No, I'm not describing any gold-winning victory in the Beijing Olympics. I'm not talking about Michael Phelps' historical sweep of gold medals or the great comeback of the 4x100 men's swimming relay. I'm describing a milestone win for the Emmanuel Fightin' Reformers on August 17, 2008, which despite the glory of this win, ranks a distant second on the importance of this date (more on this on an adjacent post).
Here's a little background for our readers. A few years ago, a friend of mine Dave was kind enough to invite me and my church to scrimmage his church in softball. We were excited to play, and despite our enthusiasm, we got stomped 15-4, and that was after they had mercifully wiped out an opening 8-run rally and let us restart the game.
We didn't know it at the time, but that would actually be one of our more competitive games. In the next year or so, we continued to be practice fodder for my friend's team, and we would get slaughtered. As I joked around in one of my e-mail recaps of the games, "besides the fact that we couldn't hit, run, or field, we were pretty equally matched." The scores that we were losing by looked like "anyone versus Columbia University" college football scores: 26-8, 18-4, etc.
This year, we regrouped a little and formalized our team, and squared up for a series of games against my friend and some of his colleagues and friends (let's call them "Team Kang"). The games were a lot closer, but we still couldn't get over the hump.
Yesterday, we finally broke through. Our teams were deadlocked in a 3-3 defensive struggle with both teams missing key opportunities to break through. On the top of the 7th inning, Team Kang put runners on first and second base with one out. A slow grounder dribbled between the mound and second and I, playing first base, snared it. Instead of just pocketing it realizing that I didn't have a play, I forced a throw to third and air-mailed it over the third baseman's head. Ugh. The go-ahead run came in, and Team Kang tacked on two more to take a 6-3 lead.
Fast forward to the bottom of the 8th, where we countered with two quick hits followed by a flyout. Taking advantage of a little sloppy fielding, we put six consecutive batters on base, and took an 8-6 lead heading into the 9th. With my buddy Paul on the mound, Team Kang nailed some long flies, but with a slick fielding duo Steve in LF and Andrew in LCF, we kept things in check. With two out and the tying run on 2nd, a long drive eventually settled in Andrew's glove. Game over. Reformers Win! Reformers Win!
Congrats to the EPC Fightin' Reformers for a great win. To coin an expression from ex-Mets manager Willie Randolph, who was sanguine as his team choked away a 7 game lead with 17 games to play: "Losing all the time is what a pennant race should be. Now that we've finally won, it makes the champagne taste a little sweeter."
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment