Dawgs Softball in Israel | ñåôèáåì éùøàì - äãåâæ

Now, 2005 was a tough year all around. First of all, we started without Jon. He was going down, faster than we had all thought. He was diagnosed with GBM, and I'm not going to tell you what that is, but the prognosis was not good. We felt his absence in management and playing. We only had a few practices, and Jon not being there made things much more difficult. But we had Yossef Gitler join us, who is very strong at Short, and a good hitter. Unfortunately, he's a busy guy, and softball wasn't his top priority. So, although he is there in the team photo, we didn't see too much of him. We also had Ari Cohen join us for a while, but he had a special, chronic injury that prevented him from playing beyond one game or so. Zeke is back. And he came back, pitching a whole game against the ZiTs, and almost winning it. Great heat, but some control problems. He also had a skip in his wind-up that made for many illegal pitches. We hope he will solve that problem. But there were more games that he pitched as well. He did OK in the end, but couldn't quite string together an official "win". Nevertheless, we have now two main pitchers, and we can count on them both. We also had some other new folks show up - from Cuba of all places. Julio Mirabel, Alberto Tacher, Leandro Leon have joined us, and no, they didn't bring any cigars. Lowell and Zeke both contributed to managing the team, which helped immensely. Dani Machlis contributed in the field and his plate appearences got better, little by little. His photos are a very big positive aspect of the team, and quite frankly, he's starting to spoil all of us. He took the fall season out to go on an extended "tiyul" through Africa, esp. Malawi, and came back with fantastic photos and cool stories. He will have an article published in the May 2006, Hebrew version of National Geographic. We welcome Avi Davilla to the team, from Raanana. He also coaches baseball there. Avi can play behind the plate, and at first. He has put some pressure on Lowell at that position, when he made several leaping grabs in foul territory. Later in the season, Lowell took this to heart, and made some leaps of his own. Our record, was, once again, frustrating, as we only won three on the field in the spring, and another by forfeit. In addition, there were two games considered unofficial, one (against Eilat) because we didn't complete 5 innings by the deadline, and the other due to a protest (against Tri-United). It is this writer's conviction that it starts with pitching. Once your team's pitching is good and tough, and competitive, everyone rises to the occasion. --------------------------------------------- During the course of the summer, when everyone was on vacation, we all received the very sad news of Jon's passing, on August 25th. We had a practice scheduled for that date, of all times. Needless to say, we cancelled, and those who were in the country, came to his very emotional funeral in Rehovot. Later, actually in January 2006, we heard of Ruth Duffy's also untimely passing, also of cancer (in the spine). Ruth had been in the forefront of scorekeeping for the ISA, and all the stats on the ISA's website are thanks to her.