Softball+08-05-2012

=Chalices Drop 6th Straight=

Community Church stayed close to St. Thomas More for 5 innings, but then 6 unanswered runs by the Catholics in the 6th and 7th sealed the Chalices' 6th straight loss, by a final score of 10-2. We started out giving up 2 runs on some sloppy fielding in the first inning. This seems to be our pattern, to make a bunch of errors in the first inning and fall behind early. As is also true to our pattern, we improve on defense after that and play fairly well the rest of the game. We kept it close until the 6th, when St. Thomas More exploded for 5 runs on very solid hitting. Our only runs came in the 4th, when 2B Sara McCaw reached 2nd base on a throwing error by the 3rd baseman. One out later, she scored on her father Steve's line drive single to right field. Steve took 2nd base on the throw home to try and catch Sara. CF Nick Bailey followed with a single to right, on which Steve scored when the throw to 3rd base got away from the 3rd baseman. That was it for our scoring. The only other inning when we had more than one hit was in the 6th, when P Spence Foscue and 1B Glenn Mehrbach led off the inning with back-to-back base hits. The next 3 batters all made outs, so we got nothing from that good start. As a team we only had 7 hits. No player had multiple hits. On defense, we only had 4 assists, largely due to good hitting by the opposition. They hit mostly balls in the air: a lot of line drives, fly balls and popups. SS/LF Matt Nelson led the team in putouts with 7, a couple of them difficult catches. Nick made 2 catches in the outfield, including a spectacular shoelaces grab of a sinking soft liner. He also fielded a line drive in short center and raced to 2nd base to beat the runner for a forceout. You can do some good things on the field when you have good speed. Other defensive highlights: first-timer C Matt Beasley caught a short popup in front of the plate, showing cat-like quickness to reach the ball and snag it. First-time LF Eugene made a couple of very nice plays on difficult catches.