NFL football has plenty of great qualities but, like any other sport, its’ share of drawbacks. It is universally agreed that main drawbacks of pro football are…

·        Its’ life-altering injuries.

·        Its’ perceived promotion of violence.

·        Terrell Owens.

·        Its’ effect on BAD ASS Baseball.

With last week’s embarrassing turnout of twelve men fresh on everyone’s mind, the BAB powers-that-be ruled in favor of a 3:30pm start for this week’s game. The thinking was the later start would give certain members a chance to complete their Saturday work shifts and head on over to the ballpark. Surely, BAB would field enough fellas for a series game.

Yeah, right.

If last week was a lesson in BAB’s dinosaur era, this week proved to be the midterm. A total of ten players participated in this week’s affair. Only two of them were Orphans. Eight-on-two can be electric in some professions, but it forced this league into its’ second straight week of postponing the Testes Takers/Orphans series. It was decided that upon the arrival of the tenth man—Soonam Chowdhury—a 5-on-5 exhibition game complete with pitcher’s hand rules in effect would take place. Until then, the league’s members took outfield, infield and batting practice before kicking off the match around 5pm, hoping to squeeze in 7 innings before sunset.

Using the ball-roll method to assign teams, Brandon Hamilton, Bryan Bush, Alvin Trinh, Skillz Epps and Chowdhury (Giants) faced off against Cav Manning, Tito Bernal, Torance Matsui, Ed DaRosa and Rob Flores (Rockies). Any ideas of the three MVPs and company bashing the Giants’ brains in with the longball were swept away in the fierce wind blowing in from LF—one player said nothing was getting hit out of the park with “Hurricane Rita” out there to stop it.

The wind balanced out the missing defenders and kept the game relatively low-scoring. By not going for homers, the Rockies took an early 3-1 lead after one inning that was cut in half with help from a DaRosa/Manning OF collision in the 2nd  that allowed a run to score. In the bottom of that inning, Manning had apparently driven home Bernal from 2nd with a two-out single, but Trinh gunned him down at second before Bernal could score, and it remained 3-2. The Rockies put up four more in the third as the sun began to lower.

The Giants weren’t doing a whole lot offensively until the fifth inning, when a two-run single by Epps followed by Chowdhury’s RBI triple secured a 7-7 tie, but that was as close as they would get to leading. In the bottom of the 5th, the Rockies batted around three times using a flurry of singles and two errors (bad throw by Epps, blown force at 3B by Chowdhury) to go up 13-7. The Giants went into the top of the 7th trailing 16-8.

In the 7th, Hamilton and Bush led off back-to-back ITPHR’s to cut the deficit to 6. The Rockies, however, never lost their cool, not even as the Giants continued to chip away at their lead. With 0 out and two men on Bernal turned a huge DP against Hamilton to slow the rally down. Minutes later, with the score 16-14, Chowdhury cracked a deep fly to center—directly into the wind. The baseball descended into Manning’s glove for the final out just as the sun descended behind the distant Milpitas mountains.

GAME NOTES

·        The game was played with a batting helmet for 1B and a clipboard for 3B.

·        Not wanting to risk killing bystanders like last week, the league played at Gill Memorial Park instead of Park Victoria. Trust me, the few children in the playground had no chance of being hit by a HR ball with this wind. DaRosa’s warning-track triple in the bottom of the 4th was the longest-hit ball of the day.

·       In later innings, the setting sun had as much effect on the game as the wind. Infielders and pitchers alike fielded their positions with extreme caution—Epps lost a grounder in the 6th that started in sunshine, then disappeared into the shadow.

·        For the third week in a row, no homers went over the fence—not even in BP!

·       There were plenty of other ITP homers. In addition to the back-to-back shots in the 7th, Bush led off the 6th by circling the bases. DaRosa did the same to lead off the bottom of the 6th—he hit a grounder to 3B that ricocheted off Chowdhury’s glove into foul ground. Soonam couldn’t see it at first and when he picked it up he fired it to 2nd—only DaRosa had taken off for third with SS Bush in close pursuit! Ed could have run the bases twice if he wanted to. (The HR gave him the cycle)

·        In spite of the ill-timed DP, Hamilton enjoyed one of his best games, going 5-for-8 with that IPTHR over a drawn-in OF. His swing looked better than it ever had, and he even made an important catch in CF that would have normally eaten him alive. Attaboy, B-Ham!

·        Last week, Epps recorded his first BAB assist when he threw out a runner at 2nd from BS. He recorded #2 today when he gunned down Matsui at third to end the 1st inning. However, his brain farted when he forgot the pitcher’s hand rule and lollygagged it to 1B on a liner to BS in the third as Flores fired the ball back to the mound. Skillz argued, but when you loaf, you’re not gonna get the benefit of a close call.

·        Absent from the Testes Takers was Al Padron, Nick Collins, Jason LaRose, Justin Coutts, and Ryan Ledee.

·        Absent from the Orphans was everyone except Trinh and Chowdhury. OF Greg Minor missed the game to visit family in Colorado—where he watched the real Rockies whip on the real Giants from his 12th row seat at Coors Field. E