The game was lively with the Turkeys breaking out in front behind a flurry of batting and scoring after an inning or two of great defensive ball play on both sides. Soon the mercy rule came into effect...one of only a few times this year for us to be in this position. (Mark maintains that we always have it within us to create such large leads in a game...only to reach deeply within ourselves to pull out a loss...not to be tonight.) With each team scoring we went into the seventh (and last) inning with a 10 run lead. The game ended with Gerardo catching a towering fly ball from their biggest batter (who had earlier hit a rocket over both Matt and Gerardo).

The stats can be found in the usual place...on the stats page. I've linked to this game.

There was some discussion regarding Turkey of the Week. There were many candidates, and Sam referred to the score sheets at dinner. Leading candidates were Ashley (for solid play at third, first and short field, making one out after the other), Katie (for her hitting, aggressive baseruning, and general great effort on the field), Chris (for a beautiful catch on the run in the first inning), and of course Gerardo (for continuing his record hitting streak). We'll have to wait for Sam's final word later in the week.

Here are the pictures from this game. Due to the number of great shots (and in particular of the "sequences" shot by Joe) I have reduced the size of the pictures just a little. Hope you don't mind that I am saving server space this way. I don't remember the final score...again, these will be posted on the "Stats" page and linked here when I get them from Sam.

As always, it's a great pleasure to be playing with such a great group of fun loving people.

Respectfully submitted by your servant, this 13th day of June 2006.

I received this message from Sam with his view of the game. He selects turkey of the week, etc. It follows.:

The other share of the Turkey of the Week award goes to Ashley for her all-around good play. She was 2-for-3 at bat, and on defense she was a magnet for the ball, participating in a total of four defensive outs from three different positions (3B, SF, 1B). Her good catch at SF in the 5th was the only other play besides Chris's that was awarded a * by our official scorer Jack. Ashley's share of the award tonight was also based on a couple of intangibles not reflected in the scoresheets. Leading off our 1st inning, her speed and hard effort turned an ordinary ground ball out into a bang-bang play at 1st, signaling to our opponents that for this game they would need to field flawlessly to keep Turkeys off the bases. And in the final inning, just as she was about to gun down a Gravity Fielders' runner attempting to score from 3rd, the runner remembered who he was dealing with and wisely retreated. It's not too often that the Turkeys have the "intimidation factor" working in our favor! Keep up the good play, Ashley!

I could just as easily give another share of the Turkey of the Week honors to the whole bottom third of our batting order. The final six batters in our lineup (Katie, Rich, JamesW, Tim, Debbie, Phil) only got two at-bats each, but they were a combined 10-for-12 and 11-for-12 on-base (including one on-base via error), with 11 runs scored and 9 RBIs. Particularly notable in this collection were James's two hard doubles and Tim's 3 RBIs. Lucky for us, we didn't need a third round of hits from these mighty six to defeat the Gravity Fielders tonight. But next week's opponents had better beware, because this "murderers' row" will be leading off for us in the next game when our lineup flip-flops!

And Gerardo's hitting streak still goes on and on and on... Stay tuned.