The Gray Bats have no chance against us if we have our best lineup. The only way they win this game is if we have guys playing out of position, or still drunk, or whatever, and even then with any nine of us I like our chances. Still, these guys are 2-12, and are acting like they can play on the same level as us. Even though we beat them 8-0 last time we faced them. We beat them by more than the Owlz did, although to be fair the owlz looked like they were sleep walking, and playing different positions for fun and shit. We all know there’s the biggest hockey game of most of our lives the night before.
If you are a Duck and want to be able to look me, Ben Gwin – the founder and captain of this team in the eye ever again, you will stay as sober as you have to the night before to be effective Saturday, and you will show up ready to play. You will be ready to bury this joke of a team, who has a great starting pitcher, Ben Sorosky (whom I have much respect for as an opponent and occasional teammate.) and a couple other guys who can hit. But nothing else.
They have called out our team, our blog, myself, Kirk, Dr. Jones, the town of South Oakland. They don’t even incorporate the Batman logo into their uniform. They have called out the tournament winning Blues team that Sorosky, Strom and I put together (which is really odd, and may not concern you – Larry probably thinks the Gray Bats could beat the Blues though)
They (mostly larry who is batting a robust .200, and wouldn’t sniff the field if he were a Duck Black Sock [correct singular?] Owl, Bulldog, Hurricane, Warrior, etc…) are taking things to another level and I can’t understand it. This goes beyond the Rebels response to the Confederacy comments, (which i guess i can wrap my head around if i try.)
We lost to the Rebels in an 8am game. We were worse than the Rebels that day, and it may cost us a bye. We can not be worse than the Gray Bats on Saturday.
We are playing for a shot at the Division and a bye. Our immediate long term our goal is to pass the Black Sox – the team immediatly ahead of us in the standings, not to fend off the Gray Bats. “One game at a time” is a cliche for a reason.
{Awkward TRANSITION_CITY}{}{ the trash talk between the 10-3 Ducks and the 2-12 Gray Bats is heating up, check the following post and the comments in the post below it. Also the B-Sox Owlz game is this weekend. Adding fuel to that fire is like throwing brush in a volcano. That is the most intense rivalry in the league, there is genuine disdain between those two teams.
I’ve never seen a 2-12 team with so much to say…
Thank you all for reading and commenting it is greatly appreciated.
On a Day when Kenny Chesney wreaked havok on the Pittsburgh NABA – leading to two forfeits, an 8-man start from the Bulldogs, Depo getting cut from the Ducks, and who knows how many unwanted pregnancies, the Ducks flew high; higher than you were that time in high school when you shared a joint with that weird kid from Bucks County, only to find out after the fact it was laced with PCP.
South Oakland of the North Side won their tenth game of the season playing fantasic defense behind another outstanding, starting pitching performance, shutting out the Bombers on D-Day.
Mike Fletcher scattered five hits over five innings and struck out five Bombers, without giving up a walk, and Rick Whalen drove in what proved to be the game winning run with a two out, 2-run double in the second to lead the South Oakland Ducks of the North side to a 4-0 victory over the Allegheny Bombers. Adam Smith pitched two scoreless innings in relief, and the Ducks record improved to 10-3.
The game was delayed by fog for a half hour or so, then the Bombers were cleared for take off.
It was a pitcher’s duel early, the guy from the Bombers, who is probably their regular shortstop, pitched well limiting the Ducks to only a few base runners and limiting the number of hard hit balls as the game progressed through the early morning.
The biggest difference was the Ducks defense (error free on the day), and the ability of the bottom of the Ducks lineup to get on base and produce runs. Captain America, Britton, Slick, and Dr. Jones batted in the 7-10 spots in the lineup and accounted for three runs.
In the second inning, Captain walked and Britton singled, then Rick hit a double to left center, then it was Jones’ turn A napalm blast down the first baseline to drive in the 3rd run.
It was 3-0 Ducks when this happened.
It was going to be a brawl the rest of the way.
The Bombers threw it around a bit.
Kirk Gibson would score on a passed ball.
4-0 Ducks.
The Bombers threatened, getting men on first and second a couple times, but they could not get the big hit they needed. Mike “Tyler” Fletcher got big outs when he needed inducing many groundballs which were fielded and thrown accurately for outs. Dickey made a great backhand play on what appeared to be a sure hit up the middle in the 5th, securing the shutout. The Bobmers’ 7-9 hitters combined to get on base once all game ( I think), a single by their last hitter who acted like he had just won the Atlantic City Memorial Day Tournament when he blooped one in front of the Ducks’ left fielder who was playing with a pulled quad.
The Ducks 7-10 hitters got on base 6 of eleven times, including Coby’s sweet hbp and stolen base in a pinch hit appearance for Wojton. Coby has more stolen bases than Wojton.
Nothing like a guy who has gone 1 for the season talking shit after a 4-0 loss to a team that is six games better in the standings.
Aside from him, the Bombers were solid human beings, and had to be missing some players. Good luck to them the rest of the way.
bullet points & Mid-Season Notes
Defense and starting pitching have carried our team through the month long stretch of one game per week.
Remember when we used to play on Monday Nights?
The Dr. and I took in some of the double header between the Owlz and the Gray Batz – the Ducks have a better chance of beating the Owlz than we do of losing to the Gray Bats – take that however you want.
The Owlz seemed disinterested and still smoked the Gray Bats, albeit not by the 25 runz we may have assumed.
You could have been a Duck Sorosky, all those unearned runzzzz – wooooo.
The Gray Bats will come out with their guns blazing, ala the guy[s] who shot 50 cent, this saturday morning. If we lose I’m handing over admin of the blog to Larry for the rest of the year – no one wants that, not even Larry. All hands on deck.
Slick Rick and the Invisible Hand have been our most improved players this season, their contributions have been noticable, both have embraced and thrived in a reduced roles on a winner after struggling through the Red Scare years. – While Wojton is finding his stroke, and before Captain America got his command back, they have picked up the slack at the plate and on the mound.
Kirk Gibson is also playing up to his potential after batting only .260 or something last seaosn – a natural shortstop playing without an ACL he has made a seamless transition to first base, and is a corner stone of our infield – and allows last year’s first baseman an outfielder by trade to get back to his natural position.
Depo was having a solid year, until he skipped Saturday’s game to rest for Kenny Chesney and was cut. Sorry, Depo.
Our firstbaseman last year was gay anyway.
Dr. Jones has taken this team from the scrap heap and turned it into one of the top teams in the league.
Dr. Radical for Life.
Aside from Jesse Smith, Tony Casale has been our most valuable player.
Britton Mike and Mike have embraced the time-share at second base.
Watson’s ankle is healing, I hope.
Darren Daulton is unreal, when we don’t have to play at 8am he leads the team in Avg. doubles, and allows Jesse to play 3rd, where he imposes a Mike Schmidt like presence.
If we beat the Gray Bats (1-12) on Saturday we assure ourselves that we will finish with a better record than them and we will equal our win total from last season with ten games to play.
South Oakland Ducks of the North Side (9-3) vs. Allegheny Bombers (5-7) 8am, John Herb Field.
Bad idea
These guys love Disco.
The Allegheny Bombers dropped two close ones to the Matadors last weekend. According to my sources they can hit, or at least score runs against the Gray Bats. They have named their team after either the Yankees, or death-toting pilots.
I’m not sure which is more offensive.
All bets are off for the 8am start time. Bomberman (above)
I have several close friends who are English Major writerly types. My buddy Bryan wrote this.
Was gonna post this to your blog…thought it might be a little gay…also wanted to work in how three little black kids showed up at the end of your game on sunday playing with broken bats…ran onto the field to mess around and then they turned the lights off.
There is something about baseball that inclines the written word towards a nostalgic glorification. So often in movies, books, and television documentary’s there is this resonating obsession with the grass, the sky, leather, wood, players as heroes, all the elements of baseball being described romantically, as if a thesis about the best parts of what it is to be an American man.
Some strange feeling that awakens the senses to being alive, as if there is no better place to be alive, spectator or player, than near a baseball field, in all its endless detail and all its possibilities. Each play is a renewal, a challenge of focus and timing, a mixture of curiosity and fear, patience and aggression, a chance for guilt or redemption.
And the tools are heralded, gloves oiled, balls massaged, bat handles meticulously taped and tacked. The debt and gratitude of the wooden bats, breaking one is like breaking a limb, something so precious, so cared for and entrusted to be the conduit of a man’s god given skill, clarity and timing.
I watched a player borrow another man’s bat and line one for a hit. Returning to the dugout he thanked the owner of the bat so genuinely it was as if he had been the recipient of a kidney. Likewise broken bats are smashed to the ground by the handle tested for cracks and fired into a nearby trash-can with furrowed brows, muttered curses, and dark feelings.
And the baseball itself is more than an object. A baseball symbolizes something when you hold it in your hand, the many varied ways to throw it and how someone chooses to and has learned to throw it mean something, it’s like a person’s signature.
“You have to know the feel of a baseball in your hand, going back awhile, connecting many things, before you can understand why a man would sit in a chair at four in the morning holding such an object, clutching it-how it fits in the palm so reassuringly, the corked center making it buoyant in the hand, and the rough spots on an old ball, the marked skin, how an idle thumb likes to worry the scuffed horsehide. You squeeze a baseball. You kind of juice it or milk it. The resistance of the packed material makes you want to press harder. There’s an equilibrium, an agreeable animal tension between the hard leather object and the sort of clawed hand, veins stretching with the effort. And the feel of raised seems across the fingertips, cloth contours like road bumps under the knuckle joints-how the whorled cotton can be seen as a magnified thumbprint, a blowup of the convoluted ridges on the pad of your thumb. The ball was deep sepia, veneered with dirt and turf and generational sweat-it was old, bunged up, it was bashed and tobacco-juiced and stained by natural processes and by the lives behind it, weather-spattered and character as a seafront house”. (Don Dellilo).
To play baseball as a child is like participating in magic. Taking that tense anxious excited feeling before and game and releasing it on the field and seeing what happens. I watched a men’s amateur baseball game a few Sundays ago. Late into the night, the myth of each team’s best player gathering , concealing a deep urge to take the field scoop up a grounder and fire it across the diamond as hard as I could, slam a closed fist into the palm of the glove, grab my nuts, adjust my hat, and spit on the field. The urge to play a game that is not easily played or won, with concise rules, unexpected outcomes, and offers the reward of, both, personal and collective pleasure.
If the Bombers named themselves as such as an ode to Kubrick, they are my heroes. More than likely they did not.
They are fighting for first place in the Campbell Conference.
Naturally after i post a “sex with ducks” youtube I get a league wide, “keep your blogs clean because other people read” them email.
If you’re that easily offended go read Larry’s Reader’s Digest-inspired Gray Bats Blog (that’s not aimed at you, commish)
Larry, shocked that the internet can breed anonymous mud-slinging, may be shutting down his blog.
I find managers betting on their own baseball team offensive and negative.
No way did Charlie “Hustle” do this ad to cover his gambling loses.
Mid Season Report on the 9-3 South Oakland Ducks of the North Side up later.
Unless there is a torrential down-pour, BP at 6:30 tonight at the Pitt Field. EDIT: the rain has been declared torrential enough to cancel bp, we’ll go friday at 5:30.
I have no opinion one way or the other on gay marriage, but I am pro-Sex with Ducks., er, wait that’s not what I mean, that’s not what i mean either, shit. I like boobs.
thanks for the link Depo. DUCKS It’s amazing that we haven’t had more rain-outs this season.
Batting Practice Wednesday 6:30 pm at the Pitt IM field.
The South Oakland Ducks of the North Side (9-3) continue the best start in team history. Mark “Captain America” Guthrie hates easy listening, and he owns the Eagles (2-7). Captain pitched 6 scoreless innings, striking out 7, walking 1, allowing only 3 hits.
The Ducks scored two in the first off a Kirk Gibson single, and an error on a ball hit by Chris Wojton.
Dr. Jones knocked in the game winning run in the bottom of the sixth.
Eagles pitcher Joe Walsh has historically given Ducks aging outfielder Ben Gwin fits. On the day Gwin went 1 for 1, with a walk, hbp, and would score two runs, on a day when the Ducks recorded only 3 hits. (Casale, Gibson)
Jesse Smith is a beast.
Strong starting pitching and defense complimented by timely hitting and unreal blogging have bouyed the Ducks to a .750 winning percentage. Despite their record start the Ducks still trail the 8-2 Black Sox (despite defeating the BSOX earlier this season), and the 7-0 Owlz in the Whales Conference.
With a first round bye awarded to the top two seeds in the Conference the play down the stretch is sure to be heated, despite the new rules which grant all teams a pass into the post-season.
The Gray Bats are 1-10.
***
Arguably the only two truly American contributions to the world, are baseball and rock ‘n’ roll – blues-based rock ‘n’ roll. As someone who could not live without either baseball or such music, it should come as no surprise that I can not stand what the Eagles did to rock ‘n’ roll in the 70’s.
You’re better than that Whittaker, why the Eagles?
Why not just call your team the Electric Light Orchestra and be done with it.
Jack White quite possibly hates the Eagles.
“Can you give me number nine?”
The Ducks got off to a quack start when Tony Casale singled before Gwin was plunked for his team leading 3rd hbp of the season. one batter later… Kirk Gibson drilled a shot to right, scoring Casale and moving Gwin to third. Larry tried to censor the single but failed. Gwin would score on the mystery rbi, which should have been attributed to Chris Wojton (REMINDER: BRING YOUR UNIFORM MONEY, THIS IS RIDICULOUS)
2-0 Ducks for five innings.
South Oakland of the North Side hit into three double plays, it seemed like everything was hit right at left handed shortstop Don Henley. The Ducks can field ground balls extremely well, and the Captain kept the ball down recording ground ball out after ground ball out. “Tyler” had a great game at second base. (We aquired Fletcher via Rob Cool who hates the Black Sox so much he’s willing to help us out by pointing quality players in our direction.)
Meanwhile… Don Henley was everywhere. snaring a hard hit line drive by Mike “Tyler” Fletcher, and doubling off Keeper of the Helmets after another great play on a hard hit by Murphy. A left-handed shortstop, that’s about as cool as the song “End of the Innocence”.
Captain America had his good stuff on this day, a peacefull easy feeling enveloped Pie Traynor Field as Guthmanzadeh didn’t allow a hit for 3 and 2/3 innings. that hit in the fourth was Heartache Tonight, so it only counted with frat boys from the south and old women.
In the bottom of the sixth with South Oakland leading 2-0 Walsh loaded the bases with Ducks.
Jones drives in the third run, but the Ducks fail to capitalize further on the bases loaded no outs situation.
The Eagles make a comeback in the top of the seventh. Thanks to an error and a single the Eagles had runners on second and third with no outs. Some guy hit one to left and Chris Carter tries to score from second. As performed by the Black Crowes
Chris Carter is immediately traded to the Vikings. Mixed Metaphor City. Ducks lead 2-1, with a runner on second and one out. next guy singles to center, Wojton throws to Smith at the plate, Jesse ruins the batters life as he tries to take second. That’s the type of throw an MVP makes. Depo catches a pop-up and the game is over.
9-3.
After twelve games you are what you are, the picture is becoming clear in the Whales Conference. Owlz, Black Sox, Ducks and then everyone else, with the Gray Batz and the Eagles battling it out for last place.
You can not win without good defense up the middle, the defense this season has taken so much pressure of the starting pitching.
We still haven’t played our best baseball.
Jones is still just as concerned with getting everyone at bats than he is with winning. Our depth allows him to do this and continue to win, everyone is contributing.
Will the Eagles lose their playoff spot if they forfeit another game?
It looks like the Black Crowes are playing Mighty Eskimo regularly this tour.
Haven’t heard from Kenny Powers in a while.
The Eagles now play the BSox and Owlz back to back. how about taking one of those two, Don?
Kirk, what did you write on Larry’s blog he felt so threatened by he had to censor?
The response to the Ducks blog has been phenominal this season, thank you all, seriously.
Go Sabres.
Where are you Darren Daulton and Mars Volta? – the games not even close if Daulton is there to go 5 for 5 with 3hrs. (projected stat line)
Dr. Jones for coach of the year, do it.
Commish, we need a coach of the year award to award.
The Bulldogs blog is phenominal check it out oif you haven’t already.
Now that Larry has his college kids back why is he losing, it’s so unfair, isn’t it?
Sorosky deserves better.
The Eagles appear to have regressed, I think Glenn Frey is back on the H-train. – yes, I will say that after a 1 run victory.
Realignment.
Bombers this Saturday in a Hair of the Dog 8am match at John Herb.
South Oakland Ducks Baseball 