Friday - Semi Final Playoff Game

The top four teams in camp are playing in the semi finals to decide who gets to play in the championship game tomorrow at Hammond Stadium. We play "Coomdawgs" today (we beat them 8-1 yesterday) - so we feel confident. They are pitching their ace pitcher (L Anderson - "LA") so we will need to have our bats going today to make sure we have some run support for Bremer. I was slated to play first base for the whole game.

The top of the first the Coomdawgs started with a hit and a walk - with runners on 1st and 2nd a base hit made the game 1-0. Bremer was able to work out of the inning by striking out one batter, the next one fouled out and a fly out to end the rally and stranding two runners. That was a scary inning as we could have easily given up more runs than that.

LA looked good early as we went three up and three down in the bottom half of the first. The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th innings were highlighted by dominate pitching - we escaped a one out double by LA (game MVP so far) in the 3rd inning - and the game was 1-0 going into the bottom of the 5th. The Cuban-American Connection started to get something going. LA was throwing a no-no when Bob Bykosky (represent Jersey baby) knocked a solid base hit off of LA. Ryan McDougal came up and first pitch swinging laced a single up the middle. 1st and 2nd and I came up to bat. My first AB resulted in a defensive 3-1 swing and an easy groundout to first. I took ball one, took strike one, fouled off strike two, took ball two. I was looking curveball off LA as he seems to like it and he had not thrown one to me - so the next pitch was that juicy pitch - the problem was it was a good one - low and outside. I was able to get enough wood on the ball to get into RF for a base hit and BB scored our first run - tied up at 1-1. Bremer popped out and Brad Puetz laced a single to Left Field - aggressive baserunning by Ryan McD gave us the lead. I advanced to third on the throw home. 2-1 CAC. Another hit by Van Beach (yes that's his name) made it 3-1 - we scored one more to make it 4-1.

Bremer shut them down in the top of the sixth 1-2-3 - we didn't do anything in the bottom of the inning - this was Bremer's game to lose. The first batter grounded out pitcher to first. The second batter lined a base hit up the middle. The next batter popped out to the pitcher so we had 2 outs and one on. The next hitter hit a grounder to third which found the "5-hole" and now we have runners on 1st and 2nd with 2 outs. LA came up to bat as the potential tying run. Bremer threw an offspeed pitch and LA sent a skyhigh popout that second baseman Scott McDougal was able to snare for the final out.

CAC WINS 4-1!

Next stop -- Hammond Stadium - 12:15pm tomorrow.

Stats: 1 for 2, Run, RBI

Cumulative Hitting: 9 for 19, 6 R, 3 2B's, 6 RBI, SF, 2 BB's, 3 K's

Kangaroo Court is in session this evening - I better bring my wallet.

PB