Labor Struggles

Good Afternoon A-erinos!

Well it’s hard to sugarcoat a ten-run loss, so you all will be graciously spared my garrulous description of last night’s game.  We’ll keep it brief today.

On a beautiful sunny afternoon, standing in the shadow of the monument to our great city’s namesake, the First Effing Amendments took on the Notorious LBC, who were either affiliated with the Dept. of Labor/OSHA or BALCO Labs.  With a predominantly southpawed lineup of talented worksite inspectors, The LBCs took it to the A’s early, smashing a staggering 15 runs in the second and third innings (combined), after the A’s had held them scoreless to start.  So the A’s, back in our familiar position of trailing by a long distance, began to claw our way back with six runs and another inning of clamped-down defense to head into the fifth down a mere 15-6.  Then things started to turn a little ugly.  We were mercy-ruled for the first time on the season in the top of the frame, and could only respond with 2 more runs, so we faced a huge deficit of 25-8 as the sixth inning, and some malevolent cloud cover, rolled in.

With the daylight slipping away, the top of the A’s order came up in the sixth and sparked our second 6-run rally of the day.  We held the LBC to only one run in the top of the final inning, but couldn’t muster any more than 2 runs in the bottom half.  The A’s had gone down in defeat, a 26-16 loss for our third of the season, bringing us to 2-3.  But there were plenty of bright spots on an otherwise dismal evening; farm prospect Daniel, who hadn’t touched a bat in a decade, got his first hit as an A in our late rally.  Four players: Red Freyve, Matt Marran, Kathleen Callaghy and Wes “-ley Snipes” MacCleod-Ball all batted 1.000 on the day, and Wes won the MVP beer after appearing in consecutive games for the first time in ages, due largely to his saving the horrendously errant throws from shortstop.  Alex “Ain’t no Stoppin’ Me Now!” Stamm learned the value of a base coach, and we reclaimed Killer Kelly Trout and Brian Levine from the DL.  All in all, it was a pretty good way to lose.

So these are all promising signs as me move forward into our second doubleheader of the season.  Next week we’ve got 2 engagements.  On Tuesday, we’ll face off against Too Big to Fail, the FDIC’s team.  The scouting report on them isn’t overly promising; they kinda sorta decimated the LBC last week.  So after we take down those giant crushers, on Thursday we take on Read the Fine Print, of the Government Printing Office.  Both games will be played at 6:30pm on the mall, at/near 15^th and Constitution.  More details will follow on Monday, though I imagine by now most of you know the routine.

One last note - our game yesterday was also covered by the Roll Call Blog, so if you haven’t already been motivated to come out, maybe a chance at your fifteen minutes of (rather inconsequential) fame will do the trick.

Effing A, Mike