about 5 per inning (we only played 6 because the lights were timed to go out at 11:00 - you do the math).

At one point, JB scorched a ball out to center, which was really only good for a long single. He got daring, though, and tried to go for 2nd. Actually, it was kind of funny because he managed to get all the way to 2nd just seconds too late and pointed his toe over to the bag, but then took it away like Lucy pulling the ball away from Charlie Brown. They got the ball in and he became trapped between 1st and 2nd. The gap narrowed and as luck would have it, the 1st baseman overthrew to the 2nd base (uh) woman and she fumbled and JB got back to 1st safely.

The other exciting play was brought to you by yours truly. I got a single on the smallest little baby hit you can imagine. I didn't intentionally do this, but the ball sort of brushed the bat and fell at my feet, but in fair territory So, I ran like a mofo. And I made it, but not before taking a huge fall. I couldn't stop myself and landed on my shoulder (big scrape) and thigh (bruise). I then did a summersault and landed on my head. Hey, softball isn't a delicate sport. JB got a bloody nose during his Suppan WS performance. (I have to learn how to slide.)

Final score: 26-10, GREEN (leafy green, that is)

So, long story short (way too late), we are 9-1 going into the playoffs. One of the other teams we were tied for 1st place with ended up coming out of the regular season undefeated (we were only tied with them because they were a game behind us). The other team is still undefeated, but has to play their last game this week. If they win, we'll be 3rd. But that's 3rd out of 30 something teams.

I'll give you all the specifics re: the the playoff schedule, if you are interested in coming and cheering us on. We need all the woo-hooing we can get!

Okay, back to the Sox. It looks like Curt will not be making his start on July 9th. Skipper says post All Star break is most likely. I'd rather have him take the time he needs.

Wells offered to be our closer. And here I thought that he wasn't a team guy. Between this and the joking and wise cracking on sports desk with my man Jim Rice a while ago, I have really come full circle on Boomer. He is becoming much more dimensional to me. I think they'll stick with Timlin for a while. He's done it before. He's eye of the tiger, all the way. I hope this isn't the end of the line for Keith, though. I'll miss all the fist pumping. Timlin does it, too, but not as good.