YOUR WEEKLY REPORT FROM THE REAL AND WANNABE SLUGGERS & HURLERS & GOOD TIME CHARLIES OF THE CAPITAL DIVISION:

Alrighty, let's get the score out of the way first, since I know you're all waiting for that. Best I can decipher, on Sunday, June 7,
on a pleasant if overcast afternoon, the Blues be-bopped the Reds, 20-10 at New Scotland. But it might have been 22-12.
(The scorebook and I go different ways after the game. But I got the vital stuff down.)

Score doesn't mean real baseball wasn't played. We were a part of, witnessed or did, some really nice hits and plays.

Case in point: Joshua Szpila, new to the league, tall, slender, strong, 34, trying to see if his baseball skills are still
somewhat in tact after nearly 16 years away from the game, played short and later caught, and for his second game in a row, launched a towering
fly ball well over the left field fence. As in well over.

And well over 18 players and some fans turned and watched it go. It was a thing of beauty. I don't recall who on my team was pitching,
he likely wouldn't care to have his name advertised, but he threw fine and joined the fans following the ball's soaring flight.

The general consensus is that Josh still has a few skills.

Another hitting display merits attention: Steve Holmes. Steve's tall, a big shouldered guy, 42, with a thin beard, big wide blue eyes and
a calm, easy-going, reserved manner. Last time he played ball was, he estimated, 2010, but that was softball. Hard ball's further
back. In between, Steve has used his math degree to work as a consultant, and he and his wife have been bringing new life into
the game: Eleven at last count, ranging in age from 23 to 4. Steve has stayed in the game by coaching kids, his and others, in
Little League. So in only his second game back, Steve did all right for himself: a 3-for-3.

Like Josh, Steve was curious if he still possessed some, any baseball skills. He also just wanted to play.

Getting the sense of a theme, here, are you reader? One the lures of Cap Division ball is that it says, come one and all. Men and women.
See what you got left.

And the tests, and skills on display, are surprisingly high, and the age ranges long, from 24 to 79. So it means everyone is
being challenged by guys with one set of skills from not far from teenager's, where speed and strength are on the surface,
to others well past that, who've caught on to the useful skills of being quiet, cagy, sneaky even, and then, like a still strong
snake, striking at the fat moment.

Second case in point: Reds left fielder, Mike Laney is only hah! only! 24, but he doesn't take his still young years for granted.
The man's in shape, lifts and runs at the Y, and the guy can motor. He hit a shot in his second at bat that sent outfielders fleeing
on diagonals to left center. When Mike reached second, you could see he was questioning himself? Go for third. He was straining
in that direction. But, factoring in caution and a smart move, he stayed on second for one pitch. And then stole third. Man's got wheels.

Getting back to Steve: A family with eleven kids will keep you busy. But word of baseball is always in the air in his household
and workplace, too. Steve grew up in Arlington, Massachusetts, which means he was unavoidably a Red Sox fan, and
which also means baseball talk at home, and sometimes, at work. That's CMA in Latham, a consulting firm. One of Steve's
co-workers Mike LaBarge is also a fine catcher, pitcher and manager in CDMSBL who, Steve said, was regularly
coaching Steve, that is, suggesting he go play Cap Division ball. Steve had had a connection to the game over the past two years
when he managed two of his boys in Little League.

Then, one day recently Steve's wife said, why don't you do what Mike said,and go play ball? She knew how to manage the nine
or so at home just fine for a couple of hours. Steve was out the door.

I don't know how Steve did in his first game about two weeks ago. He said I pitched against him and got a strike
called against him, but I don't recall that. As you age, not recalling pitches can sometimes be a value.

But I saw in Steve's second game, getting a strike against him is apparently an accomplishment: the Just-Back-Ballplayer
went 3-for-3 with three singles.

So, that's some of what's left and what's still there among 26 players.

Seeing how late you can play before the lights go out is an issue for me, too. An appealing one, mostly. I write this on
Wednesday, June 17, my 79th birthday. I've played in MSBL since '93 in Texas and '98 here, yet, despite the evidence from that, that
I'm still in uniform (one week that's a Red, the next a Blue, a colorful mix) I'm with Josh and Steve, still trying to find out
what's there, what's left.

In numbers, which are only one set of discoveries, that's 3-for-6 with 7 RBI, and two innings on the hill, with an ERA, oh,
I don't know, close to 31? I see now that there's a reason pitch counts are numbered on big league TV casts: each arm
has only so many throws in it, and then the wing says, that's it! no mas! It rules. You're done. No foolin' around.
In my first outing, with Nick Weiler doing yeoman work behind the plate catching pitches everywhere, I found
I was done after warmups. It takes a while to stretch an arm.)

(Since, we in the Cap Division, have no spring training, stretching my arm will have to be done in three spots: against
the thick painter's tarp I have hanging in my garage for 25 years, a 12-foot-throw, and on the hill, before games at New Scotland,
with amazingly supportive catchers Nick and Elijah who tell an old guy to keep going and in my 90-foot driveway, where our
Border Collie Scottie will chase a rubber ball non-stop longer than I can throw it. Then, once more delight?
That manager Amber Ring said at the last game: "Mike, fifth inning, take the hill?" Gratitude exists in baseball.)

Next posting, too, I'll tell y'all about further outstanding acts of players in the Cap Division, and how the baseball
bench got the word "bench" from its original word, "ruminator" - and how the still very lively ghost of former major
leaguer, and my original hitting coach, Mike Easler (outfielder, mostly with Boston, big league average .293),
now 76, showed in a ghostly form on a rainy afternoon at New Scotland, sat next to me on the ruminator
and, said, "What? What did I teach you about hitting with your eyes open, Mike! Remember?" That's next week.

One more quick tip from the geezer world of ball? A hummer off the thigh heals a lot faster if you don't try to
run the bases after taking a thump. Lefty Greg Kennedy was pitching a really fine game and he apologized. But he needn't:
first, because I've clipped more than one player myself, all unintended, so, still, I owe, and second
because at 79 everything, that's everything, is a useful teacher.

-Mike





all>-- Edited by mikehart on Wednesday 17th of June 2026 03:11:25 PM

-- Edited by mikehart on Wednesday 17th of June 2026 03:13:45 PM