Cool...a little foggy, but absolutely perfect weather for Game 1. We play the Egg Yolks, a team from the Hall of Fame Division. We are in the All Star division. John, the Tournament Director, and great Man, likes hyperbole. We are TNB veterans, so we understand hyperbole.
We are all feeling the pre-game Buzz, I can tell, and I would imagine that Kenny G' and Ski are a little nervous. They are rookies, and Ski is our starting pitcher. I was in his shoes 2 years ago, and I was. Hell, I am!
We are the Visitors and "Mike" will take our first at Bat.
"Mike" will get drilled almost immediately and Ricky will hit the first pitch he sees to the fence in the left center power alley driving in "Mike". Amazing, we start off right where we left off last year. Bang, 1-0 Nor'easters. Deja Vu. I would like to put a couple of things out there right now. In case you didn't know, we, unexpectedly, won this tournament last year. We are not a stacked team, we just played perfectly last year. That does not often happen. We did not win this year. We didn't play perfectly (understatement) but had just as much fun (well, almost).
Little did we realize that the team we were run-ruling right now, ...would be playing the NE Thunder in the Finals on Sunday. And the Thunder ARE a stacked team. More on that as we go along in this narrative. The Thunder are all our friends, and they also happen to be some of the very best players from our Baseball Universe.
We scored only the single run in the first, but Ski pitched masterfully in the bottom of the inning. He mixed his Ski breaking pitches with fastballs and looked real good. In the top of the second, we basically sealed the deal, as Fluff, MonCap, Joltin', Nails, Hammer, Kenny G' and Duse collaborated for 3 more runs and a 4-0 lead. Ski struck out 2 in the bottom of the second, and breezed.
We continued to add to our lead and Ski went the distance, which happened to be only 5 innings. John changed the Mercy rule the next day, in part, because of the various mercy'ings by the Hall of Fame teams to the All Star Division teams. But we would have a peek at what would be out Achilles heel, as far as playing well anyway, in the third inning. We booted the ball a few times and gave up some very unearned runs. Without our Ace, Bullet, to bail us out, we could ill afford to play shaky 'D'. I think John realized that there were 4 pretty good to very good teams in the tournament, and put them in the same Division, so one of the regular, not stacked teams would play in the 'Finals'. Probably a good idea to keep peace in the Baseball International Family.
Anyway. we did win this game going away, 13-3, and as we headed to lunch at the Stadium and an afternoon shower at the Clubhouse, we knew we'd be facing Arch Rivals, the Harver Wallbangers, in the afternoon. This would NOT be a walkover.
To be continued...Click to return to Page 1
