Geeks on the Web

Date	Time	Field	Opponent	Record	How'd we do?
May 5	6:00	Lex SW	Team Wild Wings	1-1	Touch 'em all Jeffy...twice! The Seeds found a new source of power in 2010 with Jeff hitting two opposite field shots. Nice! We came out of the gates pretty well (and looked pretty sharp in our charcoal greys). Course, the one exception was Lee getting some strained Hong Kong back action (you okay Lee?). Nonetheless, we still took game one with solid bats and gloves. Game two, with three outfielders, wasn't as smooth. Guys were going down (Dar, you okay?) and we just didn't keep the momentum. Split to start the season. Not too bad, but we'll put a better, hopefully injury-free, effort together next week (think Venezuelan Road Runner). Hopefully we get some appropriate summer softball weather too!
May 12	6:00	Veteran's VFW	D'Horns	2-2	Glove Needed! Hey, has anyone figured that one out yet?. Wet and sloppy night but nontheless...play ball! Came up against a familiar, evenly matched opponent and slugged it back and forth all night. First game, our opponents came to the plate in the bottom of the seventh down by one. Unfortunately, they rallied and brought in the winning run. Second game, we batted in the bottom half of the last inning all tied-up. Caven led off. Dinged it. Walk off. Game over for the split. Oh, and let's not forget the shot our opponent had over the house in left field. Yes, cleared the fence. Cleared the back lawn. Cleared the two story house. Wow. Night ended with our annual "what would you do for a million dollars?" debate. Drink 100 bottles of booze in a year? 52 kegs? Go to prison for six months? Work fast food everyday for eight hour for a year? Opinions were split pretty even. We'll need more Hogger attendees next week to break the ties.
May 19	6:00	C.P. Lex SW	Bonestroo	3-3	Heard we had another split.
May 26	6:00	Veteran's VFW	Lunseth Lawn Care	5-3	(from Lee) VFW field was the perfect setting for what would be the first double header sweep of the season. Relying on 3 subs (more on that later), Hogger jumped put to a First Inning 9 run lead with everyone hitting solid strokes all around. A dryspell hit us in the middle innings. Perhaps with all the germinating offspring around the park, they could have done better. Game 1 was an easy win with Danny (Rainbow (2-0)) filling in for Darren on the mound. Game 2 saw us take an early 10-3 deficit and turn it around in the 4th inning thanks to some key 2 out hitting by Caven (Grand Slami (triple + error)) and some gift walks by one of the opponents 3 pitchers they used on the night. Came back thanks to a key leadoff hit by Dan and ended up hanging on 15-12. Sweep for the day. Imran aned Caven key line drive catches, Craig and Keith solid in the OF, Pat and Tschak with some deep hits and Grant calling some of the best pitch locations ever. Team Darren or Team Rainbow? We won't go there, but some great weather, timely hits and a postgame at the Hogger that was damped by the Twins falling to the Yankees and a not so engaged waitress, but at least the Hogger has facial recognition software now; plus a broken cigarette vending machine in the basement. Kind of like combing thje Jetsons and the Flinstones. Enjoy the Memorial weekend. See ya'll next time.
June 2	8:00	C.P. Vic 3	Blue Fox Diamond Cutters	7-3	Another sweep! Although, I think it's safe to say that most of us thoughts we'd be playing for a total of about 45 minutes tonight as we trailed 6-0 after our opponent's first at bat that included a grand slam. No matter. We shook off some earlier errors, brought our bats around, took advantage of a few (okay, a lot of) walks and worked our way back for two strong wins against a very good opponent. The games also featured a number of sweet put outs in the field including Keith across the diamond to Lee at third, Vad firing to Lee at third and Caven to Grant gunning down the runner at home. Definite rally killers. Oh, and mark your calendars. Caven earned his second walk ever (and I think the first might have been intentional). Good playing by all...and, if you weren't thrilled with your night...at least be glad you didn't sign a lifelong contract for a couple of bags of rice. Darn lost in translation.
June 9	6:00	C.P. Vic 4	Old Chicago	9-3	If you didn't know (and Dan didn't tell you), we've won six straight with Dan on the mound. Pretty cool. Tonight's opponent wasn't very strong. Didn't field well. Didn't hit hard. Didn't run fast. And, we hit pretty well. It's hard to tell if the scrawny guys or the non-scrawny guys did more of the heavy lifting (although, the non-scrawny guys really should of...they can carry more, right?), but in the end it was two pretty easy wins. Nice run. Let's keep it rolling.
June 16	6:00	C.P. Vic 4	Rogues	10-4	It was a battle of the best teams in the league, just like the Lakes vs. the Celtics, except that, unlike the NBA, people actually cared. Last week of the regular season. Top two teams. We needed at least a split to get the #1 seed in the playoffs. Well, we started off poor against a good fielding team with lively bats and seemed like we might have a long night in front of us. We rallied back, but came up one run short 11-12 in game one. Pooey. We jumped all over them in game two giving them a ten run defeat in six. Better. It was as sweety-ier a victory as we've had all season (that words from Dar...who was just happy to reclaim his mound with a victory). Hoggsbreath was lively with risqué conversation (the waitress), formed alliance (Grant & Pat), broken alliances (Grant & Pat), pizza opportunism (Dar), instigating (Keith) and overanalyzing of the stats. Cool. Quote of the night: "Daddy missed the ball... but that's okay"
June 23	8:00	C.P. Vic 3	Hearthside Pizza	12-4	My evening started with a late arrival to the Hogger and jumping in on some story about Grant trying to seduce some bachelorette. Yup, it was going to be one of those nights. We faced another strong opponent with solid swings and good D. Started slow...but our bats came together and we took game one by seven (remember, run differential determines a winner). Seven is plenty, right? Well, we gave-up seven in the top of the second. Resilience! We came back and score nine in our bottom half the inning. Gave up four more and came back with six. Matched them run for run and then some finally beating them by 10 in game two. Granted, nobody really understood who bats when with and extra half run, blah, blah, blah. Who needs it when you crank in almost 40 runs and bat .561 as a team. Funny enough, we had six innings where we didn't score a run and six innings where we score four or more. Let's keep those hot bat streaks rolling through the playoffs.
June 30	8:00	C.P. Vic 3	.	.	Game time changed but the league organizer didn't let us know. Games rescheduled.
July 7	.	.	.	.	Rained-out.
July 14	8:00	C.P. Vic 3	Republic Express	12-6	Ugh. I'd like to blame our three weeks off, but overal we were as sluggish as the 80% dew point lingering in the air. We knew this was the semifinals. We knew we were playing poorly. We knew we should be beating our opponents. We knew we needed to turn it around. We never did. We were flat in game one with shaky D and lost by three. We were even flatter in game two with no bats and lost by 11. Just no pop. Off to the third-place game next week. 6:00 start so we should all be able to make the Hogger afterward (yeah Caven, we're looking at you). Let's go out on a high note.
July 21	6:00	C.P. Vic 3	Avengers	13-7	"If you don't pet it, it might run away." More appropriate words have never been spoken. So, we had just enough to win. It wasn't a great victory. I don't think any of us felt we played particularly well, but in the end, we were able to squeeze enough runs out of our split to win the third place game. We also ate a lot of pancakes. Oh, and Frogger 2. See you in a couple of weeks at fall ball.