What's Cooking? The All-Star Game!

The annual Center City Softball League All-Star Game and Cookout and Ritual Bad Dating Decision Jubilee will commence on Tuesday, Aug. 7 at approximately 6 p.m. on the historic grounds of Edgeley 8.
You can bring some beer if you like or snacks, but General Manager Chris Brennan has instructed that the team cooler be filled with the priciest brews I can find, so we'll have that going for us. The league provides the grill stuff like burgers and hot dogs. Brennan is considering chateaubriand for us, but, well, we do that all the time.
There will also be a softball game during which no one will keep score and the rules for entry and exit are somewhat looser than during the season. It will be the Dairy Division teams versus the Edgeley Division teams, so we at the Pen & Pencil Club are teaming with South Philly Tap Room, Bishop's Collar, Fleisher Art Memorial and Old City, against the team culled from Catahoula Refugees, Art Museum, the Zoo, Franklin Institute and Please Touch Museum.

Our official representatives are Brian Donlen, Mark Nevins, Steve Lynch and Sheila Ballen. The Management will captain the Edgeley team, even though the honor usually falls to the Division champion. The Collar asked me to take the job, because it is such an honor and because it is such a pain in the ass to try to get 20 people into a softball game. But it's another chance to hang the clipboard on the S-hook and you know how much pleasure that gives me.

As is the custom, don't feel left out. If you show up -- even if you show up wearing only flip-flops as McElhatton no doubt will -- and feel like playing, you'll get in there. The only thing better than working 20 players into a game is working 30 players in. Fortunately, we usually only recognize the boundary of total darkness, not the boundary of seven innings.
Still working on my deep thoughts for the season wrap-up. Catahoula swept the Collar to win the championship. That team -- the old Franklin roster -- has now won six of the last seven CCSL titles. Kinda greedy, if you ask me.

The Pen & Pencil turnout at the 2011 All-Star Game, except for Danny who refused to get into the
picture. Let's have an even better showing this time. (Yeah, that's Hickey back there.) 

Sunset

Sorry for the delay in getting our playoff post on the board, but I have been busy learning about standby generators, water pumps and digital thermostats. I have learned much, especially that I missed the day in journalism school when they taught thermostat installation. With any luck, everything will be back to normal when Bonnie gets back, but mum’s the word until then, OK?

I intend to do the annual season wrap-up and team awards post sometime this week, but won’t attempt that in this wrap-up. For one thing, I want to see who wins the championship and want to offer some constructive suggestions for the entire CCSL going forward. I’m sure everyone will appreciate that.

Anyway, back to our final game of the year. The Pen & Pencil Club softball team made the Center City Softball League playoffs for the first time in three years. We’ll get into the new and improved and somewhat more lax standards of our postseason at another time, but, hey, it beat a sharp stick in the eye.

Truth be told, under the old standards – top four teams advance – we would have made the playoffs this season as well, but it was kind of a weird year, so it felt kind of… well, weird.

Starting with the end, we lost to our long-time friends/foes at Bishop’s Collar by a score of 14-6. It was a 3-3 game after three innings, and just 5-3 entering the bottom of the fifth. It was a game. We scrapped and played as well as possible despite a thin squad for the evening and it was a remarkable effort against a solid, well-stocked team that advanced to the league championship round.

As has been our issue a few times, we didn’t hit well enough. Six runs doesn’t win very often. We had just 12 hits and we couldn’t sustain any innings. Oh, fucking well.

We didn't get to this base often enough, or the next one.

For the evening, Steve Lynch had three hits, and two hits each for Russ Krause, Brian Donlen and Keith Craig. That’s nine of our 12 hits, so the other seven spots in the order were struggling, including the Management. Collar put together one big inning and that was the ballgame. They had nine players with at least two hits. We had four. The top five hitters in our batting order were 10-for-14. The next six were 2-for-17. Hope Nevins had a good time at his spa retreat or wherever he was.

Regardless, it was a great season and we should be proud of it. We were 8-5 in the regular season, had some terrific wins and drank an awful lot of beer (and some champagne!). There might have been some records set in that regard.

Stay tuned for the wrapup post. Remember that the All-Star Game is Tuesday, Aug. 6. Our official representatives will be announced later this week, but the tradition is that all the starters are drunk by the third inning, so anyone who shows up with a glove gets to play. There will be burgers on the grill, and I will bring the team cooler just because Brennan wants to spend some more money.

And the pregame speech sucked, too.

Got 'Em Right Where We Want 'Em

 Oh, yes. Our plan to get Bishop’s Collar over-confident leading up to next Monday’s opening-round playoff game worked perfectly on the verdant asphalt of Edgeley 8 on Tuesday. I don’t think they even suspect a thing.

Some might view our pre-game as lax, but just part of the grand design.



Having correctly determined that we want to be the visiting team in that all-important postseason tilt – I mean, look at how it worked for them! – we had ourselves a nice little scrimmage, took a narrow 24-4 loss, and now we are nestled comfortably in the bat-first role for Monday. Couldn’t have gone much better, really.

Some might say we went a little too far by not scoring a single run in the final six innings of the game, but that would be nitpicking from this point of view. We made our statement in the first inning that we could so score if we wanted to, and there was no need to pour it on after that.

"Nothing against Bob, but this crap just didn't happen when I was
managing the team. Makes you think, doesn't it."

Unless, of course, the truth is that we stunk it up and if we don’t play a lot better next week, our postseason appearance will be brief and painful. You decide which.

Anyway, let’s have some details. The Management failed to distinguish between the end of batting practice and the start of the game in the first inning and served up 10 runs on 11 hits before the Collar got tired of circling the bases.

The Prelate’s Neckbands hit well all night, particularly Mike Abt, who I think was 6-for-6, scored five runs, had two home runs and knocked in seven or eight. We’ll have to make sure he gets the same pitches next week, because you’d hate to mess with a guy on a roll.

It is never a good sign when one’s opponents have more hits than you have at-bats, but that was the case for the Red Inks in this one. BC was 37-for-58 and we were 15-for-36. Not good. All four of our runs and four of those hits were bunched in the first inning, so we had zero runs and 11 hits in the last six innings.

Those with long memories – or those who stuff socks in their memories to make it look that way – will recall that we led Fleisher Art Macrame 14-3 after four innings the week before, and sneaked away with a 15-14 win. That means in our last 10 innings, we have been outscored 35-to-5 and outhit 49-to-19. Well, that sucks, and it would be a wake-up call for us except we seem to keep mixing up the AM and PM part, which is really what always gets you.

Scariest book since Cujo.

Oh, one more stat to get you to bear down for next week: The Collar never scores this many runs. I mean, shit. In the Collar’s six previous games against CCSL playoff teams this season, they averaged 9 runs, with a previous high of 12 against the Fart Museum. They doubled that against us. The last time BC scored 20 or more runs against a playoff team was Week 10 of the 2009 season, 25-13 over the Farties, and you could look it up if any of you were demented enough to keep track of this stuff like I am. That’s three fucking years ago.

OK, calm again. Serenity now. Serenity now. Let’s see. Highlights? Lynch had three hits and, which is good for a guy with a busted kneecap. Brennan thinks he had three hits, too, although one was a fielder’s choice, but since it was a clean single into the outfield, he’s getting credit for it. George Miller had two hits and a swinging bunt that went approximately three inches in front of the plate. Nevins had two hits, as did Kerry O’Connor. Brian Donlen had one hit and was robbed of a home run on a great running catch by Adam on the last play of the game. And, man, we were coming back then.

Anyway, that one’s over and the next one is the one that counts. With all those hits and runs we’ve been hoarding, I don’t see what can go wrong.

What's that called when someone stands on one of those pillows? Ah, yes, a baserunner. Cool.

Kind of a Laugher

Sure, yuk it up. Check the email.

Yeah, after Yaz set down Fleisher Art Memorial for another scoreless inning and the Pen & Pencil cruised into the top of the fifth holding a 14-3 lead, there was pretty much nothing that could go wrong, was there?



Krause: He wants to swing this way.



Well, except everything, of course, and what could have been, perhaps should have been, an easier win turned into a nail-biter against the up-and-coming Sammys. It ended up as a 15-14 win for P&P and even that barely describes the onion skin that separated the two teams. (I love that line, even if they do keep taking it out of my Inquirer copy.)

Those of you with sharp memories will recall we beat Fleisher by a single run in extra innings earlier this season. So, a hit here and a catch there, and Fleisher gets by us twice and is 6-6 on the season…and so are we…and fighting to make the playoffs.

George indicates where he hit Tina the last time we saw her pitch.

As it is, we got the job done twice and that’s the difference between the P&P team this season and in other seasons. Now, we’ve got one more regular season game left, Tuesday against Bishop’s Collar, and it’s a playoff preview. If we win the game, we are home team in the first round of the postseason against the Collar. If not, we are visitors. It would be nice to show the Prelate’s Neckband that we mean business. So get your running in for the regular-season finale.

Now, back to the postgame show. We won the first four innings, 14-3, and lost the last three innings, 11-1. I’m not entirely sure how that happened, but it took some doing. In those opening innings, we had 16 hits and brought 33 batters to the plate. In the skid toward the end, we had four hits and batted 13.



Head down, full extension, weight shifting back to front.
 Three-run home run. Simple game.



One explanation is that we let down a little or something, but that would be disrespecting the Sammys, who kept playing and gutted their way back into the game. They stopped throwing the ball around, which hurt them early, and they started finding gaps with their hits. We made a couple of gaffes and hit our way out of innings and, well, it happened.

First the good. We batted around, plus three, in hanging a 10-spot on the board in the third inning. The frame was highlighted by an RBI double from Mark Nevins, a two-run triple by Jon Snyder, and a monstrous three-run home run into the bench area of Edgeley 3 by Brian Donlen. A player in the other field helpfully picked up the ball and flipped it to the Fleisher leftfielder who relayed it home, where it struck Donlen squarely in the back as he crossed the plate. Nice.



Key Moment. Ed has just told Krause, "Listen, kid. I know it's 14-8,
but we might need this run. If Nevins lines out to second base
here and they try to double Miller off first, you take off. You never
know, it might turn out to be the winning run." And here's the pitch.



Donlen had three hits and was one triple away from the cycle when the Management wisely pulled him from the game. Save it for the playoffs, big guy. George Miller also had three hits, none of which gave Tina another titectomy. Three hits for Chris Brennan, and two hits each for Russ Krause, Dan McElhatton, Keith Craig, Chris Yasiejko, and Dan Rubin. Ellen Kenney knocked home a run in that big third inning.

Ok, Krause’s day. He threw a guy out at third in the first inning by about 20 feet and Fleisher never tried to take another extra base. That helped. Krause also scored the winning run from third base – our only run in the final three innings -- on a line drive to second, which didn’t hurt, either.

The play of the game came in the bottom of the seventh with the tie run on second base and the winning run on first. Fleisher Drew, who was 3-for-4 at that point, drilled a shot down the left field line that appeared certain to land fairly and end the game, and not in a good way.

Krause ran down the ball and gloved it to his backhand side on the full run, causing Ron to scream in the Management’s ear as if we had just gotten a bagful of free hoagies. Ron, of course, had no idea how loud he screamed, so we will forgive that little outburst.

There you have it. Just another routine win on our road to glory. Let’s get after the Collar now and beat them twice. Just like the hoagies, we’re on a roll.

Win Some, Lose Some

Perspective is a bitch. Particularly in softball. You know why? Of course, you do. Because whenever you’re talking about perspective, that means you fucking lost.

Nobody ever searches for perspective after a win. You don’t need perspective when you win. The other guy does. And we don’t really care about his perspective and his excuses and his if-only this and if-only that. You lost, dude.

Jon Snyder, 4-for-4 in a rare night off from Saxotech, wondering
if it wasn't more fun in the office.

Which brings us to Monday night at Edgeley 8 versus the Tap Room. We lost, dude.

We lost 25-10 and if you want to say the game was a lot closer than the score, have yourself a big scoop of perspective with sprinkles on top. For the most part, you are right. That doesn’t change the final score, however, which is imprinted on our foreheads like the triple 6’s of Damian until we perish from this earth. (Perhaps I’m losing sight of that perspective thing.)

Let’s back up. This was a fun game. Or was supposed to be. Tap is going to get the top seed in the division. Bishop’s Collar and Pen & Pencil will have a one-game playoff to see which team plays Tap for the division championship. That was decided at the Cherry Street Tavern in February when the divisions were set up and Brennan was looking at Phyllis and forgetting the instructions he was given. That is understandable, depending on one’s perspective.

Anyway, so a fun game, which is how both sides should approach it, even if one side is undefeated and apparently so taken with that honor in the Center City Softball League that it supercedes all else. So, we’ll get to the point. When one of your runners goes out of the baseline to avoid a tag, even if the base coach is sort of undecided, or distracted because the runner in question is the size of a rampaging rhino, the right thing to do is to call the runner out.

That’s not even a tough call, but too tough for the Tap Room team apparently, which is really a bunch of nice guys after the game. During the game, they freeze in the sportsmanship moments. It doesn’t make them bad guys, but it sure makes them seem like bad guys. If it didn’t happen every time, it might be coincidence.

Hayes: Three-run HR
highlighted offense.

Anyway – yes, I’m using anyway again – the runner was Elmer Ogre and he invoked the “3-foot rule,” indicating that he could go three feet of his width outside the baseline to avoid a tag. Now, three feet of Elmer’s width would extend to Manayunk, but we choose not to mention that. And the fact is that the rulebook says a runner has three feet from the basepath, not from the extreme left or right edge of the runner himself. Elmer was out, at least by the spirit of the rule as he avoided Brian Donlen’s tag at first, but he was not out according to the Tap Room and the inning was extended for four runs.

OK, time for perspective. If Ogre had been called out, the Tap would have still scored four runs in that inning, and, combined with the eight runs it scored in the seventh, would have won 21-10. Gee, I feel a lot better.

The fact is that the better team won the game and that the Pen & Pencil, after holding a 10-4 lead after four innings, stopped scoring runs entirely. Never a good idea. Perhaps the worst idea of the night came from the Management, who decided that Yaz, having given up five runs in the fifth should be pulled for relief. Yaz gave up nine runs total in five innings, while the Management gave up double ochos in his two innings. Yikes.

What beat us, aside from the stray dropped fly or errant throw to first, was a lack of timely hitting. We left 12 runners on base, including eight in scoring position. In the fifth inning, down by just a run, we loaded the bases with nobody out and didn’t score a run. That was a killer for us.



Mike Galan: Tough luck on two hard line drives
to the right side of the infield.



OK, we did have some highlights. Jon Snyder sneaked out of work and was 4-for-4. Brian Donlen, Dan McElhatton, Chris Yasiejko and Kerry O’Connor had three hits each. Two hits for George Miller and Mark Nevins. Marcus Hayes had a three-run home run.

Good stuff, but not enough to win this evening. Maybe next time. And with one win in the playoffs we get another shot at the Tap Room. After that game, let’s leave them searching for perspective. You know what perspective means, right? You lost, dude.

Special thanks to Sheila Ballen and Kathy Matheson for making sure we were street legal, as Ron used to say. Kathy had a big hit in our five-run second inning and Sheila hit three line drives through the middle only to have each speared by pitcher Mark Bruno.

Extra special thanks to Chip Proctor and Dawn Proctor, who came out as spectators. Chip, Bruno, Al Heinle, Mark Nevins and the Management play on Sundays in another league. Chip and Dawn think our league is cool, Monday’s result notwithstanding.

And special, special thanks to Keith Craig and his kids, Keegan(sp?) and Elle, for the Pen & Pencil face-painting support, and particularly to Elle who, after the game, when told that we’d win for her the next time, responded, “We lost?”

That, folks, is perspective.



George Miller didn't take any pictures worth a damn, fouled off many pitches.



Pen & Pencil Club Clinches Playoff Berth!!!

Yes, it’s been a long wait, but the Pen & Pencil Club softball team is back in the Center City Softball League playoffs, which only took a 30-14 win over Old City/NCC on Tuesday evening and a semi-strange reshuffling of the entire CCSL universe this season.

Not that we’re complaining, and not that we don’t intend, once invited, to make ourselves lengthy guests in the postseason. We’re in and we’re going to stick around.

Well, 30 runs. The Management is in its sixth season and this represents a record during its (his) tenure for offensive production. Those who have followed us closely are not surprised by that, but we also put up that number in five innings, going scoreless in the sixth and seventh innings, which is kind of remarkable.

Let’s reflect a moment on making the playoffs, which touched off a wild celebration and led to the popping of champagne corks – oh, all right, cork, singular, and it was fucking sparkling wine and not real champagne, but fucking sparkling something or other.

We have clinched at least third place in our division, whatever its name is, and are probably headed toward a first-round showdown with our old friends/foes from the Bishop’s Collar. That will be a great one, but that is down the July road and not to be played just yet.

The new divisional split of the CCSL worked against us this season – no surprise – but we should all feel good that we overcame the forces of evil and made the postseason despite having the cards stacked against us. Now we make them sorry for letting us hang around.

As for the clinching game, Old City was coming off a narrow (sorta) loss to the Collar the night before and was looking to set some records of its own. Well, we helped the expansion franchise set a new record for runs (14) and runs in a single inning (8), and on another night things might have gone differently.

We led 13-0 going into the bottom of the third before surrendering the above-cited 8-spot, which was a combination of good Old City hitting and some dodgy P&P fielding. That briefly made it a game, but only until we scored 12 in the top of the fourth and added five more in the fifth to lead 30-8.

At that juncture, the game had lasted at least two presidential administrations and we moved quickly toward a conclusion, lest sundown and gunfire from Diamond Street precede the final out.

Highlights? Well, we got four hits from Kerry O’Connor and Mike Galan, and four more from Steve Lynch, including two home runs. Three hits for Russ Krause, George Miller, Dan McElhatton and Brian Donlen, including a pair of bomb triples. Among the ladies, Sheila Ballen and Kathy Matheson had two hits each, as did Liz Gabor. At least, I think so. The book is not usually this crowded with hits.  And we hit it a lot, scoring 19 runs combined in the third and fourth innings. Let’s keep doing that in games to come.

So, we’re in, and we are in with three regular season games left to play. Let’s have some fun with those and get ready for the big games to come. This wasn’t our last taste of champagne. Hopefully, Leroy won't slobber on the next bottle.

A Black Eye For The Whole Team

Well, not really. Our 11-3 loss to the Catahoula Orcs wasn’t that bad, but it did provide an excuse for the headline and for the photo of our own Lizzy Gabor, who underwent an Uglyectomy less than an hour after the game. She was playing soccer at the time, which is totally unrelated to our Center City Softball League, but, hey, it was the best art I had.

(Liz promises, by the way, that she will not miss any of our games because of the facial repositioning. Or, at least, she won’t be any later than usual or forget any additional equipment.)

On to the game!

Catahoula, for those unveterans among you, used to be the playing portion of the Franklin Institute roster. In the most recent offseason, the non-playing portion of the Franklin roster demanded that, in the future, they, well, you know, play occasionally. Since the non-playing portion was also the only portion that had any connection to the Franklin Institute, they won – and haven’t won since.

That’s the way the Catalites tell it, anyway. The truth is that Franklin, after five straight championships, lost in the World Series to the Tap Room last year. And because of that, the whole world had to blow up! And so it did, which led to an unsafe cooling of the earth’s core and the fucking divisional setup in the CCSL, which blows. Somehow, we added two more teams and play fewer games. Go figure that one.

Anyway, the Catahummus still can’t beat the Tap Room, which would be a lot funnier if Little Al & The Imperials were the least bit likeable. Such is not the case. Also anyway, we still can’t beat the Real Franklin/Catamongas, or at least we couldn’t on Monday at lovely Edgeley 8.

It was an interesting enough game. They scored three in the top of the first and then hung around to see if they needed to score more. It was still a 4-1 game in the top of the fifth when the Orcs added three more and, after we scored two in the sixth, four more for good measure in the top of the seventh. The top three batters in their lineup – Matty, Nick and Ryan – scored eight of their 11 runs, which is pretty predictable. It was a surgical win, for the most part.

True highlight was Russ Krause nailing a runner at the plate with a great throw, and also a great tag by Chris Yasiejko. In the field, we did fine, and a hardy welcome back to Brian Donlen, who was also welcomed back by Edgeley 8, which tried repeatedly to put a ball in his throat.

Offensively, we just didn’t hit at all. Score three and you lose, no matter who you play. Nevins had three of our 10 hits. No one else had more than one. We brought just 32 batters to the plate in a seven-inning slow-pitch softball game, which is hard to do.

It could have been a little better. We left the bases loaded in the third, but put just six runners in scoring position all day and got three of them home. Oh, well. Wasn’t our night. Wasn’t Lizzy’s, either, apparently.