Inside, Looking Out

The Pen & Pencil softball team improved its record to 9-2 with a solid win over the National Constitution Center on Tuesday at Dairy 2. There wasn’t a lot of drama, but good teams can win games without that. Not saying we are one, but that’s what the record says and that’s what the scorebook says, so who are we to argue?
We bunched 10 of our 17 hits in the third inning, batted around, scored eight runs and

pretty much put the game away there. The final score was 9-3, so we had only one run in our other five at-bats, but we did what we had to do, and that’s how they keep score in the end.
The Constitution Center was without Captain Brian, one of their best players – although he did text lineup suggestions from his honeymoon – but they hit the ball pretty well.
Our defense kept them from stringing hits together,

however, and it was one of our better fielding efforts of the season. Eighteen of their 21 outs were recorded in the infield, which might be a CCSL record. I don’t really have an explanation for that, except we made the plays, always got the lead runner and kept the force in order almost every time. It was pretty impressive.
At the plate, we tried to be as patient as possible and wait for strikes, but that wasn’t always an easy task. Brian Donlen, George Miller (3 RBIs), Keith Craig (2 RBIs),

winning pitcher Chris Yasiejko, Eddie Cascarella and Ellen Kenney had two hits each. That makes Ellen 6-for-6 in her last two games. Eddie ripped the ball sharply into left for both of his hits and fellow designated hitter Ron Goldwyn also hit the ball well, but into tougher luck. Steve Lynch was 1-for-2, but with a big two-RBI hit in our big third inning.
So, where are we, with seven games left in the regular season? Actually, in pretty good shape.
We are in second place, behind undefeated Catahoula, but a half-game ahead of the Tap Room, and we currently hold a tiebreaker against them. In a perfect world, we will hold onto second place and earn an opening-round bye in the playoffs. That would leave us just one win away from making the championship round. Likely opponents would be the Tap, Fleisher, Bishop’s Collar and the Art Museum. We either can or have beaten all of them this season, so there’s no reason it can’t happen again.
To get there, however, we have to have some more games like Tuesday’s. We have to make the layups and then play very well against the top teams that would like to knock us down into the middle of the pack.
So far this season, we’ve been able to get the job done. Personally, I don’t see what can go wrong.


Two first-base coaches are better than one, most of the time.