Thursday, July 05, 2007

Laminated!

After last week's rain-sodden match in which our score sheet became pretty soggy and smudged, we'd thought ahead. We had laminated score sheets, with permanent markers. As Richard said, we are the geekiest team in the league. And we proceeded to get laminated - in the sense of squashed flat, smothered, and put through a heated mangle.
It wasn't that we played badly. It wasn't our finest performance ever, but RB are leading the division and it shows. They just outclassed us in batting. And fielding. And pitching. and base running. Apart from these few areas, we were actually quite close to them in skill level.
I faced my first pitch right-handed, then stepped across to the other batter's box and shifted to my left hand. cue minor agitiation from the opposition; "he's a switch-hitter!". Sadly, your classic switch-hitter is as deadly batting left-handed as right. Whereas I'm just not that much worse with my left... I gave them an easy out at first. Next time up, I was on a full count and lost the head-game with their pitcher - "will he pitch a strike now, knowing that if I leave it I'm out? Or a ball, 'cos he thinks I'll swing at anything? But he knows I'd know that...". Struck out.
Some great moments from us - Julian struck out two of their people, and there was some great fielding - at one point Gareth heroically flung himself at a ball, risking life, limb and finger, rolling over and emerging with it as a catch.
We retired to the social club, where my Doctor Who earworm was cleared by hearing the Raiders women singing along to 'Jolene'. Bring back the Scissor Sisters...

[X posted from my LJ]

4 comments:

Kate said...

Great review Andy, but I have to say I disagree on one point. I don't think they outclassed us with the pitching. Julian was a machine, and whilst their pitcher may have had some fancy moves, I think we were equal if not better.

Andy said...

Fair point. I stand corrected.

Kevin Wilson said...

They were just an excellent, well drilled, professional team. No weaknesses anywhere. The girls hit the ball miles, the guys further, and they were tight in the field. So no disgrace in losing.

They only scored two home runs at best so it's not even like we pitched or fielded badly. They could just find the gaps and get people round. If we played like that against the teams around us, we'd probably be fine.

Vic said...

We were out played fair and square. They are a great team, good all rounders, and I would say one of the nicest teams that we've played this season.

We may have had some shoddy moments (we won't mention our batting!), but we also we had some moments of brillance (fab catches in the outfield and some great stops in LF holding them from home runs), and most of all I had fun!