Friday, January 6, 2017

1/1/2017 Cop Field





Something satisfying about playing the first game of the new year on the actual first day of the new year.  And it helps when it is a beautiful day.  A little on the chilly side, but nothing we couldn't handle.  We had 20 brave souls who braved the day after the revelry, and the field was in pretty good shape considering the rain.

Carter started for the visitors, and Satch for the homers, and Carter once again proved his dominance, with an fantastic curveball and enough change in speeds to keep us off balance.  I felt good, but I sure didn't seem to be doing the job in getting outs.  None the less, I think I struck out about 7 or 8 on my way to another crushing complete game loss.  i will save the suspense, and say it straight, our offense was bad and our defense turned worse as the game progressed.  Luckily I love this game.

That being said, we turned two double plays, and almost had a third!  So we couldn't have been all that bad.  You can't win a game without scoring some runs however, and we did little of that.  Carter, and his follow up Mitch kept us waving at pitches and grounding weakly to to all fields.

A few times, I thought I felt the momentum shift and was sure that we were going to turn the game around, but it just never materialized.  I will say my own production was paltry, every time I thought I was going to get good wood, I hit a weak-ass dribbler to third.  My teammates followed similar paths, with the exception of Greg, who was hitting sharp.

The end of the game the score was a roundabout 12-2.  I say that, because we had a couple of innings that we figured there were a passel of runs, and 12 seemed like a good number.

Highlights:

* Two double plays, not a bad way to open the season.

* Our team broke early, when we heaped more scorn on Nick Smith than deserved on a close play.  He got hot under the collar, and we all felt bad, and then were confused why we had focused so much on it, in the beginning of a game.

* I struck out the side, that was pretty nice

* John Carey may have had one Manhattan too many on NYE, he was taken out by the mysterious outfield sniper more than once

*In about the 7th inning, the wheels really fell off for our team, we were throwing balls all over the place, dropping grounders, the full monty

* Did manage a good play on a great bunt

* Carter hit at least two pop flies that got in the wind and turned into doubles

* Looking back at the blog, I have thrown more CG losses lately than ever before

* The other team hit some great pitches, I was confident right up until the point that the bat hit the ball

* I hit new Nick twice, once with a country hardball, which was unintentional.  I kept getting him into 0-2 counts and then overthrowing.  I think he started to get  frustrated about the third time...

* Dennis showed up after a long absence

* James struck out more than I have ever seen in the past

* We had John Carey running for Tony who is still rehabbing a bad knee.  After signs, waving, and jumping up and down didn't work, we started yelling "Hey John.  You should steal second, now!!!!"

* Adam once again proved himself the better man in a RBI situation

I would like to say see you this Sunday, but instead I will say run for higher ground, and keep the canoe handy!

S. Paige

No comments: