I GOT OFF THE COUCH TO WATCH THIS SHIT?

Yeah, it wasn’t pretty, but look at it this way: No one got hurt, it could have been worse and the season has only one direction in which to go. (At least two of those three are true. We just don’t know which yet.)
The Red Inks of the Pen & Pencil Club opened the 20th season of the Center City Softball League with a 27-8 loss to the South Philly Tap Room, reigning league champions, on Monday night and, man, it was a stinker.
The Tap Room batted around in three of their six innings at the plate, which is probably three too many and, regardless of how we played, it is likely we weren’t going to match firepower with the Tappies on this particular night.
That said, however, we played less than efficient softball. Some dropped balls, some balls that fell just out of reach, some of this and some of that. It added up to 27 runs and quickly offset our temporary happiness about scoring five runs in the top of the first to take an early lead.
The scorebook offers few answers, and not just because Ron kept the first few innings before having to hustle off for Kahn Jr.’s bail hearing. It tells us, however, that the Tap blasted away and then decided, having moved us back, to drop bloops in front of the defense. This hardly seems fair, but nevertheless. I tried, briefly, to tally earned runs versus unearned runs, but that got depressing. If you really want to know, I think the final score would have been a 13-8 loss if we played perfectly, but it would still have been 0-1 in the standings. So, whatever. We got it out of the way.
On our side of the book, I see two hits for Marcus Hayes, Mark Nevins (2 run HR), Steve Lynch (HR) and Chris Yasiejko (3 run HR!). Otherwise, meh. We scored five in the first and three runs in the six innings afterward, bringing only 25 batters to the plate in those six innings. Not good enough – and six assists or putouts for Benson – so we didn’t even get it past the mound often enough.
Whatever. Now a word about Ogre’s foul ball. Oh, my fucking God.
In the fifth inning, Tap Room Elmer hit a ball that Google Earth says went only 300 feet. I have never doubted GE, but I think NASA was tracking this thing. It landed beyond first base on Edgeley 3, which is just silly. George Miller gets points for retrieving the ball without his bike. It would have been a prodigious shot even with a legal bat, but this was a force of nature and, don’t know about you, but I’m glad I was there to witness it.
Genug. We play a friendly on Saturday against Kerry’s gay friends and then resume the CCSL sked on Monday against an Old City/NCC team that we should have better luck against. Let’s have some fun.