Thursday Night Fever!
This week’s blog is brought to you from the player perspective.
So first and foremost – a big shout-out to first time mom’s Colleen Bentley and Cheryl Kwiatokowski. Holla! They truly made the evening a disco inferno…from the beads in the entrance of the dugout - to some stellar cherry/lemon vodka jello shots – to disco balls for everyone – and homemade chocolate ‘Disco Discs’(yum – thanks Mama Bentley), all we were missing was John Travolta (circa ’78) and that really cool light up dance floor.
Additional shout-out to ‘Mom Peden’ for always being on time with water and Gatorade – we’d evaporate out there on the field without it!!
While the team moms made a proud showing with disco cd’s and flowered pants – the Nuts-3 were ready to face off with the Village Idiots – a team who has truly earned their name. Case in point…. The Idiots are on the field for some pre-game pitcher warm up when someone decides he should stand in the batter’s box, take a half-ass swing and foul tip the ball right into the catchers nose. This is the first time I’ve seen a pre-game injury that involved blood. A LOT of blood.
Aparently it wasn’t as bad as it looked and the Idiots take the field – bloodied catcher and all, with the Nuts-3 first up to bat. An uneventful inning ensued and no one from either team scored – 0-0 to start the 2nd.
But since this is from the player perspective – we don’t need the play by play of usual blogs – lets skip right to the highlights – in no particular order.
Gibby managed two great grabs from left field – though they both were much closer to center field – who knew that guy could cover so much ground, plus he then managed to gun down a guy at third making sure to put plenty of arc on the throw so that the ball arrived just in time for a bang bang play (no sense in getting it there early and killing the excitement) – add to that his solid home run to right field – and Gibby might be MVP.
Or will it be Reaton – who managed to play first base in an infield that likes to challenge their first baseman. I’d say 1 in 5 throws were in the regular first baseman’s range – but Robert let only one ball past him – because well, he’s not 6’10” and isn’t made of elastic. I bet he’s got some softball shaped bruises on his chest and legs today!
Now a big shout-out to the women of Nuts-3 – each and every girl got on base with a legit base hit. Some of particular note were Jeanine’s line drive over the 3rd baseman’s head – followed by a celebratory run/dance to first base which I’m sure made Dawn proud. Amy got up 4 times – got on 4 times – 4+4=8 and that’s why we call her “The Ocho.” Julie had multiple solid hits out of the infield, and I think I heard her daughter cheering/screaming for her – or maybe it was because of her very graceful face plant; Vicki and Dawn were both on base more than once each!! Now that’s one for the Nuts record books.
I’d also like to note that once Amy learns a base running skill she does not forget it. A few weeks ago she learned that a runner cannot “over-run” 2nd or 3rd. So When she rounded 2nd and was on her way to third – she hooked her foot on the inside of the bag and slowed down and stayed on – she was not about to be tagged out.
Brian “B-Lee-Ve” Lee while not always on target with the throws (which didn’t matter last night) was still impressive at shortstop. The last play of the game was a body-sacrificing highlight as Brian put everything he had in front of the ball, taking a bad hop off his glove stopping it with his chest, retrieving it from the ground and making the only clean throw to Eaton of the game to make the last out and stop the misery of the other team. This is why we continue to B-Lee-Ve.
Now lets get to Mike “McLeaner” it was an up and down night for this seasoned pitcher – it went a little something like this…. McLean pitches to one of the better hitting girls on the opposing team, gets her to hit a slow grounder to the pitchers mound and then proceeds to do what appeared to be a later day version of the Hustle with the ball until he was finally able to gain control of it only to make one of the many less-than-sterling throws to Robert "the vacuum" Eaton who with a diving effort kept the throw from going far into right field.
McLean followed up this lead glove fielding performance with a beautiful whiffing strike out at the plate. That is, McLean struck out. How embarrassing. But the Cleaner is coachable and DD did just that – advising his pitcher to walk a couple of the boy idiots who already had a strike called – because as we all know in this league – it’s easier to make any defensive play against a girl batter – it just is…. this strategy proved very useful when the Nuts-3 were getting impatient, hadn’t had enough jello shots, and felt like getting this game over with.
Rick “Guns” Fletcher was sporting a very flashy muscle shirt – but he swears he’s not on the juice.
Double-D had a very quiet 4 runs batted in and a couple runs scored while J-Dawg must have had a solid game because we can’t remember how all the other runs were knocked in, so he gets the credit.
Final score 11-4 Nuts win! Nuts-3 are now 3 and 3 and will take that lucky number into next week against Club Fed.
So the Nuts-2 have been playing well the last few weeks, feeling good about their all around play for the most part and were looking for win #2. Nuts bat first and Hammered & Screwed take the field – after two quick outs (why dwell on the negative) Duke gets up – kills a homer to right field and scores the one run of the inning.
Nuts take the field…no one remembers the details but H&S only scored one – tie ball game.
Not sure why only the first inning is ever clear in our minds, but the rest of the highlights go like this: In no particular order.
Jose Baldonado (needs a nickname) hits his very first home run – and it was a legit, solid, way past the outfielder home run! No errors were necessary – I can’t wait to see what he does when he buys that bat he keeps talking about – bring on the ‘White Steel’
Duke – lets just say it, the guy’s a vacuum – agile for a guy wearing a XXL – and freakin strong at the plate. Here’s some of his highlights…So he cheats to the middle just a bit at just the right time and narrowly throws out one of the H&S guys! Not a girl – a guy – this hardly ever happens…the guy hammered it and we screwed him. It happened again later in the game…same play…Kara doubted Dukes agility for a split second, didn’t think he’d make the grab…and couldn’t find the plate in time – the guy barely beat out Kara finally finding the base. This more than wipes out the two double plays that could have been because their base runner was…lets face it – in the way (and that one time Duke never had the ball – but the motion looked good). Plus Duke (still needs a nickname) hit two home runs – both solo, but powerful – one nearly hitting the ever-evasive top of the trees – which would count the same as hitting it over the fence in a regular park. He would have hit three if they’d pitched to him.
Now lets talk about the outfield. Steve in Left, Dianna and Rebecca sharing Centerfield and Rover duties, and Jose covering Right. H&S decided they needed to hit center since that’s where the girls were – but these girls weren’t havin it – nothing got by them – only clean stops and throws back into their cut-off – text book ladies – lets see it again next week! Jose and Steve probably ran a mile covering ground in the OF and it caught up to them when a ball is hit right to Dianna – Steve is racing over to help – but scared Dianna a bit – Steve pulls up to get out of the way falls down, Dianna falls the other way, Jose is over to pick it up – but where’d he go – he’s down too and Rebecca is somewhere in what we will forever refer to as a “The Pile-O-Nuts” So H&S scored a couple on that play – big whoop.
Sin-D was playing 2nd base for the first time, and it was an amazing debut – she stopped the first grounder hit to her – picked it up cleanly and made the out at 1st! She covered the bag nicely – stayed out of Dukes way, and then showed up at the plate too. Cindy hit one of the best female hits of the season – a super clean line drive over 2nd base for an RBI single. And that was after her single that hopped over the 2nd baseman’s head.
Alex “Marquez” Porter – was finally channeling Marquez at the plate, like we’d hoped he would all season. His weird batting challenges of games past no longer troubled him, and he hit a couple of singles and wait for it…wait for it…a defensively assisted home run. It was basically a strong single – with a number of bobbles and bad throws – and what do we call that in Nuts world? A home run. Plus the AP to KP connection was back for at least 3 outs – maybe more, who’s counting. My money is on AP taking out a base runner one day with one of his carefully placed throws right at the runner going to first.
Jorge showed us what he’s got at 3rd – made the heads up play to stop the grounder and rather than throw to first – held the runner at 2nd. The runner did not anticipate this and took too big a lead – Jorge throws to Duke – back peddles to cover 3rd and we’ve started our first run-down of the season. But it was short-lived cuz Duke tagged the guy out – nice try dude – but you’re screwed.
Eustacio was also solid at 3rd picking up a couple ground balls and making the easy out at 1st. There’s nothing we couldn’t handle. I think Eustacio’s due for a home run – check back next week for that update.
Favorite play of the game…a girl hits a weird foul ball – Criselle goes for it – and with all her momentum – rolls the ball, lawn bowling style to Kara at 1st. If it hadn’t been foul – it would have totally been an out – plus her hair stayed looking great the whole time.
So first and foremost – a big shout-out to first time mom’s Colleen Bentley and Cheryl Kwiatokowski. Holla! They truly made the evening a disco inferno…from the beads in the entrance of the dugout - to some stellar cherry/lemon vodka jello shots – to disco balls for everyone – and homemade chocolate ‘Disco Discs’(yum – thanks Mama Bentley), all we were missing was John Travolta (circa ’78) and that really cool light up dance floor.
Additional shout-out to ‘Mom Peden’ for always being on time with water and Gatorade – we’d evaporate out there on the field without it!!
While the team moms made a proud showing with disco cd’s and flowered pants – the Nuts-3 were ready to face off with the Village Idiots – a team who has truly earned their name. Case in point…. The Idiots are on the field for some pre-game pitcher warm up when someone decides he should stand in the batter’s box, take a half-ass swing and foul tip the ball right into the catchers nose. This is the first time I’ve seen a pre-game injury that involved blood. A LOT of blood.
Aparently it wasn’t as bad as it looked and the Idiots take the field – bloodied catcher and all, with the Nuts-3 first up to bat. An uneventful inning ensued and no one from either team scored – 0-0 to start the 2nd.
But since this is from the player perspective – we don’t need the play by play of usual blogs – lets skip right to the highlights – in no particular order.
Gibby managed two great grabs from left field – though they both were much closer to center field – who knew that guy could cover so much ground, plus he then managed to gun down a guy at third making sure to put plenty of arc on the throw so that the ball arrived just in time for a bang bang play (no sense in getting it there early and killing the excitement) – add to that his solid home run to right field – and Gibby might be MVP.
Or will it be Reaton – who managed to play first base in an infield that likes to challenge their first baseman. I’d say 1 in 5 throws were in the regular first baseman’s range – but Robert let only one ball past him – because well, he’s not 6’10” and isn’t made of elastic. I bet he’s got some softball shaped bruises on his chest and legs today!
Now a big shout-out to the women of Nuts-3 – each and every girl got on base with a legit base hit. Some of particular note were Jeanine’s line drive over the 3rd baseman’s head – followed by a celebratory run/dance to first base which I’m sure made Dawn proud. Amy got up 4 times – got on 4 times – 4+4=8 and that’s why we call her “The Ocho.” Julie had multiple solid hits out of the infield, and I think I heard her daughter cheering/screaming for her – or maybe it was because of her very graceful face plant; Vicki and Dawn were both on base more than once each!! Now that’s one for the Nuts record books.
I’d also like to note that once Amy learns a base running skill she does not forget it. A few weeks ago she learned that a runner cannot “over-run” 2nd or 3rd. So When she rounded 2nd and was on her way to third – she hooked her foot on the inside of the bag and slowed down and stayed on – she was not about to be tagged out.
Brian “B-Lee-Ve” Lee while not always on target with the throws (which didn’t matter last night) was still impressive at shortstop. The last play of the game was a body-sacrificing highlight as Brian put everything he had in front of the ball, taking a bad hop off his glove stopping it with his chest, retrieving it from the ground and making the only clean throw to Eaton of the game to make the last out and stop the misery of the other team. This is why we continue to B-Lee-Ve.
Now lets get to Mike “McLeaner” it was an up and down night for this seasoned pitcher – it went a little something like this…. McLean pitches to one of the better hitting girls on the opposing team, gets her to hit a slow grounder to the pitchers mound and then proceeds to do what appeared to be a later day version of the Hustle with the ball until he was finally able to gain control of it only to make one of the many less-than-sterling throws to Robert "the vacuum" Eaton who with a diving effort kept the throw from going far into right field.
McLean followed up this lead glove fielding performance with a beautiful whiffing strike out at the plate. That is, McLean struck out. How embarrassing. But the Cleaner is coachable and DD did just that – advising his pitcher to walk a couple of the boy idiots who already had a strike called – because as we all know in this league – it’s easier to make any defensive play against a girl batter – it just is…. this strategy proved very useful when the Nuts-3 were getting impatient, hadn’t had enough jello shots, and felt like getting this game over with.
Rick “Guns” Fletcher was sporting a very flashy muscle shirt – but he swears he’s not on the juice.
Double-D had a very quiet 4 runs batted in and a couple runs scored while J-Dawg must have had a solid game because we can’t remember how all the other runs were knocked in, so he gets the credit.
Final score 11-4 Nuts win! Nuts-3 are now 3 and 3 and will take that lucky number into next week against Club Fed.
So the Nuts-2 have been playing well the last few weeks, feeling good about their all around play for the most part and were looking for win #2. Nuts bat first and Hammered & Screwed take the field – after two quick outs (why dwell on the negative) Duke gets up – kills a homer to right field and scores the one run of the inning.
Nuts take the field…no one remembers the details but H&S only scored one – tie ball game.
Not sure why only the first inning is ever clear in our minds, but the rest of the highlights go like this: In no particular order.
Jose Baldonado (needs a nickname) hits his very first home run – and it was a legit, solid, way past the outfielder home run! No errors were necessary – I can’t wait to see what he does when he buys that bat he keeps talking about – bring on the ‘White Steel’
Duke – lets just say it, the guy’s a vacuum – agile for a guy wearing a XXL – and freakin strong at the plate. Here’s some of his highlights…So he cheats to the middle just a bit at just the right time and narrowly throws out one of the H&S guys! Not a girl – a guy – this hardly ever happens…the guy hammered it and we screwed him. It happened again later in the game…same play…Kara doubted Dukes agility for a split second, didn’t think he’d make the grab…and couldn’t find the plate in time – the guy barely beat out Kara finally finding the base. This more than wipes out the two double plays that could have been because their base runner was…lets face it – in the way (and that one time Duke never had the ball – but the motion looked good). Plus Duke (still needs a nickname) hit two home runs – both solo, but powerful – one nearly hitting the ever-evasive top of the trees – which would count the same as hitting it over the fence in a regular park. He would have hit three if they’d pitched to him.
Now lets talk about the outfield. Steve in Left, Dianna and Rebecca sharing Centerfield and Rover duties, and Jose covering Right. H&S decided they needed to hit center since that’s where the girls were – but these girls weren’t havin it – nothing got by them – only clean stops and throws back into their cut-off – text book ladies – lets see it again next week! Jose and Steve probably ran a mile covering ground in the OF and it caught up to them when a ball is hit right to Dianna – Steve is racing over to help – but scared Dianna a bit – Steve pulls up to get out of the way falls down, Dianna falls the other way, Jose is over to pick it up – but where’d he go – he’s down too and Rebecca is somewhere in what we will forever refer to as a “The Pile-O-Nuts” So H&S scored a couple on that play – big whoop.
Sin-D was playing 2nd base for the first time, and it was an amazing debut – she stopped the first grounder hit to her – picked it up cleanly and made the out at 1st! She covered the bag nicely – stayed out of Dukes way, and then showed up at the plate too. Cindy hit one of the best female hits of the season – a super clean line drive over 2nd base for an RBI single. And that was after her single that hopped over the 2nd baseman’s head.
Alex “Marquez” Porter – was finally channeling Marquez at the plate, like we’d hoped he would all season. His weird batting challenges of games past no longer troubled him, and he hit a couple of singles and wait for it…wait for it…a defensively assisted home run. It was basically a strong single – with a number of bobbles and bad throws – and what do we call that in Nuts world? A home run. Plus the AP to KP connection was back for at least 3 outs – maybe more, who’s counting. My money is on AP taking out a base runner one day with one of his carefully placed throws right at the runner going to first.
Jorge showed us what he’s got at 3rd – made the heads up play to stop the grounder and rather than throw to first – held the runner at 2nd. The runner did not anticipate this and took too big a lead – Jorge throws to Duke – back peddles to cover 3rd and we’ve started our first run-down of the season. But it was short-lived cuz Duke tagged the guy out – nice try dude – but you’re screwed.
Eustacio was also solid at 3rd picking up a couple ground balls and making the easy out at 1st. There’s nothing we couldn’t handle. I think Eustacio’s due for a home run – check back next week for that update.
Favorite play of the game…a girl hits a weird foul ball – Criselle goes for it – and with all her momentum – rolls the ball, lawn bowling style to Kara at 1st. If it hadn’t been foul – it would have totally been an out – plus her hair stayed looking great the whole time.
posted by Kara at 4:13 PM
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