HURTIN' UNITS HAUNTED BY BANSHEES COMEBACK WIN...

"Man that ball got outta here in a hurry, you know anything that travels that far oughta have a damn stewardess on it, don't you think?"- Crash Davis

 HURTIN' UNITS vs. THE BANSHEES

Game # 5- May 30, 2011


Hurtin' Units lose 16-15


Team Record -4-1-0


Keogh Park-Well we've gone from rain, rain and more rain to extreme heat and humidity. At 7:30pm on Monday evening the temperature was 25 degrees and with the humidity it felt like 32 degrees. Perhaps, it's time to pull the cover off the air conditioning unit, get ur going...


The heat didn't let up at all by game time and we also had all kinds of bugs buzzin' around us, mostly mosquitoes and at one time in the evening one flew down my throat, yuck!!

At game time we had 11 players, the only player missing was Paul E. We were the visiting team in this game.

The Tale of Two Games...

It was the best of games, it was the worst of games...It seemed, from the beginning, that this game was going to be a close affair. In the early innings the Hurtin' Units defense was spectacular, allowing zero runs over the first 3 innings, but our offense could only muster up 4 runs and the score after 3 innings of play was 4-0 for the Units...

In the top of the forth inning, the Hurtin' Units tacked on another run and in the bottom of the inning the Banshees finally got their first run of the game... The Banshee's enthuisasm, for finally getting on the scoreboard, was short lived and in the top of the fifth inning, the Unit's bats came alive and put up 7 more runs on the scoreboard...But, just when we thought this game was becoming a runaway, the Banshees countered with 5 runs in the bottom on the inning, 12-6 Units after 5 innings...

In the top of the sixth inning the Units scored 2 more runs and shut down the Banshees... In in the top of the seventh the Units scored 1 more run making the score 15-6 for the Hurtin' Units going into the bottom of the seventh...



 Some people would say the wheels fell off the Hurtin' Unit wagon, but I would disagree... The Banshees came out and hit the ball to almost every location that there were no Unit players or any chance of players getting to the ball. There were no blatant errors or mistakes by the Units, just some really good hitting by the Banshees...The Banshees brought 13 batters up in the inning and 10 of them came around to score and when the winning run came home, there were still 2 runners on base... Talk about an extordinary inning...Again, it wasn't errors, it was just good, ole fashion hit the ball where they ain't baseball... I remember standing on the field, when this rally had started to unfold, saying to myself “ just hit it to one of our players, we'll make the plays”, it just didn't happen...Make the final... 16-15 Banshees...

The Banshees are a scary team, not because their name implies such, but because they have a solid defense, speed on the bases (as Anicete displayed, as leadoff, in the bottom of the seventh inning), and a strong, hard hitting batting lineup. It was disappointing to lose this game, after building such a huge lead, most teams going into the bottom of the seventh inning with a 9 run lead would be quite confident they would come out with a win...

It is a far, far better thing to lose to the Banshees, captained by Frank and John, than to lose aganist some other teams in the league...We'll get them next time!



Boxscore:         1    2    3     4     5     6      7       Total

Hurtin' Units     1    1    2     1     7     2     1          15 

Banshees          0    0    0     1     5     0     10        16 


Highlights: ( there are always highlights in a game like this).

Despite losing this game, I thought we played quite well. Bob M. was like a human vacuum at short and in one inning it was the Bob and Mike Show with all 3 outs, all from short to first, nobody else was even needed on the field... There were 2 double plays on our side. (1) A ball hit to Bob M. at stop, relayed to Kevin at second for a force and to Myself at first to get the batter. (2) A hard hit line drive to Chris L. caught at third with the bases loaded, Chris touched the third base bag that the runner had left anticipating a hit... Our outfielders made some nice catches... Cal R., Cal S., and Chris L. all went 4 for 4 batting on the night...We scored at least 1 run in every inning of this game...

There are 2 other people I would like to mention before I sign off this page of the blog: First is Chris Nyers- if this name doesn't ring a bell, Chris was the umpire for this game. I mention Chris because he played for the Hurtin' Units last season, a great player and teammate, but because of ongoing back problems he decided not to play again this season and took a role as an umpire. This is Chris' first season umpiring, I have seen him in umpiring action 3 or 4 times and I think he is doing a great job. I think that umpires and referees have a difficult job and deserve the a ton of credit for devoting their time and energy to our league... Thanks Chris.

The second person, I would like to thank is Bev S., for scorekeeping our games...Bev has been our scorekeeper in most, if not all, of the Hurtin' Unit games and when she scorekeeps the scoresheet is professionally done, I mean it's perfect. I can look at the scoresheet and tell what every player did on the night...This is incredibly handy when I do this blog and it makes the stats guy's life easy also... Thanks Bev.

Our next game is June 1st at Keogh Park at 7:00pm.