Dingers!

Ladies and Gentlemen and Dewey, your 2017 Oakwood Wiffle & Ale Club Home Run King:

Hansoo Ha

It is no small feat to lead this league in round-trippers, and Hansoo's total of seven homers is an impressive tally. He even had a Ruthian blast off Kurt (during our one game at Budget Field)! His moon shots represented 37% of all four-baggers hit this season. I'm adding this sentence because I have one more word for home runs: Bombs.

Here is the complete list of all the long-ball-sluggers from 2017:

1. Hansoo - 7
2. Andy - 4
3. Peter - 3
4. Dewey - 2
5. Three tied at 1
• Kurt
• Matt
• J.D.

Congrats to all the guys swingin' for the fences, 'cuz remember...

Recognition

Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2017 Oakwood Wiffle and Ale Club Batting Champion!

Dr. Kurt "Krash" Mosser

Stats put up a valiant effort to catch him at Black Friday Wiffle, but 9-for-13 wasn't enough to catch Kurt's 0.528 / 0.653 / 1.181 slash line. To pass Kurt, Matt would have needed to go 11-for-13; the four outs he made today were all strikeouts from J.D. So blame him.

So while we're recognizing Kurt let's recognize a few more people...

The 200 AB Club:
Peter, Kurt, Bob, Adrian, Matt, Hansoo

The 100 AB Club:
J.D., Eric Z., Dewey, Andy, Mark

Rate stats win awards, but counting stats make a league. These wifflers, gentlemen ballplayers all, showed up. And to be clear, that doesn't just mean they climbed in the box a lot. That means they took the mound a lot, and threw a lot of innings. Good on ya all.

And here is everyone else who strode the asphalt, even just a single time:

The rest:
Tim Y., Eric Kn., Ryan, David W., Jeff, Greg, Tim B., Fred, Andrew

Oh, yeah. There was a game today. Peter hit for the cycle in a losing cause. J.D. brought his dad and there were some tear-jerker Kodak moments. Zamonski composed the wiffle rock-opera while in the on-deck circle. In other words, a typical day at Nance Bradds Field.

Adrian, Eric Z., Matt - 10 runs, 24 hits
Dave W., J.D.W., Peter - 4 runs, 16 hits

HR: Berwald (2)

State of Wiffle, 2017

Caffeine, sugar, fat, nicotine. That's the great game of Wiffle circa 2017.

Hold the Line!

October wiffle is the best wiffle, don't you agree? Especially when played in November, I always say.

Every morning. Every 42-degree morning, I say that. But, what the hell. Wiffle gets us out of bed - amIrite?

The deadly mix of high stakes and cold weather raises the specter of... injury. And today's game featured not 1, not 3, but TWO injuries.

Four batters into the top of the first, Stats made too quick of a first step in pursuit of a sinking liner off the bat of Peter. As he does in many endeavors, Matt came up lame. A pulled right calf relegated him to a DH role for the game, leaving his Home boys, Bob, JD and Kurt down a pitcher, down an outfielder, and with a lame cleanup hitter.

Getting an injury in a World Series game is the absolute worst. It's like when you are singing Guns N Roses karaoke, and everyone thinks your Axl Rose is Cat Stevens. Get high on THAT peace train. Bad impersonation scholars generally agree - that is the lowest point you can reach. Or stoop. Whatever. They also agree that Toto's "Hold the Line" is the ultimate air keyboard song, so take that for what it's worth.

Ironically, with Matt at bat, Eric fell trying to catch a pop up and scraped his hands on the Nance Bradds asphalt. The hydrocarbons took their share of his skin in the process, and he didn't catch the ball. There was no need to really go all out because of course Matt was batting with one leg.

Any way, there was a game, too. (Game 5, actually. I slay me.) After allowing 2 runs in the first, the home boys "Held the Line" for the rest of the nine-inning contest. In the bottom of the sixth - also known as the Verlander Inning - The homebrews found a way to plate three runs to take the slimmest of leads.

Miraculously, two rbi came off the bat of gimpy Stats. Which immediately made everyone think of this...

Yes: EVERYONE.

Adrian, Hansoo, Eric, Peter - 2 runs, 12 hits
Bob, JD, Kurt, 0.5Matt - 3 runs, 15 hits

HR: Gibson

Innovation

Zamonski uses the bat rack.

Live update - Wiffle World Series Game 5

Matt "Stats" Lindsay pulled a calf running after a fly ball in the top of the first. Being fragile sucks.

Wiffle World Series - Game 1

We've been fortunate all year with good summer weather that extended into the third weekend of October. But when the WWW (Wiffle World Series) came around, fall was in full force. Late fall at that.

38 degrees, overcast. The lights were on at Nance Bradds Field.

Believe it or not this picture is showing you that the lights were on.

Tense wiffle ensued despite the cold. The visiting Andy-Bob-Tim trio took an early 4-0 lead, and then the home-standing Adrian-Matt-Peter slowly chipped away.

A little too slowly, as it turned out, as the nine-inning game ended with the tying aboard in the bottom of the ninth. Bob's farting shoes nearly blew the save but did not.

It was the kind of day where pitches floating through the strike zone were topped for weak grounders. With runner on.  The kind of day where every parent at DLM lets their kid push the shopping cart. In other words: frustrating.

Andy, Bob, Tim - 4 runs, 14 hits
Adrian, Matt, Peter - 3 runs, 19 hits

HR: Lindsay (1)

"They Always Clean Their Plate!"

Ha Ha!!

Don't ya just love it when they give away the punch line BEFORE the joke? Who is that worse for? The dope who ruined the joke, or the one who has to watch and listen to the dope's sense-of-humor-as-train-wreck? Who can say? It's two minutes no one ever gets back. NO ONE!

Like a milk shake with stuff in it - like chocolate chips or crushed candy bars? NO ONE likes that!! Stop making them. You can't get it to come up a straw. It ruins the shake. You end up having to eat it with a spoon, which is like eating ice cream and if I wanted ice cream I would have ASKED for ice cream and it's not like eating ice cream because it's all melted ANYWAY!!!!!

GAH!!!!

Like a wiffle game where the first batter hits the fifth pitch of the game off Matt for a home run (according to the outfielders) and then NO ONE scores for the rest of the nine innings!!! Who is that worse for? The pitcher who lost the game on the fifth pitch or the batters who futilely played another 2 hours of wiffle FAILING to SCORE? I ask you.

GAH-GAH!!!!

"Why are Umpires so fat?"

Andy, Bob, Kurt - 1 run, 8 hits
Hansoo, Matt, Peter - 0 runs, 9 hits

HR: Evans (4)

A Game of Inches

5 heroic Halens ultimately failed to defend against the 4 victorious Vans today in a game that felt a lot more symmetrical than it looked on paper.  Each team had their untouchable ace---Hansoo vs Andy---but each team also had plenty of hits and plenty of missed chances.  Both teams failed to score with 'em loaded at least once (twice both?), yet both teams also made brilliant defensive grabs that saved runs.  Kurt caught a lined tomahawk smash from Eric right at his ankles;  Eric returned the improbable favor by gloving a low one straight back to the mound;  and Matt bolted off the mound to spear a fast grounder that just didn't look playable.  (He also cleanly fielded Kurt's batt deep into tripleland.)

The top of the 3rd was where all the scoring happened:  JD got into trouble early and with two on Eric clubbed a gapper double to break the seal for his lone ribbie.  Then The Big Unit took the plate and walloped a waist-high laserbeam triple that scored three more and that's where it would remain.   

Other noteworthy symmetries included:  both Matt and Adrian served each other weird high rpm balls that neither could quite manage to smother.  And both Eric and Hansoo had ABs that went: perfect pitch/Strike 1, swing-and-a-miss/Strike 2, hard low smash right to LF's feet, miraculously caught inches off the ground/Out.  

Andy, Dewey, Eric, Matt - 4

Adrian, Hansoo, JD, Kurt, Mark - 0

Home Runs - None

Sept. 30, 2017: A day that will live in improbability

A virtually insurmountable 1-0 lead by the Vans on Saturday was, beyond all forms of logic and reason, undone by a two-run explosion in the sixth. Adrian, hobbled by recent finger surgery, was taken advantage of by the type of ruthless opportunism one should expect from the OW&A. The Halens won 3-2.

Sun Tzu would be proud.

The outcome would have been much altered had not:

1. The Vans left the bases loaded on several occasions.

2. Dewey not been robbed by Eric of several deep hits.

The Vans drove in a run in the ninth to make the Halens sweat some but that cry of hope was made quiet by muted bats.

A rookie, too, was broken in. Andrew (not to be confused with the older, taller Andy) accounted for two singles in his initial outing. After a thorough explanation of the rules (follow by an apology for such obfuscation) the younger Andrew faced pitchers with aplomb. On the mound, he learned to count on his finely tuned and sure-handed oufield. At his homecoming dance tonight, Andrew is sure to spend the entire night talking about our endeavors.

In lieu of offense, we did learn the distance of a double (58 feet), triple (77 feet) and at-fence home run (94 feet). The mound sits 35 feet from the box. This research was brought to us by Eric who produced scientific equipment and a thirst for knowledge to get us to this frontier.

In attendance: Dewey, Hans, J.D. and Mark for the Halens; Adrian, Andrew, Eric, Kurt and Pete for the Vans.

Weather conditions: God smiled on our corner of Ohio. Asking for anything better would be criminal.

If this were an ordinary weekend..

So much to report from the asphalt BUT...

Ordinarily I would write in breathless prose about the return of Dewey to Nance Bradds Field and to our spirited bat-and-ball play. Ordinarily, I would mercilessly savage Kurt for sitting on his league leading batting average. Ordinarily, I would make jokes about this being an "offensive" game after 11 runs were scored in the first inning, and then none in the remaining five.

But this is no ORDINARY weekend, dear wifflers. For this weekend sees the return of ..

Yes, Matt passed Kurt in the batting stats and sits at the head of the table. Sure, Adrian was run-ruled in the first. Yup, they used the black bat named Esther. But none of that is important.

Sunday night on CBS, Star Trek returns to serial television for the first time since 2005!!!!!

REALLY WHAT COULD BE MORE AWESOME THAN THIS?!?!?!?

Adrian, Andy, Matt - 1 run, 15 hits

Dewey, Hansoo, Peter - 10 runs, 19 hits

HR: None

Two is the One

It's not enough to induce the easy fly ball - your outfield has to CATCH them. 

The visitors dropped three easy fly balls that should have been three outs and could have been four outs. These misplays led directly to three home-team runs in a game the home boys won 4 to 2.

Nonetheless is was a good, tight contest; the visitors loaded the bases after two were out in the top of the ninth. Hansoo came to bat to face Andy... and struck out to end the day.

Adrian, Hansoo, Matt, Peter, Eric Z. - 2 runs, 17 hits
Andy, Bob, Kurt, Mark - 4 runs, 20 hits

HR: none

Monday Morning Wiffle, Live From Budget Field

So there was this:

So Peter had to do this:

Which had the side benefit of allowing us to do this:

Bob got a single on that pitch, by the way. Welcome to Budget Field!

Fred, Matt, Mark, Ryan, Hansoo - 5 runs, 18 hits
Bob, JD, Kurt, Peter - 2 runs, 14 hits

HR: Ha (4)

Commish Walks 'Em Off

Quite a day on the asphalt. Eight were there and seven played; eight were witness to something seldom seen in sport.

First to the game. The home team of Bob, Kurt and Peter took a 4-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning. It really looked like it would be more but Adrian turned the timeliest, clutchiest double play to squelch the rally. That 4-0 score stood pat until the top of the eighth inning.

In that 8th inning, Peter was pitching for his third turn on the bump. Anonymous sources insinuated that Peter had drawn the pitching rubber a little further back today - to goose the offense. IF so, it came back to bite Peter himself as he allowed 6 runs to the visiting Adrian, Andy, Eric K., and JD. JD contributed 5 of those 6 rbis in that inning. Heck of a day.

So, to the moment. Bottom of the ninth, Adrian on the mound for HIS third turn with the ball. A merry-go-round of singles and a couple of outs has us with a 6-6 tie, two outs and teh bases loaded. Who's at the plate?

Peter.

The long AB (and the game) ends with a bouncing single to the first base side of the pitcher. Walk off, 7-6 win for the home team.

Know this: no other team game is played in a way that would allow one player to be goat and hero in one game. Not even modern baseball, the way it's played today. Volleyball maybe? Heck of a day. And eight were there to see it.

Adrian, Andy, Eric K., JD - 6 runs, 15 hits
Bob, Kurt, Peter - 7 runs, 17 hits

HR: none

BREAKING NEWS

In a surprise development that caught the Oakwood wiffle community completely off guard, Commissioner Peter Berwald announced an immediate end to the 2017 OW&AC Season. "Considering the constant heat, global warming and how it is only late spring, I came to the undeniably sound conclusion that the season should end now," Berwald said in an emotional statement, holding back the understandable tears. "Effective today, June 17, 2017, all games and stats... are final," he added, solemnly.

While the news came as a shock to wifflers of all stripes, the league's players, young and old unified to support Berwald, lovingly known as "Commish."

"I postulate that Peter did the right thing," said Dr. Kurt Mosser, "since he decided it and he said it, it must be good."

A spokesperson for Brent Mackintosh gave conditional approval of the move adding, "Brent assumes theory sessions will still be scheduled, at least in air conditioned facilities."

Dewey Darden and Mark White were seen simply saluting and beginning their off-season routines.

A downtrodden Eric Zamonski added, "Elizabeth Montgomery was hot."

Lindsay turned heads with his 8-for-10, 5 RBI day.

Matt "Stats" Lindsay, now permanently atop the batting charts for 2017, declined to comment.

FINAL:

Dewey, JD, Peter - 0 runs, 11 hits
Bob, Eric Z., Kurt, Matt - 11 runs, 24 hits.

HR: None

No such thing as Wenis

The blog was going to be glorious this week. Embellished with wenis facts, trivia and lore. Not to mention tons of wenis word play: your puns, your malapropisms.

Much of this would likely been made at the expense of the visitors (Dewey, Andy and Peter) who were out played by an 8-wenis margin. See what I did there?

It would have been a tremendously funny blog entry. But there is no such thing as a wenis. Urban legend, based off an episode of Friends, apparently.

Andy, Dewey, Peter - 3 runs, 13 hits
JD, Kurt, Matt - 11 runs, 22 hits

HR: none

Fantasy Wiffle

The weather and the community conspired against the OW&AC today. Cold and wet, plus the annual Oakwood Bike Safety Rodeo made it impossible to play wiffle. Oh, Well.

NOT!

Because of these unfortunate circumstances, Andy, Bob, Pete did NOT face off against Adrian, JD, and Kurt. These gentlemen did NOT play to a 2-2 tie. Kurt definitely did NOT go 8-for-15 with 2 RBI. Andy certainly did NOT earn the season's first base on balls.

These feats, though they could NOT possibly have occurred, are reflected in the stats, because I am a gullible mensch.

Andy, Bob, Pete - 2 runs, 18 hits
Adrian, JD, Kurt - 2 runs, 18 hits

HR: none (this I believe)

Thumpin'

Mother Nature drenched the field on Saturday, so the league was reduced to the impious players on Sunday, again.

The visitors (Dewey, Hansoo, and Stats) brought out the thunder sticks and the lightning arms for the game, as it turned out. They produced 10 runs using a 26-hit attack from the first inning to the ninth. All the while surrendering zero runs and only 12 hits to the homestanding Adrian, Eric (!), Kurt and Pete.

Dewey's 10-for-18 (plus 4 RBI) led the winners and earns him a blog mention, though average-wise Pete's 6-for-9 in a losing cause was the best of the day. Hansoo (7-for-18, 4 RBI) hit the game's only dinger and was just a triple shy of hitting for the cycle. Ironic, as this was a game that featured four different players hitting triples.

Just not Hansoo.

Indeed, Pete and Matt (9-for-18, 2 RBI) were both just a homer shy of the cycle. For Matt, that's the same as saying he was a Unicorn shy of the cycle.

Nothing says it better about the pitching than saying "9-inning shutout." Matt threw three shutdown innings following top halves where his team scored. As the game wore on this seemed less and less an achievement, since everyone was pitching shutouts.

Dewey, Hansoo, Matt - 10 runs, 26 hits
Adrian, Eric, Kurt, Peter - 0 runs, 12 hits

HR: Ha (1)

To Whom It May Concern

Peter had an Idea: let's play Sunday wiffle, since the weather was not so good on Saturday. Seven men showed up, but Zamonski once again was the Spanish at Trafalgar.

The quality of play was matched by the glorious weather. In the end, the home team cobbled together an 8-inning 7-5 victory, with a gutsy performance by Bob (who stayed vertical, not Horizontal), One big inning off of Dewey, and Bee Gees jokes.

The visiting team of Dewey, Hansoo, Matt and Adrian built an early 5-1 lead, but then their bats flew to Odessa. Spirits Having Flown, Dewey took the mound for his second turn on the bump, and gave up a series of Spicks and Specks hits. 2 Years On the lead was gone and they were down a run. Peter got the dream that inning, by the way.

Stats gave up another run in an inning where the home team of Bob, Kurt and Peter loaded the bases with no one out. Stats couldn't replicate the feat of Mr. Natural, Krash Mosser, who had earlier allowed the bases to be loaded then surrendered no runs.

Down two in their final at bats, the visitors had two on with two out with Peter gasping for the save. Trying to reach the Cucumber Castle with a dramatic late rally, instead, Matt struck out while laughing at one of Mosser's High Civilization jokes. Meh, Size Isn't Everything.

Adrian, Dewey, Hansoo, Matt - 5 runs, 19 hits
Bob, Kurt, Peter - 7 runs, 22 hits
Barry, Robin, Maurice - 8 Grammys, 12 Top 40 Hits

HR: none

This Is Where I Came In

When the Commish is Away...

It's a proud, bittersweet, moment when a parent sees their child off into the world of independent adulthood. Seeing that they can manage a life, contribute to society, make art, consume calories, etc. This week, the OWAC did manage to have a game, even without the beneficent leadership of the Commish.

Stats, his left wrist in a brace, managed to pull off a game. And as has been noted in the past - the only thing he does worse than drawing the lines, is picking the teams. BUT NOT THIS TIME!!! This time, the lines were MUCH worse than the teams.

In fact is was a very competitive 7-5 game. The game ended with the tying run in scoring position. The game featured a lot of hits, some amazing defense. Memorable in every way - except for J.D.

Mark had pitched himself into a jam. Bases loaded, one out. JD gave him a pretty tough at bat, but then fouled one off the wall that mark managed to catch and then turn into a nifty double play. Rally quashed.

No one likes to do that, but it happens. But for JD - it happened twice. In the eighth inning with Tim Y. on the mound JD did it again, this time with an easy grounder. Twin rally-killing double plays in a game where your team loses by 2. Ugh. JD, we hope your Easter goes better.

It was a better day for Andy, who's twin home runs put him firmly in the league lead in that category. Like they say, you can't win an MVP in April, but you can lose it.

Dewey, Hansoo, JD - 5 runs, 22 hits
Andy, Kurt, Mark, Tim Y. - 7 runs, 16 hits

HR: Evans (2)

Spring Training Wiffle

Where we're all in the best shape of our careers.

Pitchers and catchers reported to Nance Bradds Field for the start of another year of OW&AC Wiffle Ball. Andy, Hansoo, Matt and Peter were the stalwarts who reported to camp on time. Everyone else owes us a shandy.

Stats sporting the official Spring Training Cap of the OW&AC (Photo: Hansoo)

The intra-squad game was actually a good one. A 4-2 final that saw the visiting Hansoo and Peter come from behind late to win it in 6 full innings. But this is just Grapefruit Ball at this point. We're all just working on some stuff, finding the release point, hoping to contribute to the big club.

Peter swings and misses. Later, when it mattered, he drove in his team's final run. (Photo: Hansoo)

Hansoo, Peter - 4 runs, 18 hits
Andy, Matt - 2 runs, 10 hits

HR - None