Saturday, November 4, 2017

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.

Sunday, October 29, 2017

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)

Saturday, October 21, 2017

"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)

Saturday, October 14, 2017

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