Softball+06-24-2012

=Chalices Fall, 11-8=

A depleted Orange Methodist team came back twice from multi-run deficits to defeat the Community Church today, 11-8. The game was shortened to 6 innings because we exceeded the 90 minute time limit.

The Flaming Chalices held an early lead through 3-1/2 innings, but eventually sloppy fielding yielded too many runs, and the bats stopped producing, leading to an agonizingly close defeat. Our opponents are the first place team in the league, still undefeated, but the lineup they put up today was not their first string. They had several holes. The opportunity was there for us to exploit, but we were unable to do so. In terms of offense, we did about the same as in last week's winning effort, but with only 11 hits, 4 fewer than last week. Only 4 of our runs were earned, the others came as a result of the Methodists' 6 errors.

Of our 11 hits, 6 of them came in the first inning, when we scored 5 runs. A Nick Bailey single, Matt Nelson triple and groundout by 3B Pete Siragusa produced 2 runs. Glenn Mehrbach and newcomer Gabe Covington also singled, and were driven in by Mark Bruhn's 2-run double, and then Gabe scored on Megan Carlson's infield hit to third base. In the 2nd inning, Margaret Cox and I reached on errors, then scored on a single by Nick and fielder's choice by Mark Smith. After 2 innings, we held a slim 1-run lead. In the top of the 3rd, our first 2 hitters -- Glenn and Gabe -- got base hits, but the next 3 hitters were all retired, so no runs. 4th inning saw only one hit, by Sara McCaw. In the 5th, Mark Smith was able to cruise all the way to 3rd base when the shortstop threw in the dirt to 1st base and ball rolled all the way out to the fence down the right field line. Matt followed with monster smash to deep right center, similar to his home run blast of last week. The difference this week is that the outfielder retrieved the ball quickly, made a strong throw to the infield, and then a strong relay to the plate was caught by the pitcher just up the 3rd base line from home. The pitcher was on the infield side of the line, and lunged across the base line to try and tag Matt. Matt made a valiant attempt to leap over the tag, while going full speed, and just got nipped on the foot by the tag, before he came crashing down on the plate, and tumbled over, absorbing several scrapes on different parts of his body. It was a heroic effort to score and a play worthy of a SportsCenter highlights show. Matt's 2nd triple of the game proved to be our last hit. We got two more baserunners on errors, but that was it - no more runs scored.

Seven players scored all of our 8 runs, with Mark Smith scoring twice, and Matt, Pete, Glenn, Gabe, Margaret and me scoring once each. Four players had 2 hits: Matt with 2 triples, Nick, Glenn and Gabe with 2 singles each. RBI leaders were Matt and Mark Bruhn, with 2 each.

Meanwhile, on defense, we committed 5 errors today, similar to last week. But this week's errors seemed to cause more damage, as they came in bunches and in the 2 innings when Orange scored 4 runs. We also made more mental errors this week, like not getting the lead runner, not covering bases, not backing up, not being in position for cutoff. Most of these types of errors are due to not thinking ahead of what you are going to do with the ball when it comes to you, and not communicating with each other. Despite the errors, we also made some plays when things looked very dire. In the bottom of the first, we had given up 4 runs, and the bases were loaded with no outs. Yet, Orange did not score the 5th run, thanks to 2 forceouts at home. As a team we recorded 11 assists in just 6 innings, which is a pretty good number. P Jeff Nelson threw out 5 batters, SS Gabe Covington threw out 3. Our outfield only caught 2 fly balls. The Orange hitters had a knack for either hitting line drives or bloopers just out of reach reach of both infielders and outfielders. If I had it to do over again, I would play some of their hitters much shallower in the outfield to take away some of their cheap hits.