by Pete

Beat Rally Falls Short Against Hit Men This week's comeback not enough as The Beat falls 16-14

The latest dip in this roller coaster Summer Season featured The Beat once again staking its opponent to a huge early lead, only to fall short this time. Despite handing our opponents an unsightly 9-0 bulge in the top of the 2nd, the Beatniks came back twice, even taking the lead 10-9 after batting around in the 3rd. That margin held up until the 5th inning when the Hit Men hammered The Beat, taking the lead once and for all, 16-10.

Gamely The Beat scrapped back once again in the bottom of the 5th and final frame, against the muscled-up Asian-flavored Hitmen, and almost came all the way back when Jim "The Thrill" Colletto crushed a 3-run home run in the bottom of the fifth and final frame to cut it to 16-14. But we didn't put it away earlier when we had the chance.

The moral of the story, of course, is that giving up 9 unanswered runs early in a game is a not a high percentage tactical move. Much higher margin of error. We've been doing this a lot this Summer Season, 4 games to be exact, in which we've handed the opposition a lot of runs early on and then had to play catch up. Twice it's worked, but we haven't taken control of games like we did in the Spring and the record shows it-now 2-4 and tied for the basement in Division C-7 with, you guessed it, the Hit Men.

The game was rescheduled from August 21 as part of a morning-afternoon doubleheader for the Hitmeisters (they spilt the twin-bill losing the nightcap to Nicoya 16-12) because of a request before the season from James Onoe, the Hit Men's erstwhile leader. It was played at the long lost Rolph #2 bandbox in the foggy SF September gloom of a 10am start. We showed up early, took BP and some infield knowing that with shortstop Mike "Pizza Man" Weiss out, it'd be back to the future time with an infield of yours truly at 1st, Mark "MSG" St. Georges at 2nd, Kevin Austin at shortstop and Donnell "Big Daddy" at 3rd. It felt like 1995.

Down outfield captain Chris Young, as well as speedsters BJ Bateman and Kid Kevin Doyle, the makeshift outfield alignment included Greg "Lukie" Lukoski in left, Jim in left center, Brian Arcuri in right center and super fill-in Mark Melin, who had answered a last minute call from the manager on Friday night, in right. The battery, as usual was manned by wily veteran Dennis (OB) O'Brien and colorful rookie Gunnar "Man" Rosenquist.

In the top of the 1st inning, we retired the 1st batter on a 4-3 groundout, but back-to-back singles by the Hit Men put runners on 1st and 3rd. The lanky cleanup hitter Parker, a left-handed shortstop no less, flied out to Jim Colletto in left-center for the 2nd out, and the #5 hitter Kain hit a screaming liner to short that "Kevin the Elder" leapt high in the air for, but couldn't bring down. He would've had to be Michael Jordan to do so, it was hit that high, so it dropped for a single and the rally was on. The 1st run scored and the floodgates opened with another RBI single, a 2-run triple that hit the lip of the infield on Rolph #1, another RBI triple deep to center and another RBI single. It was 5-0 before we had our 1st at bat.

The Beat went down in our half of the 1st, but not quietly. With 1 out, Kevin and MSG scorched back-to-back singles. As Kevin rounded 2nd trying to draw an errant throw from the Hit Men left fielder, the gunner slung a rifle throw to 2nd to nip a diving Kev on an accurate, but seemingly late throw. The 2nd base umpire deferred to the home plate blue, who dramatically signaled the out. The Beat bench went wild and the 2nd base blue marched toward us, looking ready to toss somebody. He was addressing his ire at Austin, but Brian Arcuri was the guy chirping away. Painfully aware that we were down to 10 players, I trotted over to silence our bench and mollify the blue with the handlebar mustache. Peace was restored for the moment, but then we went down with a whimper.

Seizing the momentum, the Hit Men rung up another 4 runs in the top of the 2nd inning to make it 9-0. Once again, we got the 1st out, but a single and 3 straight extra base hits accounted for the runs. Another deep liner into no-man's land to straight-away center on the vacant infield of the other field for a triple and a double off the short tall fence in left were the unfortunate highlights.

Then the Beatniks showed some signs of life in the bottom of the 2nd. With one out, Gunnar-man blooped an opposite field liner past the right fielder and legged it all the way around to 3rd for a triple. G-man scored when the HM 2nd baseman booted my grounder. Bases on balls to Mark Melin and OB loaded the bases for Brian, who popped a fly to medium right, which the left fielder (yes the same one), caught on his knees running to his right. On contact with the glove, I took off for home trying to make something happen, but was nailed on another shotgun throw to the catcher. Out by 10 fucking feet. Big play.

By this time the Hit Men were laughing at us and we were pissed as shit. Happily, we held them scoreless in the top of the 3rd despite a leadoff double. Now it was our turn to score some runs.

Following an error by the lefty shortstop on Kevin's grounder leading off the bottom of the 3rd, "The Cottonmouth King" St. Georges rocked an opposite-field triple to score Austin. Big Daddy followed with a booming 2-run blast to right center to make it 9-4. A walk to Jim and singles by Lukie, G-man, me and Mark Melin cut it to 9-7. With 1-out, a sac fly by Kevin and 2-run single by "The King" catapulted The Beat into a 10-9 lead. With Brian at 3rd, D flied out to end the onslaught. At that point we were feeling vindicated, but it was no time to get smug. That's not to say we were, but we were more relaxed at this point.

OB put down the hit Men in the top of the 4th despite an error and the Beatniks came back looking for more. With 1 out, Lukie and Gunnar singled to put runners on 1st and 2nd, but I fouled out and M/M flied out to end the threat. Another big opportunity was foiled by the Hit Men's crafty hurler with his deceptive, but flat delivery. Give the guy credit.

The top of the 5th ended up as the coup de grace. Details aren't really necessary, but our opponents batted around to make it 16-10. Did we have a pulse?

Yes we did. With time ticking away (is this football?), and one out, Brian and Kevin put together back-to-back singles before the hot-hitting MSG knocked in his 4th run of the day with a single to make it 16-11. After D popped to short, Slugger Jim (who's in much better shape than the man he resembles, Will Clark) cranked a 3-run homer to cut it to 16-14. The Beat bench felt a surge of electricity as Lukie followed with a single, but the pitcher-with-the-funky-move got Gunnar to fly out to end it in sudden death.

We came back valiantly, shouldn't have had to, and it was a tough loss to swallow. Watch this space to see how we take out our anger about this loss on the Other Guys and Hit Men in an effort to salvage a 4-4 season in our final two games of the summer.

View The BEAT's 1999 Final Batting Statistics

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