ABGSL Sting:
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ABGSL Sting: Competitive Softball ABGSL Home ABGSL Hotline: 510-869-4277 |
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ABGSL Sting 15, Concord Glory 1
The tone was set in the first inning, when Bonnie Coulman walked, stole second, took a throw off her ankle, ignored the pain and raced around to score Sting's first run. On this morning there would be no tears, just cheers. From behind the plate catcher Grace Rusin gunned down a runner who had the audacity to think of a dropped third strike as an opportunity to get on base.
In the first three innings Sting scored 15 runs, stole 30 bases and never were actually stopped , just prevented by the umpires from scoring and stealing even more. After drawing a walk and coming around to score Quinn Lewis reported to the dugout, "The pitcher isn'tt that scary." When the score reached 9-0 a Sting fan, who requested anonymity, but whose cover was later blown when he revealed himself to be the boyfriend of Coach Carrie Arth, said "can the other team just say, like, `can we just end this? (Pause) Don't tell Carrie I said that."
As triumphalism is alien to the Sting fan base it had trouble knowing what to do with the emotions that arise from conspicuous success. Sting fans were clearly troubled by how much more attractive the world is, and how easy life seems, when you know that, whatever else happens, you will win the game. As they gazed into the opposing dugout their feelings raced from gratitude to pity and back again. A few were heard discussing how "cute" the opposing players were. Others simply asked scorekeeper Michael Saaf, repeatedly, for the score. ("Wait, Mike, is it 8-0 or 9-0?")
Sting players themselves struggled with new emotions. When, in the final inning Coach Carrie instructed them to stop stealing bases, they cried in protest. "Why not?" they hollered, and "Other teams do it to us!" "We're not other teams," said Coach Carrie, reminding them, without them knowing it, how lucky they are to be coached by her.
When the game was over, Sting's natural modesty quickly returned. Asked how she felt about her sterling outing, pitcher Robyn Wampler said, simply, "Good." When pressed she said, "Well, it was a no-hitter, so..." She couldn't even bring herself to finish the thought.
ABGSL Sting 8; East Bay Impact 13
Before the game the field umpire walked over to the Sting dugout and had a surprisingly long chat with the players. The takeaway, as one player put it, was "Don' do any of the cheers about their mamas." The ump clearly didn't realize who he was dealing with: Sting doesn't have cheers about other people's mamas. Sting doesn't even have any cheers about its own mamas.
At any rate, there wasn't much to cheer about. At the end of the first inning Sting was down 5-0; and going into the bottom of the second, 10-0. Graham Griffin pounded the strike zone but defensive misplays-- the theme of this game-had Sting fans squirming in their seats. Then Sting stung.
Isabel Lavrov got it started by walking and then dashing around the bases for Sting's first run. She set the tone for the inning that featured many more walks, punctuated by sharp base hits by Sky Salas, Lila Simpson--who also scored- and Graham Griffin. By the time it was over Tatiana Jellinek, Adi Saaf, Raleigh Williams and Quinn Lewis had all scored, too. What looked like a blowout was suddenly a close game: 10-7.
East Bay responded in the top of the 3rd, with a strategy rarely seen at this high level of play: bunting for a home run. "That was a beautiful bunt," a man in the stands pointed out, but no bunt, however lovely, should become a home run. A series of defensive mishaps led to three runs crossing the plate. Going into the bottom of the last inning Sting was in a hole: 13-7.
Once again Isabel Lavrov walked, stole second, and so rattled the opposing pitcher that, by the time the East Bay coach realized what was happening, the bases were Sting-loaded, and the score was 13-8. A new pitcher came in and the rally was squelched. The game ended with Adi Saaf, in a daring attempt to steal home, narrowly missing the space beneath the East Bay catcher's glove.
The loss sent Sting to its snack in a reflective mood. "We could have won if we had played better D," noted Graham Griffin, justly. "If I had to do it over," said Adi Saaf, "I would not run into the final out.
ABGSL Sting 6; San Jose Renegades 5
Revived by snack, in which they consumed two tubs of a strange hybrid cookie-brownie, Sting's defense came to life. Bonnie Coulman snagged a line drive and prevented a certain double. Graham Griffin devoured ground balls at shortstop as easily as her teammates had the brownie-cookies. Sky Salas played second base so smoothly that the Renegades finally gave up hitting the ball in her direction. Salas also crossed the plate with Sting's first run, closely followed by Griffin, Coulman, and finally Derby Gill.
At the end of the first inning Sting led 4-1, and were playing so well that a few Sting fans turned inward to inquire, in modest wonder, what they had done to deserve such talent in their children. "I didn't contribute genes to this," said Robyn Wampler's mother, as Wampler dispatched yet another Renegade hitter. "I didn't even practice with her. I just cooked dinner." Other Sting fans turned their attention to their opponents.
"Nice try number 8! (Sorry we're so good!)
"Nice hit Number Three!" (Whoever's child you are.)
Although they strive to be gracious in defeat, Sting fans clearly find it even easier to be gracious when their children are winning. Sportsmanlike cheers rang out over the diamond, and seemed, momentarily, to paralyze the Renegades. You could see them thinking: from whence come these strange creatures who kill us with their kindness?
Alas, they came to their senses, and their bats awakened. In the bottom of the third, Sting came to bat with the score tied 4-4. Lila Simpson then put on a private show. Hit by a pitch, she proved that she had mastered the art of tossing her bat in disgust with the opposing pitcher's lack of control. She then raced around the bases, unaided, until she arrived at third. Dancing on and off third base she appeared merely to be taunting the opposing catcher into making an ill-considered throw; but her ambition was far greater than that. After each pitch Simpson crept further and further down the line, numbing the catcher to her presence, until she was closer to home than to third. On the catcher's final throw, with the ball in the air en route to the pitcher, she took off, and beat the throw in: a clean steal of home. Jackie Robinson smiled in his grave.
Then came the play that will live long in Sting memory. In the top of the 4th, and last, inning, Sting led 6-4. The Renegades now had a runner on second and only one out, however, with the meat of their order coming to the plate. A Renegade hitter smacked a pitch over first base, that narrowly eluded the grasp of Tatiana Jellinek, in right field, and kept rolling, fast. If this was any other team, or this any other day, the right fielder might have given up on it and conceded what appeared to be a home run. But as the Renegade player rounded first Jellinek chased the ball hotly, reaching it as the Renegade rounded second.
Two things happened next: the play the fans saw, and the play the players lived. The fans saw Jellinek to Salas to Wampler to Simpson. Bang-bang-bang: and the ball arrives at home plate at precisely the same moment as the runner. The fans saw three perfect throws, two perfect relays, and a ferocious, determined attempt to block the runner from the plate. The fans saw a cloud of dust, and the game decided.
The players, on the other hand, lived the experience. Their few seconds of play yielded a novel’s worth of panic. "I was thinking," said Jellinek, "oh crap, It's all my fault. I let the ball get by me. We're going to lose the game."" On the other end of Jellinek's frozen rope Skye Salas was thinking, "I'm going to miss it. Or miss my cutoff. And the runner will score. Because of my humiliating throw." On taking Salas' perfect strike and wheeling towards home plate, Robyn Wampler had her own thought: "I saw her running around third and I thought I could get her. But when I threw it, I thought she was safe." Lila Simpson caught Wampler's throw but not her thought. As she applied the tag, she thought, simply, "you're out. " And she was.
ABGSL Sting 4; East County Hotshots 12
Sting headed into Sunday's play tied for second place, in a field of ten teams. If this were tennis, or badminton, Sting's high seeding would have guaranteed it a low-seeded opponent. But this was softball, and in softball there is no rest, even for the winners. Top seed faced top seed, in a battle only Darwin would enjoy. Just three weeks ago Sting had been beaten, badly, by the East County Hotshots--16-5--in a contest that left only one question unanswered: where on earth is East County? Wherever they were from, they were now here, again.
If any Sting player recalled her last disastrous Hotshot-encounter she did not show it. Or maybe these Sting players realized that they were not the same Sting team of three weeks ago. In any case, Skye Salas led off with a walk, stole second and went to third on Lila Simpson's graceful bunt-- and then came home on Graham Griffin's line drive up the middle. 1-0, Sting. But the Hotshots were still the Hotshots: not merely good softball players but softball players with good taste: matching orange and white gear bags disgorged matching orange and white batting helmets which covered matching pony tails bound by matching orange and white hair bands. Running into their dugout for their half of the inning the Hotshots instantly donned these gleaming helmets, and sat in formation, like well-organized aliens preparing to exit their spacecraft. Unfortunately, these aliens could hit.
Graham Griffin once again pounded the strike zone but on this day the strike zone was a dangerous place. As Sting fans once again failed to locate East County ("Paul Cerami thought it was like, around Clayton. Those parts.") East County found its way home-- four times. At the end of one inning, the score was 4-1, Hotshots.
Then something interesting happened. Sting did not win or really even seriously threaten to win. But Sting bats came alive, in a way they have not yet this season. Tatiana Jellinek smoked a line drive over third base that was of course grabbed by the Hotshot third basemen-- but that against another team might have been a triple. Skye Salas lined a shot to second base; Grace Rusin dropped down a perfect bunt; Lila Simpson drove a long fly to center field.
And then Bonnie Coulman came to the plate. By this time it was clear that, when playing the Hotshots, the only way to hit a ball that would not be caught was to hit a ball that could never be caught-- and that is what Bonnie did. Her titanic shot sailed so far over the head of the center fielder that even the center fielder paused to admire it. In a game played on an exact replica of Wrigley Field the ball landed before the warning track, and then bounced all the way to the center field wall.
For a brief moment even the Hotshots looked confused, as if plans, carefully drawn back in the mother ship, suddenly could not be executed in this galaxy. If there was any point in rounding the bases twice, Bonnie might have done it. Sting went down today, but in a different, more hopeful spirit than three weeks ago. Word of their exploits reached far and wide, and into the men's rest room, where a Hotshot coach was overheard saying, Did you see the ball that girl from the Sting team hit? Oh...My.. God?!!!"