Softball+2017-08-19

=Chalices Eliminated from Tournament, 19-10=

St. Thomas More defeated Community Church on Saturday afternoon by a score of 19-10, thereby eliminating the Flaming Chalices from contention for the league tournament championship. Thankfully, we had a full team of 10 players, so Mark Smith did not have to risk further injury by playing for us so that we would not forfeit. We had one newcomer, Warren Hinson, Josh's father, who graciously came all the way from Apex to play for us.

The game was fairly close after 3 innings, STM leading 9-6, but the Catholics pulled away in the 2nd half of the game to win handily. They had three 5-run innings. The heart of their batting order hit the ball well, making it very difficult to keep them off the scoreboard. We recorded only 14 outs in 6 innings against them. Only 5 ground balls were successfully handled to make outs. Their batters ran fast, so that sometimes we made no error, but could not get the ball quickly enough to 1st base to throw them out. We were fortunate to catch at least 4 line drives in the infield that I can remember: 2 hard hit ones caught by Carolyn at 3B, and 2 by Lucien Masse at 2B. Lucien was involved in 4 put-outs, 2nd most in the infield after Will. We only caught 2 balls hit to the outfield, the rest of the time they hit balls that were uncatchable.

While we could not match St. Thomas' hitting prowess, we did pretty well ourselves, scoring 10 runs for only the 3rd time this season. The middle 5 of the batting order (Will, Mark B, Pete - returning from several weeks on the DL, Carolyn and Jean) produced 16 of our 18 team hits. Having the heart of the order hit so well is what gave us our runs. Will and Pete were 4-for-4, while Jean and Carolyn were 3-for-4. Will and Mark B scored 4 runs each. Pete and Jean each drove in 3 runs, to lead the team in that department. Of Will's 4 hits, 2 were doubles and one a triple. All 3 extra-base hits were hit very deep to the outfield, the longest hits by any player on either team that day.

Two-out RBIs (my favorite!): Carolyn and Jean, 1 each in the 1st inning. Pete and Jean, 1 each in the 5th innings (plus another 2-out hit by Carolyn to keep the inning alive). One more by Jean in the 7th. All 3 of Jean's RBIs came with 2 outs, so she clearly wins the clutch hitter of the game award.