It’s always awesome to see one of the (many) former O-fers in the spotlight, even if it’s a little spotlight.
Brian Dalka, he of the long yellow socks, was featured in a Spokesman story today about returning National Guard soldiers. Click through the link for the story and photo:
Recently back from Iraq, Guard members play for day at Silverwood
Closing out the 2011 summer league season, the O-fers successfully lost their 14th game in a 14-game league on Aug. 18, holding on to lose to Ellenbecker Eye Clinic 17-7 in five innings.
The 14 losses tied a league record held by several teams. Due to scheduling errors on the part of the league office in Rochester, however, the O-fers ended up playing 16 games during the 14-game league. Two games ended up being those yukky wins that we’ve mostly avoided for several years now.
Ellenbecker fell into our trap early, scoring three in the first, two in the second and five in the third, putting the O-fers into an awesome 10-0 hole after three innings. Unfortunately, Ellenbecker’s defense let us down in the fourth inning and allowed a run. They still won the inning 3-1, but things were looking a little shaky for the O-fers’ dreams with just a 12-run deficit to overcome.
Undeterred, Ellenbecker came back and scored four in the fifth inning, putting the boys in green back into the mercy-rule spotlight.
Then the wheels totally came off the wagon. The O-fers scored six runs in the fifth inning, nearly forcing the game to another inning. What were we thinking? Art Wright, Duane Miller and Gus Gustin both had two-rbi hits during the inning. The voices in my head tell me to cut them from the team for being so successful.
But the potential game-extending run died on third base. Not literally, although that would have been a fitting end to our triumphant season.
O-fers 14, Kootenai Title 8 (8-11-2011, Game 1)
Ellenbecker Eye 12, O-fers 8 (8-11-2011, Game 2)
First off, obviously there’s a few games missing from this guidebook. Nothing interesting happened, so maybe I’ll get back to them just in time for the 20th anniversary hardcover edition of O-fers.com.
Second, when I said that the O-fers had never been beaten by any team three times in a season, obviously that was a lie. The joke was that once a team beat us three times, they didn’t stop at just three and would play us over and over again. Motivational humor, har har.
The first game was close for four innings, but we pulled ahead in the fifth and broke it open on a two-run single by none other than Mike Bundy. We still didn’t hit particularly well, but Kootenai Title did allow us to reach base 10 times on errors (a season high).
We were leading 14-4 going into the bottom of the seventh, so Kootenai Title scored a few at the end but not enough to make us sweat.
Dewey Miller: I’m confident that we won’t blow a 10-run lead in one inning.
Coach: Sure, but do you think we could blow two five-run leads back to back?
DM: If you put it that way, umm …
This is the first game where I think we could say our new shortstop, Gus Gustin, has started to make the transition from coed to the much faster game of men’s softball. Rather than being content with taking balls of the shins, knees or gut, he has decided to start using his glove more. This is a good thing. Once he starts getting older, those balls ricocheting off his body will hurt a lot more.
Another player, Eric Hawk, made his O-fer debut in this game. I have more to say on this one in regards to his specific play style, but for now I’ll just point out that he’s a 1987 graduate of none other than Kellogg High School. Wildcat Pride, baby!
The second game didn’t really have any surprises, either, except that the O-fers held a 7-4 lead going into the bottom of the sixth inning. So that was one of the longer stretches we’ve had this year before the wheels fell off the wagon.
Dewey came within a double of hitting for the cycle, but even more surprisingly, got his home run through the in-the-park method – an increasingly rare feat for the rapidly aging O-fers.
Victory! The winless league streak comes to an end with a 9-7 conquest of Handy Mart.
In the O-fers Softball Rules under “Six Degrees of Separation,” it states that anytime the O-fers beat team B, which in turn has beaten team C, that makes the O-fers better than team C (regardless of how badly team C pounded the O-fers in head-to-head competition).
By that measure, since we beat Handy Mart, and Handy Mart beat Isagenix later that evening, we are a better team than Isagenix.
A > B > C, therefore A > C : This is simple math, really. Prove me wrong.
“Bad Boyz” 21, O-fers 17
Who knows what would have happened? We were leading 9-8, so I took myself out of the game and put in one of our former (and for-life) players who hadn’t played softball in three years.
The next inning, it was 18-9 and we were reeling. At that moment, it occurred to me that by being sentimental rather than cutthroat, I had probably cost my team the game.
It’s hard to say for sure, however, because we turned right back around and scored eight runs of our own. Going into the seventh, we were only down 18-17. Would they have scored those runs anyway? Would we have countered, or would we have fallen 19-9 instead of 21-17?
Shrug. I’ll take the blame if you want to give it to me.
Frank Morden and borrowed player Chad Burland (finally! Burley has an O-fer stat line!) were both 4-for-4, and Beasley was 3-for-4. Duane Miller had the big hit, a two-run line-drive homer in the top of the sixth that brought us to the 18-17 score mentioned above.
I’m not sure who gets Defensive Play of the Game. Guess it can go to Burley and Beas, who had a nice 6-4-3 double play.
It was a better game, much improved over past weeks’ performances. The defense was mostly sound, although we had to do our usual shuffling around. The offense scored 17, which *gulp* is the high for the season so it’s got that going for it. It still wasn’t an efficient 17, but we’ll take it.
I’ll have to keep this short, because I am ready to move to more important things. It was pretty clear that the balls they use in St. Regis are deader than they used to be. (This is true in Missoula as well, but it was especially noticeable in Regis.) We only allowed 39 runs in five games, which is less than eight per. We actually scored 48 runs, quite a bit more than we allowed, but only won two with the ratio because both of our wins were blowouts.
The team hit .476 for the tournament, with the gold, silver and bronze medals all going to pickup players. Roy Cook was 11-for-15 (.733), Steve Cates was 8-for-14 (.571) with the only homer for the O-fers, and Dave Bidwell was 9-for-16 (.563). Biddy’s performance was more in line with his ability than what he had done for us in May when we went to Moscow. Moscow was just another of those weird random things that happen when you string a lot of at-bats together.
The coach was 8-for-15 (.533), which started with a pair of 1-for-3s, so he got hotter after that. In a sign of the problems facing the O-fers, he reached base on those eight hits, batting seventh, and didn’t score a single run in five games.
Cates led with 9 runs batted in and Cook scored nine runs. Duane Miller had two triples.
The most gratifying moment was, of course, sending the Mullan boys home.
All right, it was out of 12 teams, but this year we will take it! We managed a pair of wins, one over the Mullan boys, still reeling from the retirement of Guy Ravsten two years ago.*
* Guy said he would retire if the O-fers beat Mullan, the team he was pitching for, in St. Regis. We won and Guy has mysteriously disappeared**. Coincidence? I think not!
** I suspect he hasn’t disappeared at all.
We had a good time, and I played five games at second base, only making one error. OK, two, because there should have been a 4-3 double play that turned into a 4-unassisted putout and a spiked throw to first base. Stupid ball! Stupid game!
I’ll put up a few more thoughts here in a day or two.
Heading to St. Regis to play softball for the Fourth of July weekend. This will be the 16th time I’ve played there, and the 13th time for the O-fers (out of 15 seasons). Damn. That’s a lot.
Isagenix 12, O-fers 1, 5 innings
What the *@#%$&? Where am I? I had this dream, this awful dream …
I dreamed that we were playing a game, except it wasn’t a game at all. It was hell, and we were being flayed by flaming whips, tormented by demons, and forced to perform all sorts of horrible acts.
Oh, yeah, and Beasley hit a solo homer, and somewhere in there Dewey made a sliding catch in foul territory.
And the beat goes on. The only question is whether it is the drum solo right before the song ends … or if there might be another verse.
The good news: We won the first inning, 3-2. Art! hit a triple (Offensive Play of the Game), Bryan hit a 2-run homer. Did I mention that we won the first inning.
Defensive PoG goes to Art! as well. He made some nice plays over at third base, including a couple good stops that turned into 5-3 double plays. OK, one of his double play throws was dropped by the first baseman, but what else is new, right?
It’s ugly right now. Really ugly.
