Two more games to finish the run

 4 November 2021

Day 4 started off a bit cloudier than the earlier days this week. The playoffs were reaching the second round after at least one upset in round one. The Waiting Room members were looking ahead to fulfill the promise they'd made to each other by playing hard and winning our final three games to finish 3-4 for the week. 

Today's morning meeting had the awarding of the ropes. The gold rope winner was Izzy Kushner. I had the pleasure of being a teammate of Izzy's in 2016. His brother Shai was on that team with us. Izzy is a true class act in every way, and a great teammate. The brown rope went one again to a teammate of mine on the Waiting Room. That would be Chris DiLorenzo. Here's how my man earned his rope. When he made his way to the plate during Wednesday's afternoon game at Clover Park the umpire raised his hands to call time. I was standing at the railing of the first base dugout. It was quickly apparent that the play stoppage was due to what could be referred to as massive "crop dusting" by the batter himself. The umpire's arms were flailing and catcher Dave Dolgin rose up and moved away quickly as to save his olfactory nerves from permanent damage. Chris said that the cause was Chipotle. No one would know any better than he, so we're all willing to accept that reason without further explanation. So the Waiting Room managed to take the brown rope on consecutive days. The latter being browner than the former.

Following the meeting we headed to the center of the fourplex to take a group photo of all of the campers from overhead. A large task, it would seem, but I look forward to seeing how the pictures come out.

Game one for today saw us in a rematch with Lenny Harris' All-Time 212 squad. We'd dropped our first game of the week to them by a 12-11 score, but today was a completely different story. We jumped out to an early lead and didn't relinquish it this time.  I walked to lead off the game and we ended up scoring 2 in the opening inning. We put up a 7-run inning in the 3rd and a 6-spot in the 5th. During the 5th Russ Bruno doubled forcing me to make the 270-foot sprint to home. There's something fairly exhilarating derived from such a feat at my age. But Russ was bringing virtually everyone home. He was 4-for-4 with two runs scored and SEVEN runs batted in. Rob Gambardella went the distance as we put up 20 hits in a 17-3 victory.

The afternoon contest saw us take on Mc Glovin on the artificial turf of field 2. It was a true slugfest from beginning to end. McGlovin put up 20 base hits while we had 12 of our own. I went 2-for-4 myself and broke the tie with the go-ahead run in the 5th with a single to break a 8-8 tie. Perry Pierce drove in 4 runs on the day and Bruce Fisher had 3 ribeye steaks himself. Fisher also went the distance on the mound. We held on to win by a 13-10 score which topped off our winning our final three games of the week. 

The championship game was played at 4:30 this evening, ahead of he 6:00 original start time. I think this was done due to the impending rainstorms which are due to be all over Florida tomorrow. The Suspects topped the KB-Wine-O's after scoring 5 runs in the top of the 7th inning to win the title. 

Now that the week's games are complete the only things left on the schedule are the pro games and the closing banquet. Doug has already advised us that if the weather doesn't cooperate then we will be able to take swings against the pros in the cages, much like we did a couple of years ago. While our hopes are high they are not likely to produce anything good. 

I found myself beginning the cleanup process of try locker stall today. A sad moment to be sure. As Carol Burnett used to sing, "Seems we just get started, and before you know it, comes the time we have to say so long". Tomorrow we look back at the week that was. Talk at you then.