The 55+ Peppers and Marlins beat the rains and played what became a taut game at Watervliet High Field. The Peps nailed down the game in the last frame, 6-5, thanks to running catch of a liner in left by Paul Cerone and a diving catch of an infield floater at first by Brad Maione.
The low gray clouds cut the light substantially and we agreed to stop the game after 6 innings.
Both teams scored two runs in the first, but then the Peppers, hitting singles and taking advantage of Marlin errors, put up four runs in the third and held the lead until the bottom of the fifth, when the M's got eight men on and scored three of them, one short of a tie.
Peppers third baseman Ray Meandro went 3-for-3, and Mike Hart pitched a complete game 4-hitter for the win, the team's third in its past five games.
It was good to see the Marlins' Don Wixon lucid and back on the field, after having his cage really rattled on a foul tip while catching this past weekend.
Despite all the rain, WHS' field director, and 45+ Shasky's pitcher, Dennis Lane had the field in fine, dry shape.
League president John Reel said at the game that he planned to keep using WHS and any other field that's dry over the next two weeks to help us overcome a big backlog of rained out games.
-Mike
-- Edited by mikehart on Tuesday 25th of July 2017 03:27:36 AM
Mike Hart was the winning pitcher. He took a line drive off his head in the fourth inning that bounced back to the catcher who threw the runner out at first. Mike shook it off, returned to the mound, and finished a complete game victory by striking out the culprit who hit the liner on a beautiful slider. Way to go, Peppers!! Outstanding game, Mike.
In the interests of accuracy, the liner first hit my left forearm, just above my wrist (so lucky there, missed the wrist bone; though one of my teammates said later in the dugout, "Why didn't you catch that? What's wrong with you?"), and then it shot up to my left cheek.
That was, as they say, a hit, and it gave me a sense of what it's sort of like to take a punch from a hard-hitting boxer like, say, Joe Louis. Mike said it best, "Ouch!" I don't know how professional boxers do it, take blow after blow to the face, and then down anything stronger than tomato soup. Today's a red-forearm, fat-cheek day for me, but other than that, I'm fine.
What was really nice, was not only getting solicitations from my teammates, but from about half the Marlins who stopped by our dugout to check on me. And Jim himself came in the dugout, plopped down on the bench next to me, and stared at me to see if I looked like I knew where I was. I didn't tell him that's been a life-long preoccupation with me, but I did say that I was glad to have "a man of science" (Jim's a psychologist) in the room with me. My memory's weak here, but Jim laughed and said something along the lines of that I probably wouldn't have wanted to hear his diagnosis at that moment. Whatever he said was funny, we laughed and that was just the right medicine.
After the game, I was chatting with Marlins Kevin Jackson and Don Wixon. Don, who's about one month older than I (we both hit the start of the seventh decade this spring), actually played a bit in the game, despite getting his bell really rung while catching over the weekend. He took a foul ball to the mask and had to go home. I told him that 70-year-olds might just be the perfect targets: too slow to get out the way and too dumb not to.
-Mike
-- Edited by mikehart on Tuesday 25th of July 2017 09:03:32 PM
