Moving into Contention!

Winning a doubleheader today -- on Hump Day -- put Team 3-C-Cliburn back in the championship race with just three games to go in the week.  This morning we took on the only previously undefeated team and gave them their first loss by a final score (I think) of 8-5.  We got to a lead of 3 to 1 in the first inning and, with good pitching, strong fielding and timely hitting stretched the lead to 8 to 3 going into the final inning and held on for the win.  A key play came in the fifth inning (all Ponce games this week are 6 inning games) when they loaded the bases with one out.  We were able to turn an inning ending double play (shortstop to second to first) to snuff their rally, with me in the middle on the turn.  Double plays in successive games!  I was 1 for 2 at bat, with an rbi single.  My tips from Don Buford ("move your hands up and flatten the bat") and brother Bill ("take a strike, see some pitches, you are too anxious up there") seem to be sinking in.  The team we beat had many players from the teams I played with the last two years when we won the championship each year and which includes, I think, the two best players in camp -- Chris Clark and Joe Cardi.  It was a nice victory

In the second game, we won 7 to 5 against the team that shut us out on Monday afternoon.  Again we had timely hitting, good pitching and tight defense.  Brian Ronholm (our youngest player at 44 years) pitched three strong innings to start the afternoon game after closing the morning game.  I had an rbi single in my first at bat and a double on my second.  Again we built an early lead, kept adding to it and held the opponent off in the end. The two victories put us in second place with a 4 and 2 record going into Thursday - only behind the team we beat on Wednesday morning (they are 5 and 1, with two of their wins coming in sudden death "shoot outs".)  The teams with the top two records after Thursday play for the championship in the main stadium on Friday morning.

A few notes:  Bill and I drove by the new Red Sox spring training facility -- JetBlue Park -- on Tuesday afternoon.  We couldn't get in to walk around the facility - security turned us back -- but it looks like a modern park in the middle of nowhere -- about 3 miles from the Fort Myers airport.  Victor Rodriguez -- Red Sox minor league hitting coordinator, just back from meetings in Boston -- said that some of the rookies will start workouts at the camp next Monday (and, I think Red Sox fantasy camp starts then too.)   Victor said that there are seven fields -- two for the major league team and five for the minor leaguers.   Plans for the area adjacent to the ballpark include hotels, apartments and commercial areas. 

Arnie Beyeler, as manager of the Red Sox triple A team in Pawtucket, was called up to the Red Sox to help in September after the AAA season ended.  He said it was very difficult for everyone to live through the Sox collapse during the month -- that people did everything they could to pull out of it, but nothing worked.  He said he had never seen anything like it.  (Same for all of us, I guess, but we didn't have the up close and personal view he had.)

There have been some cynical suggestions that - just because I'm in big time sports here in Fort Myers - I was giving a paid endorsement for the fabulous Chapstick Cozy and the delicious variety of Kellogg Cheez-It products.  How could people stoop so low and make personal attacks based on nothing but rumor and innuendo?  (My best non-denial, denial.)