Even If We're Just Dancing In The Dark

Sometimes on the old P&P, that seems like what we’re always doing; dancing along, trying to play some softball, but really just totally lost.
It looked that way for a while Monday when the exciting renewal of our ancient rivalry with Bishop’s Collar appeared to be short-circuited by bad ankles, bad backs, allergies, work assignments and all manner of other roster-reducing trouble.
When the stragglers finished straggling in, we had 12 players exactly, including designated sub Mike Trout, who is on-call this season, along with our own softball intern Tommy Rowan, for just such an emergency. Trout’s video, “How to Hit High Fly Balls to Left Center,” is available on demand, by the way.
We also had the Management in the outfield, which is always perilous, and Russ Krause at shortstop because he could run backward but not forward. I can’t really explain that one.
We also had Ron Goldwyn as our designated hitter, which is fine, particularly when he got two hits and kept the lineup moving. Nevertheless, against a team that went to the league championship round last season, it didn’t seem like a good spot for us.
But – what do you know? – we danced in the dark all the way to a 20-9 win over the Collar, which had a couple of roster issues of its own. (Like no Phyllis, which made everyone very, very sad.)

We’re now 3-1 on the season and would be undefeated if we could have held an 11-0 lead against the Fart Museum. That’s the way it goes with our dancing sometimes, though.

Against the Collar, Mark Nevins thumped E. “Coli” Kolach for a 5-for-5 day, including a double, three home runs (at least two of which were fair) and eight runs batted in. He also scored five runs and the first four hitters in our order (O’Connor, Krause, Miller, Nevins) accounted for 17 of our 20 runs.
Elsewhere in the scorebook, George Miller had four hits, and three hits each for Kerry O’Connor, Chris Brennan and the Management. Two hits for Ron and winning pitcher Chris Yasiejko. Two sacrifice flies for Trout. We totaled 28 hits, played good defense and if there can be such a thing as a routine win over a good team, this was it.
So, let’s keep on dancing and see where it goes. It goes back to Edgeley 4 on Monday for a game against the Franklin Institute. A little more leeway with the available roster would be appreciated by the Management.