Softball+08-12-2012

=Holy Family Outslugs Community Church, 16-11=

The Flaming Chalices scored a season high 11 runs, on 14 hits, but it was not enough to overcome a high scoring Holy Family team, which prevailed 16-11. As is our pattern of late, we committed 2 errors in the first inning and gave up an early lead. Holy Family also started the game hitting very well, spraying line drives all over the field and building up a 8-0 lead by the middle of the 3rd. Meanwhile, the Chalices were hitting the ball well, but right at defenders. In the first 2 innings, we hit 4 line drives that were caught for outs. Finally in the 3rd, we broke through for 4 runs. Eugene and Calvin had 1-out singles. I hit a ground ball to the left side that should have been a force out, but a wild throw led to Eugene scoring and Calvin taking third. Margaret hit a shallow popup just over the pitcher's head, which dropped in front of second base. It was enough to score Calvin, but I was forced out at 2nd. Nick followed with a double to right field. Margaret stumbled on her way to 3rd and had to leave the game. She recovered later and was feeling OK by game end. I pinch-ran for her and scored when Sara hit a grounder to the shortstop, who threw the ball in the dirt, scoring both me and Nick. Matt grounded into a fielder's choice to end the inning. We had cut the lead by 4, but then Holy Family regained 3 of those runs in the next inning. We finally held them scoreless in the 5th when we retired their 2-3-4 hitters in order. Then, in the bottom of the 5th, we shaved 2 more runs off the lead. Steve McCaw hit a single through second base and 2 outs later advanced to 3rd on my line drive single to right field. Nick came through with another double, this time to center field, scoring Steve. Sara hit a grounder to 3rd base, who fielded the ball but threw wildly to first, scoring both Nick and me. The 6th inning saw both teams score the maximum 5 runs. In our half, the action was started by Matt Nelson, who singled to center. After a forceout at 2nd, Glenn singled to right, putting runners at 1st and 2nd. Pete grounded into a force out at 3rd, leaving us still with runners at 1st and 2nd, two outs, and no runs scored yet. Then, we got 4 straight 2-out hits from Jeff Nelson, Steve McCaw, Eugene and Calvin, to net our 5 runs. The last 2 hits were both doubles, each one knocking in 2 runs. In the top of the 7th, we faced the bottom of the Holy Family order and managed to retire them without giving up a run. We were poised to make a dramatic comeback in the bottom half of the inning, with the top of our order on deck. We got the lead off batter on base, but our next 3 batters all were retired, ending our wannabe rally, and the game. Our 14 team hits were the 2nd highest total in a game this season (we got 15 against AME). 9 of those hits came from the bottom half of the batting order. Several players had 2 hits each: Nick (both doubles), Steve, Eugene, Calvin, and me. Steve, Eugene and I each scored 2 runs; Eugene and Calvin each drove in 2 runs. Fielding-wise, we committed a fairly high number of errors: 5. Three of them were dropped balls, two were bad throws. Matt had an active game in LF, catching 5 balls and having to make several good throws to keep runners from advancing extra bases. Eugene made a good catch in RF on a high fly with the bases loaded. We also robbed Holy Family of a couple hits on line drives caught by infielders: Pete, Sara, Steve and I each caught infield line drives. We had 10 assists altogether. About half of them came on one play! Holy Family had runners on base when somebody hit a single to center. Nick played the ball into home where I was playing catcher. The runner on 3rd had taken a wide turn, and was way off the bag. I looked at him, but he made no particular effort to get back to 3rd, apparently thinking he would take his chances in a rundown. I ran him back a bit, then threw to Pete covering 3rd, then Pete ran him back to me, then threw to me, but the runner stopped in between us. I ran him back almost to 3rd, then threw to Jeff, and the runner stopped and came back towards home, so Jeff threw back to me, etc. etc. It was like the runner was waiting for one of us to make a bad throw or drop the ball. I threw back to Jeff one more time, then Jeff ran him down and tagged him before he could reach home. We threw the ball back and forth about 5 times without an error and finally caught the runner. Well done!