Apparently, Nevins Was Safe

Who knew? I figured he was just letting off steam for grounding out. But it turns out through the wizardry of modern photography that he was, in fact, safe at first base to end the fifth inning on Tuesday against the Art Museum. What a dope that first base coach was.

Big catch on little popup.

Well, we can laugh about it now and not worry that we missed out on a couple of runs that would have kept us from blowing another lead against the Farties. Because, amazingly enough, we took a four-run lead in the top of the first and never trailed. It got a little close, and we made it interesting in the end, but came away with a 10-8 win that not only avenges our earlier 16-15 come-from-ahead loss, but gives us the season tiebreaker (by one thin run) over the Keepers of Fine Art should we go 0-5 the rest of the season and they go 6-0. I bet the rest of you hadn’t thought of that.
The Pen & Pencil Club improved its record to 11-2 with the win as we head into consecutive doubleheader weeks, starting with Monday against the Zoo and Tuesday against Fleisher. If we sweep those, we can clinch a spot in the top half of the playoff bracket, but that’s what we in the looking ahead business like to call looking ahead.
Our bigger goal is to get one of the two first-round byes so we need just one win to advance to the World Series and so Russ has to explain to his wife why they have to leave Maine at dawn on the final day of their vacation to drive back home like a bat out of Bangor.


Like he never left.

 Back to reality and Tuesday night, it was entertaining, particularly after the lightning stopped rattling off the top of the batting cage. We led 4-1 after an inning, 6-4 after three innings and then added three runs in the fifth and one in the sixth to go up 10-4 entering the bottom of the seventh. Art rallied for four runs to make it close, including a bomb two-run home run by Adam, but that’s where it ended.
Play of the game might have come in that seventh inning when Krause ran down a short fly ball to left off Ray’s bat that appeared destined to drop just inside the line. Caught it at full speed and keeping that run off base might have been the difference.
Play of the game in not quite as dramatic a situation went to Steve Lynch for a sliding, rolling catch of a line drive by Jeremy Darkness that limited the Artistes in the first inning. Otherwise, the highlight was this near-death experience by Chris Yasiejko. This has a Zapruder film kind of quality to it. If only Andrea was wearing a pillbox hat as she ran down the baseline.

Ouch.

OK, from the scorebook, three hits for George Miller, who is now going to right field, having discovered it is there, and three also for Keith Craig, all beautiful line drives. Two hits and four RBI’s for Brian Donlen, and two hits and two RBI’s for Lynch.
Two hits also for Krause and Kathy Matheson. Kathy and Liz Gabor each singled in the fifth inning to make our three runs there possible.
A big P&P welcome back to B.J. Clark, who is finally returned from honeymoon, hernia and other infirmities. Hurry back, Ellen. The team needs salty snacks.

At least he took it well.