Got ya! Nothing of the sort happened! But it makes for good entertainment and I'll bet the hearts of those of you not present skipped a beat...I just can't help myself sometimes...I'm such a card :) :) <vbg>

Anyhoo...my two cents is that these teams were well matched. We warmed up together, laughed, joked, ribbed, and generally had a good time. Comic releif was provided by the combination of Matt's continuous digging into Mark during the game as well and the Homers' Richard who couldn't believe what was happening by the end of the 5th inning. But I get ahead of myself. Instead I think I'll let Sam tell the story in his own words. (I've added my editorial comments in italics for clarification as necessary.) The game was sooooo exciting that a rare event occured...Mark took very few pictures with his still camera. He and Jose did, however, both bring video cameras to record the event for posterity. What pictures there are come from video frames of Mark's video camera. They're in the usual place. So here's Sam's report:

****

Tonight our team's secret strategy almost worked. Through four innings we had the mighty Homers reeling. Stirred up by their manager pointing them to the inciteful "bulletin board material" on our trash-talking website, the Homers came out swinging for the fences. We gladly conceded a couple of impressive leadoff home runs, and we generously congratulated our mighty opponents on how far and hard they could smash the ball. But in between their homers (note: the Turkeys held them to a total of only 4 HRs all night), we had: Matt and Gerardo catching some of their long flies (which included on in which Matt was stepping down the hill nearly out of view before catching it); Justine at 1B rescuing our shortstops on four separate occasions by stretching to hold an off-target throw or pulling a low one out of the dirt (Richard was recruiting her for his B-league team by the end of the 2nd, You stay away! She's ours!); and a terrific cutdown at home plate of one of their best homer hitters, whose long swat in the 1st inning was only good for 3.99 bases instead of 4, due to a couple of strong throws by Gerardo and Jose and a great tag by Phil. For all their awesome power, the Homers had accumulated just one two-run inning and three one-run innings. In the meantime, the Turkeys started quietly amassing runs in our own turns at bat. Nothing too impressive: pairs of extra-base hits by Mark and Phil, and a key home run by Bill, but otherwise just a lot of puny singles. But our six singles in the 2nd were worth 4 runs, and we led 4-3 after two. Ten more Turkey hits and one key Homers error in the next two innings put us up by 13-5 after four. Then after scoring two more runs in our top half of the 5th, we had the Homers pleading for mercy (well, at least they gladly accepted the automatic mercy out when the score reached 15-5 in our favor!).

On those rare occasions when the Turkeys have taken 10-run leads this year, we're prone to suffering a letdown afterward. Partly from overconfidence. Partly from embarrassment at piling on too many runs against a weaker opponent. (Partly looking forward to beer and pizza.) But tonight was no time to show mercy to an opponent as good as the Homers. Our letdown tonight began without much fanfare when Sam ended our mercy-out 5th inning with a meek foul popout to 3B, at a point when another puny single would have added two important insurance runs to our big-but-not-big-enough lead. Then, with their backs against the wall, the Homers (fine team that they are) rehuddled and stressed the importance of just hitting the ball to the holes in our defense (Hey! Wait a minute! They can't call themselves the Homers and just go for singles, can they? For shame!). And for the next two innings our defense assisted them by creating a few extra holes in places where they shouldn't have existed ;-) The net result was two consecutive 7-run innings by the Homers, and our 15-5 lead dissipated into a 19-18 deficit at the end of six. The Homers scored their lead run with two outs in the 6th, despite the most exceptional play of the night by Justine, a diving grab of a hot grounder to her right at 1B, which everyone admired gazingly, including pitcher Mark who was so entranced by her awesome play that he forgot to cover 1st! (Later that night at dinner, Mark blamed the whole incident on Justing for just being too good a player...it's all her fault!) The batter beat Justine's valiant effort to scramble back to the base, while another runner scored from 3rd to put the Homers up 19-18. That was the final score, as the game ended quietly on our final at-bat when the Homers' pitcher speared a hard-hit line drive by Katie and turned it into an inning-ending double play, with the night's hitting star Bill lurking on deck and itching for a chance at an historic 8-RBI game if only Katie's line drive had gone through for a hit.

The bane of the Turkeys' defense this year has been the double 7-run inning. In our losses to the Goats, the Monkeys, the Fringes, and now the Homers, we've given our opponents not one, but two, innings of exactly 7 runs each! But all those other games were early in the season before we started to jell as a team. Our loss tonight was somewhat of a collapse on our part, but it was mostly due to a determined comeback by a very sound team on the other side of the field. Our hats off to the Homers, a fun team to play and a worthy victor tonight. (But having won our first game against them this year by a score of 14-12, the Turkeys can still lay claim to the season series by an aggregate score of 32-31 ;-)

I'm proud of our team for the effort we gave tonight. Hopefully the Turkeys can build on our newfound high level of play this year, and schedule another exciting home-and-away series against the Homers next year.

***

This week we have an offensive and defensive Turkey of the Week awards. Bill, who crushed our only homer this game and who had 5 RBIs was given the offensive nod, and Justine who sparkled at first was given the defensive nod. Congrats to both of them for their great play.

Finally, we have to bid adeau to Justine who returns to school this week. We loved having her join our team during her summer in So. Cal. and look forward to seeing her return next summer. Good bye and good luck Justine!