Softball+2016-08-21

=Chalices End Season on a Winning Note, 10-4=

The Community Church Flaming Chalices defeated a depleted Union Grove squad in a fellowship game that was shortened to 5 innings because 4 of the Union Grove players had to leave early. Union Grove started only 9 players, while the Chalices had 12 in the lineup. Despite the fact that they did not have a full team, UG kept CC at bay for 2-1/2 innings, playing us evenly to 1-1 tie. In the 1st inning, our top 3 hitters all went down, on easy popups and a fly out. In the 2nd inning, we did not muster much more offense. But thanks to 2 Union Grove errors, a base hit by Brian Moyer, and a sac fly by Quinton Adams, we recorded our first run. Union Grove came back and tied us in the top of the 3rd. In the bottom half, our offense finally got untracked. Jonah Paden and Jeff Nelson led off with base hits. One out later, I looped a short fly safely into right field, which scored Jeff. Nick Bailey followed with a swinging bunt base hit that loaded the bases. Matt Nelson came through with a solid hit into right center that cleared the bases after the UG outfield fumbled the ball. Matt reached 3rd on the play. Still with one out, Will Bara lofted a fly ball to deep left center, caught, but far enough to drive in Matt on the tag up. 5 runs total! We tacked on 2 more runs in the 4th on hits by Pete Siragusa and Brian Moyer, another UG error, and another sac fly, this time by Bruce Paden. Union Grove scored 3 in the top half of the 5th, to pull within 4 runs, thanks to two clutch 2-out hits by their #3 and #4 hitters. The Chalices took back those 2 runs in our half of the 5th. With one out, I beat out a ground ball to second base. Nick grounded a ball to the 3rd baseman, who threw to 2nd for the forceout, but nobody was covering 2nd base! The ball rolled into the outfield, so I motored to 3rd and Nick moved up to 2nd base. Matt hit a popup in the infield, which the 2nd baseman had to catch while backpedaling. I took off from 3rd after he caught and scored easily. Nick advanced to 3rd. Finally, Will lined a single into right field that scored Nick for our final run of the game, and the 2016 season. For the game, we scored 10 runs on only 11 hits, thanks to aggressive base running and several Union Grove errors. Team hit leaders were Brian, Jonah and Nils, with 2 hits apiece. Matt led the team in runs batted in, with 3. We scored 4 times on sacrifice fly balls, in just 5 innings. That has to be a single game team record. On defense, Nick tried his hand at pitching. He threw a deep arc pitch, which gave the UG batters some trouble. Nick also fielded a lot of ground balls, throwing out 6 batters during the game, more assists than the rest of the team combined. In the 5th inning, he started a 1-4-3 double play on a comebacker ground ball. Jonah Paden made the pivot at 2nd, and I made the stretch at first to just nab the batter and complete the DP.

The 2016 season is in the books, and the Community Church finished 5-4-1, making it our first winning season ever! The closest we ever came before this year, was 2005 when we finished 6-7.