06/05/2022
In lieu of the Phillies' epic collapse last night, I thought I'd share one of my favorite baseball stories from my "career (I hesitate to even call it that!)" in men's armature baseball with the Senators. Baseball is a funny and great game, and weirdo stuff happens. If you watch it long enough, you'll see some interesting things.
Playoff game at Lindenwold Park. We are up one game in a best-of-three series against a great local club, the Medford Giants. We are in the top of the final frame, trailing 5-2 with our last six hitters coming up (we batted 11 in that league). In a surreal moment of what I can only call prescience, I see one of my players, who shall remain nameless, taking off his spikes in the dugout, a real no-no until the game is actually over. I somewhat angerly remind him of this unwritten rule. He keeps the spikes on.
The first two guys go down against a real battler on the hill, my old friend Doug Kepple, who later became a Senator teammate. Miles Reader stands in, our last chance. Miles hits a routine grounder to Steve Alemi at shortstop, a local great for many, many years. Well, the ball hits a pebble on the infield and bounces straight over Steve's astonished head. Miles is safe at first.
My turn. I step in, and being an old-school guy, I take two strikes in the hopes of drawing a free pass. No dice. Kepple throws me an 0-2 curve ball, and I do my thing, which is to flip it into right-field for a single, placing runners on first and second. Still a long way to go.
My oldest baseball buddy, Frank Rose, is up next. Frank slaps a liner into right-center field, splitting the outfielders. Miles races home to make it 5-3, and I get to third, Frank to second.
Unfortunately for us, the next hitter is our pitcher, John DiPietro. John is a decent hitter, but we almost never let him bat during his long and great career with the club simply because we had a lot of GREAT hitters. But today, we were short-handed with just 11 present, and we had no choice. I stared down the third base line hoping for a miracle, and lo and behold, it happened!
John ripped a solid single into left-field and both Frank and me raced across the plate to tie things up at 5-5. It felt like a miracle, all started by a pebble no less.
We won the game in the bottom of the 10th frame on a single to right-field by Senator great Ken Bevenour, scoring my old buddy Mark Alessandrini from second, to win the championship. It is one of my fondest baseball memories. Now that I no longer play, those are all I have left from my time in the game. They will sustain me until I visit that Ebbets Field in the sky sometime down the road.
Peace, my baseball brothers. I miss you all, both friend and foe!
