Sigh. No more kickball. On the bright side, it should be a big winter full of snow tubing, broomball, bowling and roller skating, among other things. Maybe even a snow kickball game. Let me know if you want to be on the list for this stuff.
For our season finale, we had a good, fun game and played well but we were still defeated by ourselves. Or the girl-ghost of one of ourselves, that is.
Since it was a consolation match with nothing at stake but fun, I decided that for once I would not to spend my Tuesday afternoon worrying much about attendance. The result was that we did not have enough girls, and played pretty thin with 5 guys (Scott, Geoff, Mike, Dave, me) and 3 girls (Sarah, Jenny, Amy). Jennifer had stitches, Liz was in Mexico, Gretchen was in Sweden, plus Scotty was unconscious and Patrik and maybe some other people were secretly (or admittedly) at the Interpol concert. (What gives?)
With one girl short, we had to write a ghost player into the ninth spot on the lineup for an automatic out. I was not mad, because I figured that despite this handicap, we had a good chance anyway against the Mighty Milfoil. And we did. But I wrote the lineup kind of illogically, and every time we got a threat going, our Ghost Girl came up to end the inning.
In fact, Ghost Girl kept us from scoring at least another 3 or 4 runs. I was on base three times (my season high), but at least twice I failed to score because of Ghost Girl. Another time, I didn't score because I was confused about whether Jenny was forced out at second, so I stayed on first with one out. The rest of you have similar stories.
Meanwhile, because Scott was covering both left field and shortstop for Ghost Girl, a Milfoiler was able to drive a 2-run homer through the gap between Scott and Dave. (Strangely, it was the Milfoil's second homer of the season off of us.) The lesson here? You don't want to play with Ghost Girl on your team.
Bunt lesson: With the bases loaded and one out, someone (I don't remember who) bunted up the third base line. Naturally, this got the lead runner out, as it would most times. This is a good demonstration of the "bad times to bunt" in A Philosophy of Bunting. But if you're going to bunt here, bunt to the right to sacrifice yourself. I trust that you won't spend the winter mulling over this.
But overall, I like how we made up for the shortage with great defense (Jenny starred at third), pretty good baserunning and a lot of effort. Just remember that we might have won this game with enough people. As it is, we finish with a dead-even record of 3-3-1, and a third-place standing, and that's not half bad. Well, technically it is half bad, but it's also half good.
Lake Calhoun Flying Muskellunge: HALF-GOOD IN 2004! YAY!
Comments