GRUSOME NUMBER TWOSOME.

HURTIN' UNITS VS. THE GRUSOME DEVILS.

Game # 10- June 28, 2012 


Hurtin' Units win 19-17


Team Record 3-6-1

Keogh Park- We have only really played one game since the last time we took on the Devils. We did start a game last Monday evening only to have the lights not come on and the game got rescheduled against the Tap Masters. The game we played in between the Grusome Devils was against the Red Dogs, a game we almost came back in, but fell 2 runs short in the end. In our first game against the Grusome Devils we were beaten up by a score of 16-8.

Well, I hate to be the messenger of bad news; it's official our Co-Captain Mike O. received the results of his MRI and the news was that Mike has a torn miniscus in his knee and is finished for the season. This saddens me on many different levels, first the pain and suffering Mike has been going through and second is he will not be playing with us for the rest of the season. We all saw last  Monday evening a glimpse of what Mike brings to the team, we saw two solid hits against the Tap Masters, one to the fence and the other a home run (imagine what a healthy knee would do), we have missed Mike in the lineup this season and I think this has held us back, the post Mike era officially begins tonight.

The great news is that Mike is going to continue to co-captain. Mike will definitely be playing a roll on the Hurtin' Units as the season moves forward. We can put the boy to work doing other team related chores... i.e. scorekeeping, coaching bases, pouring Sambuca (more on this as the HTKP tournament approaches) and organizing a wing night, etc. etc...

With the news of Mike's season injury, we decided to inquire about waiting list players, there was one player on the list and he was assigned to the Hurtin' Units team... I would like introduce the newest Hurtin' Unit Mr. Mark Butler. 

The weather was warm and sunny for this game. The temperature was around 28 degrees and with the humidity it felt like 33. There was a breeze kicking up every once and a while, there was also a threat of a thunderstorm later in the evening. 

At game time we had a different looking lineup, Clayton, Al, Craig and Gord were all away. We called for a couple of subs and picked up Peter H. (Beer Bros) and Don S. (Dogcatchers). This was also the debut of new, new guy Mark Butler. At game time we had 10 players suited up, well 7 of them were suited up. I felt like this was the start of something, I'm not sure what, but something just felt different to me...Maybe it was Mike was no longer able to play, maybe it was because I changed the batting order and some player positions, maybe because I was feeling good about my pitching practise over the last week. Not sure what was different, it was just a feeling I had... We were the home team for this game.


Boxscore:           1      2      3      4      5     6      7        Total  

Hurtin' Units       7      7      0      0      5     X     X           19     

Grusome             1      7      0      0      3     6     X           17     

The boxscore really tells a good story of how this game played out. The Hurtin' Units got off to a solid start scoring two 7 run innings  and our defense was really tight most of the night. The Grusome Devils are a solid hitting team, I remember being out on the pitching mound and asking myself  "when are we going to see the bottom of the order?" it seemed like every batter was a solid slugger and they were missing Robin D., Keith D. and Gord T. We were missing some important pieces ourselves. The Hurtin' Units had three perfect evening's at the plate from Anicete Goncalves (4/4); Cameron Clark (4/4) and Dave Kidd (4/4).

I looked at the players stats at the end of this week and noticed that the Hurtin' Units have 3 players in the top 25, I'm not going to mention their names because it might jinx them. I was surprised to not see certain Hurtin' Unit players. We have a couple of guys that are usually in the 25 group, but they just haven't worked their way up there yet, I imagine they will be there before too long... I also looked for some Dislocated Joints players in the top 25 batters and there was not a single Joint player in the top 25 in batting...Amazing!

I also looked at the standings and I'm proud to say we are not in the bottom of the standings anymore, at least for this week... Now let's be fair to our team, we have still played the least amount of games in the league this season...Looking at the standings and counting the other team's games I noticed we have a one game in hand advantage over 5 teams, we have a 2 game advantage on 8 teams and we have a 3 game advantage over a single team...Again, amazing! This is our time to make up ground...

On Friday the president of the T.O.T league sent out a mid-season update and thought it was kinda funny because we have only played 10 games. If we were able to win a couple of these games in hand, we could quickly move up in the standings.  One more thing I noticed in  the standings page was the losses for the other teams. We (Hurtin' Units) currently have 6 losses on the season, there is 1 team with 8 losses, 3 teams with 7 losses and 6 teams (including the Units) with 6 losses on the season... Our games in hand definitely work in our favor if we can earn a win or two... We should be able to make-up one of our games in hand this upcoming week... We play two tough opponents this week in the Tap Masters and the Dislocated Joints. These will be a good challenge as we head in to the HTKP tournament next  weekend...