Black Sox Win Streak No "Mo"!

OK guys, I gotta confess... I thought this was the week we could put all these lame "no mo" headlines to bed. I mean, we were averaging like 20 runs a game the last four games, pitching, playing defense, my smack was working in the "SDABL Bullpen", most importantly of all, our cleanup hitter, the mighty Maurice "Mo" Wrighten was returning to our lineup. The stars, the moon, the solar system was lining up for a big day, right?

Wrong. Final Score: SDEC 13, Black Sox 0.

What Happened?

Before I even get into it, let me say this: congratulations to San Diego Erosion Control (SDEC). Through the grapevine we had all heard that SDEC was not the same team that has dominated this division for the last several seasons. We all know they lost some players. Their scores through the first part of the season bore that out. But I will say this: for our game (1 pm. SDHS) today, they were as good an SDEC team as I have ever faced. They pitched, they hit, they fielded. Actually, they hit as good as I've ever seen an opponent hit in our league. Hats' off to the opposition... we only made a couple of mistakes and they made us pay dearly for every one of them.

Bottom Line: they beat the crap out of us today. Does that make them a better team than us? Hell no. But they were better today. No excuses.

Highlights

There were a few:

• Phil went 2/4 with a couple of solid line drive singles.
• Jim McGaha reached base 2/3 with a single and a walk.
• I'd be remiss in my responsibility as Manager if I failed to point out that Dan Darrin reached base in all three of his at-bats with a line drive base hit and two walks.
• Defense - All in all, I thought we played pretty good defense with Mike Gross making an excellent diving catch to save runs and other players playing generally good defense... good enough to win most weeks. Props to the opposition as well... they played generally excellent defense, robbing us of runs on a couple of occasions and making all of the plays they should make. It was just one of those days where many of our best hit balls went right to them.
• Pitching - Really our pitching was much better than the result. Despite getting rung up for 10 runs, Bob recorded 6 strikeouts in 3.6 innings. Jonathan was pitching very strongly over the remaining 4.3 innings (excuse the math), allowing only one run until an SDEC batter decided to put this dog to bed with a decisive game winning HR with two outs in the bottom of the 8th.

Lowlights

• Hitting - In all, we recorded only 5 hits and 4 walks for the afternoon. As a team, we only had one strikeout and that should have been a walk. It was sheer genius of SDEC to throw a "Charlie Hough" knuckle-ball specialist out there against the hottest hitting team in the league. We looked stupid on way too many at-bats today.

Looking Forward

Next week we play Players Sports Bar (formerly the Padres) at 1 pm at Silver Strand. PSB has rebounded nicely from a mediocre 2003 campaign to be a strong playoff team in Winter, 2004, and a legitimate contender this spring. We will definitely need to step it up again if we are to get a win in this ballgame and get back on track in our run for the league championship.