Sea Squirts Win! Sea Squirts Win! Sea Squirts Win!

I have mentioned in passing that I am playing on a work softball team. A bad team. Now I don't mean B-A-A-A-D like good, I mean B-A-D as in NOT good. Really not good. Really really not good.

We were 0-5 going into tonight's game against last year's champions.

We went quitely in the first 1, 2, 3, dispite hitting the ball hard all three times. Then, miracles of miracles, we did the same to them. Top of 2, we managed to actually score a run. Then they put up 5. In the third, we put up 2, they scored 1. So after 3 innings we were trailing 3 to 6.

During the top of the fourth, while coaching third base, I had a nice chat with their third baseman (apparently he doesn't know that he should ignore me, while I try to distract him). I told him we seemed to always manage to be close after 4 or 5 innings, then find a way to lose (usually related to being lots older than our competition, and he agreed that we "looked pretty old"). We didn't score and they put a two spot on us, so after 4, we were down 3 to 8.

In the fifth we had a big inning and scored 4 runs, mostly due to their left fielder being unable to make the play on a hooking line drive, and when we then held them to 0 (thanks in no small part to the first double play we had turned all season), we had somehow managed to get to 7 to 8 after 5.

Then God smiled upon us.

Nobody scored in the 6 or 7th (and amazingly in the 6th we turned yet another double play!). In the top of the 8th our best hitter smoked a ball to right that somehow got through their right fielder for four bases (and two runs since it came with a man on base). A quick out in the bottom of the inning, then their best hitter got a triple. The next batter hit the ball hard to second, but since the runner on third had broke for the plate we doubled him off to kill the inning (yes, our third double play of the game and season). At this point we found ourselves leading 9 to 8 going into the 9th.

I think they somehow sensed they were up against fate, because at this point the wheels came off for them and they gave us 3 runs due to a booted ball and two different throws that went into the dugout. Leading 12 to 8, needing only three outs to clinch the win, it was almost anti-climatic when they went down, fly out to right, fly out to center, ground out to third, and...

Sea Squirts Win! Sea Squirts Win! Sea Squirts Win!

Yeah. We B-A-A-A-D! ;-)