Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Loan Wolves @ G & T

This was the big one. The winner of last night's game at a stormy Regents Park was assured a place in Divison 5, the loser was looking at another season in Div6.

G & T had started their season slowly and initially looked to be one of the weakest teams in the division. However, they certainly got their act together and have been clocking up the wins in the middle and latter part of the season. In contrast the Wolves started well, had a bit of a wobble in the middle, but have picked it up again for the last few games.

The skies were blue as we started out. The first few innings were very tight. Neithe team conceding much, and runs were hard to come by. As the Wolves came up to field at the bottom of the third the score was 1-1. Then, as they say, down came the rain. With the wolves fielding into torrents of rain, G&T started to pile on the pressure. Two rain (or rather lightning) breaks saw the opposition go through their batting order in one innings and put 5 runs on the board. It was starting to look like weather was going to scupper our hopes of promotion once again. 1-6 to them.

However, Wolves are wet weather animals. We may have wobbled with the wet conditions, but we took advantage when it was our turn to bat, putting on an impressive 8 runs in one innings and taking the score to 9-6. The girls consistently got on base, and they guys moved them around and brought them home. Everyone was batting to their potential and things were suddenly looking a lot brighter. G & T still had a batting turn in hand, though, so it was important to shut them out. This is just what the wolves did and repeated for the next innings whilst adding another 3 to our tally at the top of 5.

It was pretty clear that the light was only going to give us 6 innings, and so the Wolves focused on adding as many runs as possible to set G&T a decent run chase. As the opposition came up to bat the score was 15-6. The wolves knew that they had to get three outs before conceding 10 runs to win. Playing the odds we went for easy outs at first, letting a couple of runners get around in the process. As the plate umpire declared 'Ball Game' the score was 15-8 to the Wolves! Divison 5 here we come!

Fair play to G&T they made us work for it, and they were a very sporting bunch. I hope they enjoyed it as much as we did.

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Inning-by-Inning

As requested last night, here is the match inning by inning, X-posted from my LJ:
1st Inning
Three runs to Tribold, none to us. Not a great start, but could have been worse.
2nd Inning
Tribold made one more, but their inning didn't last long. We went round the order, getting seven on the board.
3rd Inning
Four for Tribold, two of which were directly sue to a misfield from us. But we got five round, so our lead started to creep up.
4th Inning
Sharper fielding all round here, and each team only made one more.
5th Inning
A shut out in their inning, followed by a decent start to ours saw four runners go round before the game ended. Bad light stopped it after the fifth, which leaves us only one match to play.
That match, next Tuesday, will be against G&T. They have games in hand, but a win will put us in a pretty strong position.

Loan Wolves vs Tribold: Highs/Lows

Low: still can't explain what I thought I was doing when I messed up in the outfield. It cost us two runs which I had to earn back......

High: two home runs. Both looked catchable once I hit them, especially the second. That was a lead off home run, but I think the first brought two runners home.

Lesson learned: good, aggressive base running works, and not just for their captain!

Friday, August 01, 2008

Chevy Chasers 1 - 32 Loan Wolves

Last day of financial year at work, followed by leaving drinks for Simon and Thomas. I had to leave early and hotfoot it over to Hampstead for the softball, though, as I'd learned late in the afternoon that we had no male subs.
I arrived to find the game in progress. The Chasers had asked to postpone the game earlier, but had managed to cobble together a team of sorts - for which, fair play to them. They came and gave us a game when they must have realised the odds were against them with inexperienced players and missing their starting pitcher.
As it was, we played well and made some extra runs by intelligent base running. Pitching and fielding were strong, too. The Chevies did hit a consolation home run in their last inning, but soon after that the game was called by the "mercy rule" due to the lead we'd built up. first time we've been on the winning side of that rule, though we lost by it a fair few times when we were starting out.
It was a strong performance, but the nature of the win left a slightly flat feeling - for me, at least, there wasn't the buzz that we've taken away from our wins in close matches.
One sour note on the evening was that Kate was practising pitching before the match and had been hit by a ball smashed into her hand. She'd been taken to A&E, but returned to the pub after the match having been treated for a finger broken in two places. She was really brave about it, but once again our season features a hospitalised Wolf.

[X-posted to my LJ]