We shouldn’t be surprised anymore, I suppose. Sparkle Motion stormed the field and left TopCo senseless in an 8:30 romp. Final score was somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 – 2.

This is the team with the really big dude pitcher and some chirpy but harmless musclehead infielders.  They’re fast and athletic, just not particularly good at softball. Well, I take that back. The right-center fielder (brunette in the light blue shirt) made several tricky snowcone catches.

Highlights from the game included Emilie and Lancy’s big hits, a few 3rd base ropes from Aunt Mimiand a rocket from Gary that scored a few in the top of the 6th. Wednesday was also the Skokie league debut for Christine’s Matt, who held his own at SS and hit 7th.  I walked twice knocked a feeble grounder through the infield.  Fielding was good, especially on a 3 man relay that kept a sure fire home run to a triple and John Evans pitched another excellent game.

Looking forward to next week against Prairie Fire when Southern Hemisphere Matt may make his return.

Guess these guys weren’t that good after all.

We’ve definitely lost to them in the past but we came together and spanked an old rival. Newcomer John Evans pitched a shutout into the 7th inning as Sparkle Motion took the game by a final score of 4-1.

Fielding is improving in the outfield and infield. Still no Don (shoulder) but we did get Molly Jones into action.

Next week is Topco.

So yeah, not so good for a first game of the season. 

The weather was warm and the sky was clear but Sparkle Motion made its debut in the Skokie Softball league with a dud, dropping its first game to Jerry’s Nuggets by slaughter in the 6th. Final score, 13-2. 

The game featured some good pitching by new team member John Evans but we had few offensive opportunities, more than a few fly balls over outfielders heads and several infielder juggles, all of which contributed to the loss. 

Afterwards, “offseason rust” was officially blamed and all confidence has been restored for next week against Swingin’ Shillelaghs.

And as for them, if they doesn’t make you embarrassed to be Irish, I don’t think anything can.

Boo to the first game of the year being cancelled due to rain.

We were set to get the 2009 season started against Just One More, who some of you may remember from years passed.  If I’m not mistaken, this is old man river’s team with some uppity players. We’ve beaten them a couple times and they’ve beaten us a couple times. Usually a good game so I’m looking forward to our reschedule.

Next week, we have a 9:30 game against Ski Unit. For those who don’t know, they’re young(er than us, anyway), fast, brash and feature a goofy dude in short shorts and a turtleneck wearing PAB.  That said, they’re pretty good and whenever we’ve beaten them, we snuck up on them with big runs early and put the pressure on them to keep up. Obviously a big test for so soon in the season but we’ll take it as a good measuring stick for what kind of shape we’re in. Let’s hope we spank em.

ok, so we’re not off to a screaming hot start but we’re not totally lost either.

For game one vs. Jerry’s Nuggets, we let a team playing with 9 (just ok) players stay in the game until the 5th. We then threw a couple crooked numbers up two innings in a row and made what had been a close game into a laugher victory. The game was played 5 guys and 5 girls, with Shawn McGivern filling in capably for Don and Paul. No pics or video from this game unfortunately.

Last night vs. Paine Wetzel, we fell victim to a patient team of hitters (they must have walked a 5 or 6 times, easy) and big boppers doing what they’re supposed to. I can’t recall someone hitting 3 home runs against us but their number three batter did just that. It started with a solo shot and ended with two devastating grand slams. Those runs pretty much put the game out of reach, even though it wasn’t so poorly played. We had a couple pop ups and a few strikeouts but did score 9 or 10 so offense wasn’t really the problem. What makes this worse we beat this team HANDILY last year. Oh well…. Don and Miles shared a batting spot, Erin filled in for Christine and there are a few pics and video that I’ll post this week.

On to next week, which is a later game, if I’m not mistaken. I’ll write up something about them when I post the pics/vids.

Great victory last night. Final score, I believe, was 19-1. Full 30 minute video of the game available below. I didn’t add music or check the audio so if there is any cursing or badmouthing, I apologize in advance.

(118 MB, wmv)

Game 8. Basically, it was a no contest against a classy but over-matched opponent with a final score of 13-4.

Guest players Sean, Zach Steph and Jane all performed admirably in the rout.

Video coming soon!

(a little over 100 MB)

It’s kind of long because I stopped editing in the middle somewhere but it has my infamous slide play at home and an instant replay.  In hindsight, the camera angle was not great and the tag may have been a little high (you can see the ball on the right side a little above knee height) but it was close enough to be called out. oops! sorry for complaining.

Whew! Last night’s game was a demonstration in the capability of the 3 Seashells. Offensively, the team piled on 13 runs with several big dings and fielded every reasonable chance they had. The story of the night, however, had to be the stellar pitching of Gary Zimmer, who struck out 3 (remember, this is slow-pitch softball) and surrendered only 1 hit (and shortstop Molly Jones nearly pulled pulled that line drive out of the air before CF Lee Greenberg’s throw to 1st was just a second late).

Granted, Sportin’ Wood (a fellow Howard Street Inn Sponsored team) didn’t have a lineup of sluggers but the ‘Shells refused to play down to the competition, which is a good sign of things to come.

I didn’t get too video much (no tripod) and only took a handful of pictures during the 35 minute game but here they are.

35923580358636013607Next week, the team will be majorly short as Lee, Matt, Elisabeth, Molly and Emilie will ALL be out of town. The Shells will have to look to the farm system of Evanston/Wilmette to pluck a player or two for the matchup against the Smegheads. You gotta wonder if their female team members know what it means?

Also, because Lancy missed the game (thanks for filling in Aunt Mimi!) we had to go 6 and 5 with the order, so Don and I (Miles) shared a spot.

Here’s the Prairie Fire video (50 MB).

ok screencap