FPLL Major Yankees

On a beautiful April Saturday, the Cubs knocked the Yankees off the unbeaten pedestal with a 1 - 0 victory. Story of the game...Marcus gave us his best Cy Young impersonation. How good was it? How about this..14 strikeouts, 1 walk and one hit 0 runs allowed. He was ruthlessly efficient, throwing 78 total pitches over 6 innings and mainting a 72% strike rate. Man, that's good! The game started after a brief discussion over Marcus' eligibility to throw and under threat of protest if he was allowed to pitch. Fortunately, a rulebook was found that cleared up the situation and the rest is history. Highlights... Very few defensive highlights given the 14 strikeouts. However, in a play that will be endlessly rerun on ESPN (had they been out there), Vince made a diving, full extension catch in the 5th inning to put a stop to a budding Yankee rally. Great job, Vince. Offensively, there were also very few highlights, given the 1-0 score. We scored the only run of the game in the 1st inning when Wyatt slapped a double and Marcus brought him in with a single. Vince and Parker also cracked singles to account for our hit total of 4. Next game is Tuesday against the Royals.

A generally lethargic performance through 4 innings gave way to an exciting 5th and the Cubs bounced back from their first loss of the season with a 4-2 victory over our NBLL buddies, the Orioles. Our pitching was first rate, with Will and Marcus combining to throw a 2 hitter. Will pitched 4 innings, gave up 1 run on 1 hit, with 4 walks and 12 strikeouts. That means he struck out the side 4 straight times. However, he was not very efficient with his pitches, walking an average of a batter an inning and working some batters high in the count and eventually, his total number of pitches caught up with him. Not too worry, however, as Marcus was up to the task and relieved in the 5th and threw 2 innings of 1 hit ball, allowing only 1 hit and one run, striking out 3. At the plate, before the 5th, we had one hit, an infield single that Josh beat out. In the 5th, Marcus lead off with a double down the left field line, Sam continued his streak of being HBP, Josh singled again, Cabell walked, and Anthony singled, all leading to scores by Marcus, Sam, Josh and Cabell, giving us a 4-2 lead. Marcus then got the win by striking out the first batter of the 6th, getting the second batter to hit a hard shot to Miles at SS that he expertly handled, and then by shrewdly walking the last batter so he and Will could pull off the old hidden ball trick for the last out at first. Next game is Saturday at 12:30 against the Yankees.

Tonight the bear got us. The Red Sox, who we held to 3 hits and 1 run 3 days ago, exploded for 13 runs to hand the Cubs our first defeat of the season, 13-0. Story of the game...we had no answer to the Red Sox pitching. Our offensive highights were a couple of walks, a couple of groundouts and a fly ball. You don't need to be a baseball expert to figure out that those kind of results are going to end up bad for the home team. One of the few bright spots was Vince on the mound. He threw 4 innings, recorded 6 strikeouts and we were still in the game when he left the mound. After that, walks, misplays in the field and some big hits by the Red Sox put the game out of reach. Next game is this Thursday at 6 against our fellow NBLL team, the Orioles.

Cubs pitching limited the hard hitting Red Sox to 3 hits over 6 innings and Cubs batters produced big hits when they counted most to post a 9 - 1 victory this afternoon at Fleet Park. Will got the win and Vince got the save and combined to throw a 3 hitter that held the Red Sox to 1 run. Marcus, Will and Wyatt all had big hits that drove in 7 of our 9 runs. Marcus got a big 1st inning single to right that drove in the first 2 runs that staked the Cubs to a 2-0 lead. The Red Sox got their lone run in the 3rd after a walk, a catcher's interference call and a single resulted in their lead off batter crossing the plate. After that, the Cubs woke up and scored 7 runs over the next 2 innings to ice the game. In the 4th, Will helped his own cause with a blast over the right center fence for the Cub's first home run of the season. In the 5th, Wyatt came to bat with the bases loaded and crushed a triple to the center field fence, scoring all 3 baserunners. When the throw went wide at 3rd, Wyatt scampered home to complete a 4 run at bat. Other notes: *Will pitched 4 innings, recorded 8 strikeouts while giving up only 2 hits for the W. So far this year, he has pitched 9 innings and has recored 19 strikeouts. *Vince came on in the 5th, faced only 7 batters in 2 innings, had 2 strikeouts, gave up only 1 hit and got the Save. He also made a Sports Center Top 10 catch at 1st base in the 3rd inning. *Myles put on an All Star defensive performance at second base *Cabell, with his rapidly improving wheel, had a double with 2 walks *Anthony used his head to gain first base, the hard way, in the 2nd. George and Sam also gave it up for the team by getting HBP. Next game is Tuesday at 6 against these same Red Sox, weather permitting.

...to paraphase the Bard, but even Willy Shakespeare would have to agree that the win tonight does not smell as sweet as some of our other triumphs. The Cubs won their second game of the season 20-7 over the Wards Corner Royals but it was not a well played game by either team. Fortunately, we took advantage of most of their miscues and the game was called after 5 innings. Most of our hits were singles but because of errors in the outfield, we turned them into trips to second and third. One exception to this was Marcus' blast in the 5th that hit the fence and was a bona-fide triple. My count shows we had 12 hits for the night. Vince started the game on the mound and went 3 1/3 innings, recording 6 strikeouts, while giving up 3 hits. Josh closed out the game going the final 1 2/3, with 3 strikeouts. A couple of good plays in the field by our defense aided their efforts. We now take a 10 day hiatus, due to Spring Break. Next game is Saturday, 4/14 against the W/C Red Sox.