WE MIGHT HAVE A PROBLEM, SKIP

Jon Snyder suggested the headline should be, “It’s Not The Heat; It’s The Humility,” and that would have been a good one, too, but we’ve had enough humility for one season already.

On a sloppy, muggy night at Edgeley 8, the Red Inks of the Pen & Pencil Club lost 6-5 in 10 innings to the Zoo. The loss broke an eight-game winning streak over the Wild Animals that stretched back to the 10^th game of the 2008 season. Last year, we swept the Zoo, but the wins were by one run and two runs, respectively, so maybe we had this one coming.

As has been noted here earlier, this is one wacky season in the Center City Softball League and there are some unpredictable results, because all the games are close…because the wooden bats have leveled things

Seriously, Courtney. We're usually a lot better than this.

out very nicely. The unintended consequence of all this leveling is that these games are gut-wrenchers, which makes it hard to get down more than seven or eight beers per game.

On the positive side, the Zoo game welcomed Courtney Sams to the fray and she didn’t even appear to be scared off by the outcome of the game, or the fact that we could only score a measly five runs in 10 innings. Hopefully, she won’t pretend to move to New Guinea or something to get away from us.

Onto the game. We played very good defense and led 3-1 going into the bottom of the sixth inning, but stumbled against the top of their lineup and allowed the two tying runs to score. It could have been worse, but Tommy Rowan snared a fly ball off the bat of team captain Chris Oberlin, the Management lucked into a running catch of a ball over his head and Brian Donlen shut the door with a man in scoring position when he recorded a nice 6-3 to end the inning.

Things brightened in the top of the seventh when we scored two more with help from Dan Rubin, Rowan, Ellen Kenney and Ron Goldwyn, but, alas, the ball blooped and squirted around in the bottom of the frame and the Zoo tied the game.

We played scorelessly to the 10^th and then the Zoo strung together four hits and that proved to be enough to get a run across. It usually is.

The tempting part of a game like this is to blame the conditions or the luck of the game. The Zoo got runners

Our line drives had a habit of finding gloves rather than grass.

on when balls plodded into the infield and stuck there, or slid through unusually, or proved to be impossible to pick up in the wet infield. But the truth is that all those things happened when we were at bat, too. The breaks evened out and it was just a close game. We had some better line drive outs, but they don’t give any prizes for that.

In the scorebook, we had just 18 hits in the 10 innings, and there’s aren’t prizes for that, either. Three hits each for Donlen and Rowan. Two hits each for George Miller, Steve Lynch, the Management, Kenney and Ron Goldwyn. We had 12 players arrive and 12 players played, so that was nice.

Now, where are we? Well, we are 3-4 and that’s not necessarily the bad news. As you know, the league fathers (and mothers) voted for an unbalanced schedule this season, so if you finished in the top half in 2013, then you get two games against top teams and one game each against the previously lesser teams.

Already this season, we have lost to two teams (Franklin, the Zoo) that were in the bottom half last season. That’s not good. Remaining on the schedule are two games against defending league champion Catahoula, one against the nasty Tap boys, one against the always-difficult Collar, one against the undefeated South Philly Nomads, and one more against the Constitution Center, which beat the Zoo by four runs the night after we lost to them and more than doubled the number of runs we scored.

Even the non-math majors among you will recognize this means our record this season will not necessarily be an indication of how good we are. It also means there’s a decent chance we will be taking part in the play-in portion of the postseason, and we don’t even get to go to Dayton for that.

Here’s something to put on your calendar: Don’t schedule anything for M-W, July 21-23. We could be playing once or twice that week, depending on whether we finish among the top six in the league or the bottom four. If we have our whole roster available, we are going to be dangerous in the playoffs, although perhaps only to ourselves.

Next game is Wednesday against those South Philly Pizza Eating Nomads. We owe them one. Let’s collect.

(Photos by Jon Snyder)