by Pete

The Beat Extends Division Lead with Solid 12-5 Win over Straight Out of the Hood Move to 5-1 opens some daylight over idle Ronin

Riding on Kevin (Special K) Austin’s solid outing on the mound, The Beat engineered a convincing 12-5 win today over Straight out of the Hood, a collection of former Cool Dudes and others which moved up to C-league as a result of a championship in DD last summer. Following a week off as a result of the rainout last week, Beatniks anticipated the usual low-scoring match against loquacious pitcher and rap master Victor (Slick Vic) Loggins, the unofficial leader of The Hood. But for the first time in 8 outings against the crafty lefthander, The Beat scored in double figures and swept the season series, which included an 8-5 win at Jackson #1 on April 5.

At 5-1, The Beat is now 4 points ahead of Ronin which enjoyed a bye and sits at 3-1 with a Beat bye coming up next week. The boys in gray face a makeup game against Finnegan’s on May 24 (Memorial Day weekend) with key players Mark St. Georges, Armando Lopez and Jacq Wilson all expected to be out of town. Thus is the unintended effect of an El Nino winter that didn’t happen this year until late spring. The deep depth of The Beat will surely be tested.

2003 Spring Standings Team W L PCT Pts GB The BEAT 5 1 .833 10 – Ronin 3 1 .750 6 1 The Hood 2 3 .400 4 2.5 Finnegans 2 3 .400 4 2.5 Rhinos 0 4 .000 0 4

Strike quickly while the iron is hot
The Beat game plan against Vic is always to jump out quickly and try to hold on as the veteran is known to settle down in the middle innings. This was certainly the case in game 1 on April 5 as the Beat held on to win by 3 after sprinting out to an 8-0 lead in the 4th inning.

Today the boys in gray staked Austin to a 3-0 lead in the first inning and threatened for more, but Loggins was able to wiggle free. By the 4th inning, the Beatniks clung to a tenuous 5-3 lead—about the time the Beat bats normally go silent against Vic. Ultimately the boys took advantage of Straight Out disorganized defense (3 errors) and 2 walks by Loggins to score 7 tallies in the 5th and 6th to pull away for good.

Jim (The Thrill) Colletto paced the offense and won the game ball on the strength of a 3 for 3, 5 RBI performance. Kevin Austin pitched a 7-hitter, allowing only 3 earned runs to lower his spring ERA to 5.11. Special K worked a number of quickly-delivered, legal flat pitches into his repertoire to drive the Hood hitters to distraction. Most importantly, he got dangerous cleanup hitter Carl (Dar-ryl) Thompson to pop up 3 times and held the top 4 batters in the Hood lineup hitless. Others were swinging out of their shoes, but the balls weren’t carrying far in the heavy midday air.

The Beat on the other hand was extremely patient working Vic for an uncharacteristic 8 walks. Since the team moved to a more disciplined approach at the plate in the final spring game of 2002, they have registered an eye-popping 14-1 in regular season games.

With 1 out in the top of the 1st, Jacque Wilson took advantage of a slow-moving Hood outfield to cruise into 2nd base with a double. MSG walked and Donnell (Big Daddy) Moody hit a hard grounder that the 3rd baseman Hector Vado booted out of play to score Jacque for the 1st run of the game. MSG and D advanced to 2nd and 3rd on the play and both crossed the plate on Jim’s smash single. Mondo (3 for 4, 1 RBI) followed with a single and moved to 2nd as the outfield throw followed JC around to 3rd. The Beat, however, missed a big opportunity to take a 5-run lead when Vic got Mike (Butts) Buttafuso to fly to shallow right and Brian Arcuri to line sharply to 3rd.

Kevin battens down the hatch
Special K held the Hood to 1 run over the first 3 innings and got out of a tough jam in the 3rd after Loggins and Robert Martinez led off the inning with singles with the runners advancing to 2nd and 3rd on the throw. Tony Lopez sacrificed Vic in for the 1st Hood run, but Brian (The Rifleman) Arcuri checked Martinez at 3rd on a heads-up play and gunned down Tony’s brother Carlos. Vado flied out to Colletto in deep right to end the threat.

The Beat made it 5-1 in the top of the 4th when Arcuri, who led off the inning with a walk, scored all the way from 1st on Pete Wenner’s double which eluded the diving rover Carlos Lopez. However, Straight Out came right back with 2 runs scored courtesy of a gift from The Beat on an outfield overthrow to 3rd base on Bill Atkinson’s single with Marvin Berrios on 1st base. Both runners came around to score to make it perilously close at 5-3 since this was the time Slick Vic is known to toughen.

Nevertheless, this is not the Cool Dudes, and The Beat took advantage of a slow outfield, an error on the 2nd baseman Berrios and a fluke Jim Colletto sac fly to the shortstop Tony Lopez, who fell down after making the catch, to open it up to 7-3. Perhaps this will become known as the “shot heard round the infield redux?”

Austin worked around 3 Beat errors in the bottom of the 5th to get out of it with only 1 run and a 7-4 lead. Indeed, one of the keys to the Beat win today was the team’s ability to maintain poise in the face of mental mistakes and 5 errors.

Houston, we have lift off
The Beat put the game away in the 6th by taking advantage of 3 Hood errors to plate 5 runs and vaulted to an insurmountable 12-4 lead. The boys quickly loaded the bases with none out when Austin and Greg (Luki) Lukoski led off the inning with singles and Wenner walked—one of 3 on the day. RBI singles by Jacque and Jim sandwiched around errors on grounders by MSG and Donnell put the hammer down for the Beatniks.

Straight Out put 2 runners on with 1 out in the 6th but were wiped out by a beautiful tailor-made 6-4-3 double play to end the inning. The Hood scratched out a run in the 7th to make it 12-5 but Buttsy handled 2 thank you ground ball hops and threw to Moody at 1st to put the game away.

See the scoresheet in pdf (483k) or
On The BEAT News Archive

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