Storm returns to form

It was a close game… for the first inning. Storm remembered how to hit and scored five in the first. Surge scored four and it looked like it would be a close game. Then Storm kept scoring and Surge didn't. Storm scored multiple runs in every inning with so,id hitting up and down the lineup. Cereal and Tank Engine, and Big Daddy D hit triples, and Bob hit the team’s only home run. This was actually a big deal because… Big Daddy D had a shot at his second cycle of the season. After getting blocked from a triple by Greg, he ended up getting the triple in his next at bat. He eventually came up needing only the home run to complete the cycle and due to the generous nature of the rest of the team, all of the home runs had been saved for this very moment.  He smacked a double. It looked like he might get another chance to hit, but was left stranded on deck looking for another chance for the homer.   Surge had a resurgence in the fourth and fifth innings, with a couple of home runs, but it was too little too late. 

Defensively, Storm played a better game. Child labour was put to good use as Tank Engine made some good plays at third after his daughter restrung his glove for him. Cereal and Big Daddy D cut off some balls in the outfield heading for the gaps. Unfortunately, a couple of good relays home didn’t quite get the outs. Baby kangaroo made a couple double plays. On one he had to get around Toeless Joe who was trying to help/get in the way. It’s unclear.. The defence wasn't perfect, though. Brian made a great play at first. So great that Captain Underpants was too busy admiring it, and forgot to cover first. That didn't stop Brian from leading a phantom pitcher to first with a throw. And Toeless Joe Jackson's goat sacrifice didn't work. He might need a larger animal. Or maybe human sacrifice. He bobbled the ball and then gunned it to Brian who tried to catch it with his gut. Brian played the rest of the game with bruised intestines and internal bleeding.

There was also some interesting running. Mills apparently needs more fibre in his diet. He had a bad case of the runs. He tried to turn a single into a double, but only got half way and then turned around, and headed back to first. He didn't make it.

It was a game that was more reminiscent of Storm than the past couple. Storm needs to keep this momentum up if they want to fend off Triple Play for second overall in the standings and catch the A’s for first.

Check out the Podcast of the game as reported by;

Boxscore
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	Total
Storm	5	5	3	4	2	5	2	26
Surge	4	0	0	0	2	5	0	11

Too Little, Too Late

 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was a game of hitting, it was a game of scoreless innings; it was a game of defence, it was a game of errors; it was a game of comebacks, and a game of not quite enough. If you feel like you’re experiencing deja vu, it’s because you are. I literally copied and pasted this intro from the previous game, slightly disappointed because the description fit this game better than the previous game as Storm’s Jekyll and Hyde act continued. 

The first three and a half innings were not kind to Storm. You didn’t need to be Pythagoras, Newton, or Einstein to calculate Storm’s score for the first three innings of the game. Even a media producer and English teacher could add the zero to the zero to the zero to get the sum total of… zero. Storm played decent defence across the first three innings, but that pesky monkey with cymbals was lurking in the background. It struck in the top of the fourth inning. There was a ground ball to Toeless Joe Jackson. It was such a routine play that the runner didn’t run. But Toeless Joe decided to play the ball with his stomach instead of his glove and it bounced off. Then Toeless Joe quickly picked up the ball, spun on his four good toes and gunned the ball way over first base to allow a runner who had barely moved a double. A couple more errors, a baby kangaroo that had lost its jump allowing a couple of balls over its glove and a massive home run and suddenly Storm was down 13-0. That’s one more than Storm spotted Broadway two days earlier.

Storm then shifted personalities and returned to being the team they expect to be. Cereal and BP hit back to back doubles followed by a couple of singles and more doubles by Big Daddy D and Lancer Beam. Storm scored six without giving back any home runs.

There was only one run scored combined in the 5th and that went to TP. In the 6th, Storm held TP to one run again, and brought some thunder in their turn at the plate. Storm singled and doubled their way through the order, scoring six more runs to pull to within three. This would set up an exciting climax.

TP would try to wipe Storm away by adding two more runs, increasing the lead to five. Storm, however, had four home runs to use and was starting near the top of the order. Unfortunately, it was not meant to be. Storm put two runners on, but a coaching mistake of not courtesying for Captain Underpants led to an unfortunate fielder’s choice that was the second out of the inning. Storm couldn’t mount a comeback and were wiped out by TP. 

For the second game in a row, Storm started slowly. It’s probably not a good idea to give your opponents double digit leads. Also, Storm was short handed and it seems when they only have half a team, they can only play half a game. 

Check out the Podcast of the game as reported by;

Boxscore
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	Total
Triple Play	1	3	3	6	1	1	2	17
Storm	0	0	0	6	0	6	1	13

A Tale of Two Games

 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was a game of hitting, it was a game of scoreless innings; it was a game of defence, it was a game of errors; it was a game of comebacks, and a game of not quite enough. Storm seemed like two different teams depending on the inning in the game against Broadway.

In the first two innings, Broadway played all the hits as Storm were Les Miserables. Before the game a couple of players were joking about earned run average and whether it could be called that when we don’t keep track of errors, only to discover that Big Daddy D sometimes keeps track of earned versus unearned runs when he is bored in the outfield. After a ground ball was thrown away and another ball was booted, The Saskatchewan Muskie  informed Big Daddy D that he should start keeping track of the unearned runs because there were going to be a lot of them. He was right.  Broadway mercied Storm in each of the first two innings. Broadway definitely earned some of their runs as they were the producers of a couple of massive hits over the fence, but Storm certainly gave them a few encores with extra outs. Storm only recorded three outs total in the first two innings, and one of them was a home run out! 

Giving up runs wouldn’t have been so much of a problem if Storm had been able to score runs. However, Storm was shut out across the first two innings. They  turned into a different team in the the 3rd. They remembered how to hit and scored the max six. Storm was patient, as there were four walks, and they got some timely hits to reach the max. They also finally kept Broadway from mercying them. They gave up three runs, and made the game slightly more respectable. 

The Jekyll and Hyde nature of Storm continued in the fourth. Storm scored five more in the top to bring the score to 15-11. After being down 12-0, that was quite an achievement. But there was a monkey with cymbals lurking in the background waiting for this Broadway show to turn into a circus. And it did. Storm was mercied again in the fourth and the inning ended with an inside the park grand slam. This was a ground ball to 2nd, but on direct orders from El Presidente, Toeless Joe Jackson was playing more of a short rover than 2nd base and couldn’t get over. The ball then made it past a sliding right centre fielder and a diving left centre fielder and made it all the way to the fence. 

Having seemingly given up, Storm only scored one in the top of the 5th, and with time running out, it seemed like they would run out of time before they would run out of outs. At this point, Toeless Joe, who was desperate to get some balls in his hands started asking to pitch. The team thought they’d give old Batting Practice Thomas one more chance. Apparently someone should have threatened him with the hook earlier, because he went on to record six out of the next eight batters in record time giving Storm the chance they would need to come back. Storm scored four in the six to make it close.

As the seventh inning started, Toeless Joe called his own home run shot as he was adding up how many runs Storm needed to win the game, and he did, indeed come up as the tying run. Though he insisted he was not going to miss his shot, he of course did, and the game ended with a long fly ball out. Not only Argentina  was crying for Storm as they fell just short of a comeback after giving away so many runs in the beginning of the game. 

Check out the Podcast of the game as reported by;

Scoops Jockovitch

Boxscore
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	Total
Storm	0	0	6	5	1	4	3	19
Broadway	6	6	3	6	0	0	x	21

Storm holds on to win after scary seventh

 Storm had complete control of the game against the Falcons. Or so they thought. But the Falcons quietly soared back into the game making it a much closer match than Storm wanted. 

The game started off as a tightly contested affair as each team scored three in the first inning. The Falcons put up three in the top of the first. Storm had the answer, though. Big Daddy D flexed his muscles and started the game with a solo blast that took him the rest of the half inning to find. Lancer Beam hit a two run shot to round out the scoring for Storm. 

Storm started pulling away in the second. The Falcons scored two. Storm would score five led by a Joey  two run blast and a Mills triple.  In the top of the 3rd, the Falcons hit a solo home run for one run. Jeff led off the top of the 3rd for the Storm and used some of the extra weight he put on from the cruise to give him that extra umph to lead off with a solo home run. That marked Jeff’s first home run since the pandemic started. Of course, the home run was problematic, because it put Storm pluis two and Lancer beam batted with the bases loaded, but without the ability to knock it out, he grounded out.

Storm got their momentum back in the fourth as they scored four more and Big daddy D tripled in two runs. Storm would add one in the fifth and score a big six runs in the bottom of the sixth. It seemed like it might have been adding on,as they went into the inning up 14-7, but it turns out they would need more of those runs than was comfortable. This inning was also special because it marked an interesting scoring dilemma. Big daddy D hit a single, which was all he needed for the cycle, and then rounded first and when he saw the throw go home, he ran for second making it easily. This left the scorers with a dilemma. Was it a single and an advance on a throw? In real baseball, absolutely. But with Storm scoring? In the end it was decided that Big Daddy D had hit a single and nobly advanced to try to help the team. It was the first cycle of the season for Storm. The inning then ended with the Saskatchewan Muskie hitting a home run out (which also would not have been an out if not for Jeff’s selfish solo). 

Storm was pretty relaxed as they headed out onto the field for the top of the seventh. So relaxed that nobody seemed to know the score. They knew they were winning, but nobody really knew by how much. A lot was all anybody knew. What they didn’t know, was that Batting Practice Thomas was going to revert to BP form and the Falcons started hitting, and hitting, and hitting, and hitting, and hitting, and hitting, and hitting, and hitting, and hitting, and hitting. And suddenly it became very important that Storm learn the score. So they asked the opposing score keeper. They were still winning, but by much less than when the inning had begun. As a matter of fact, the tying run was standing in the on deck circle. Where was Captain Underpants when you need him? Storm managed to hold on by the skin of their teeth (for those on the team who still have all their teeth), and won 20-16. But it was tighter than it should have been.

Check out the Podcast of the game as reported by;

Scoops Jockovitch

Boxscore
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	Total
Falcons	3	2	1	0	1	0	9	16
Storm	3	5	1	4	1	6	x	20

Ferris took the night Off

 The Buellers couldn't field a team.