Seeing Stars

Hey A’s,

Thankfully the rain held off long enough for us to get a game in last night, but unfortunately our luck still had not improved from previous weeks and the A’s fell to Nellie’s Ale Stars in a thriller, by a final score of 16-12.

Skip (near) and Hoff (far), rounding the bases

Playing from the rare position of being the visiting team, we busted out of our usual mold right from the get-go, as MVP runner-up The Hoff and LBR (who, I neglected to mention last night, batted 1.000 on the day for the second time this season!) both got on base to start the game. A few clutch base knocks followed, and all of a sudden the A’s had one of their biggest leads of the month of July, quickly going up 4-0 in the top of the first. Yet again we fell victim to an early strong start from our opponents, and they reclaimed the lead in the bottom of the first with a powerful 7 run performance, then extended it in the next frame with four more. But we held right even with them, with lefties Gluten Free and MVP Will Abbott helping the production from the middle of the lineup. Jonathan, our other runner-up to the MVP with 2 doubles, 2 ribbies, and 2 runs scored anchored the bottom half, and the A’s picked up four in the third to keep the game tight at 11-9.

Gluten Free

From there, the game evolved into a defensive battle. Mr. Prohibition came on in relief of K-Dawg to hold the Ale Stars scoreless for three straight frames; in that time, we managed three more runs to take our first late-game lead in what seemed like a decade. Heading into the 6th, our tenuous 1-run lead left us in a much more attractive position than we normally would be that many beers deep, one that it turned out we couldn’t hold. After getting a quick two outs to start on defense, it looked like we’d hold firm but a bloop single started a two-out rally for the Stars, who quickly put up 5 more runs on us in the 6th to wrestle back the lead. Our bats fell silent once again in the 7th – we couldn’t produce any more and when the dust had settled, we lost by a mere four runs.

But there’s no time to get down on ourselves over our 1,985,638th close loss of 2012 – we play again tonight! We’re taking on FEMA’s Masters of Disaster at 6:30. Come join the fun! If you’d like to sponsor beer, I will be forever indebted to you*. Please let me know if you plan on playing and helping us bust out of this slide.

* (but I’m moving soon so get me before I skip town!)

Effing A,
Mike