Déjà vu: In Championship, Spare Parts Dismantle Buccos 15-6. Again

Photo: Patty Rebbe chats to Jodie Francsico in the Bucco dugout.
     

By Bill Tarrant

It was déjà vu all over again, as Yogi Berra famously said, after the Spare Parts took apart the Buccos 15-6 in the Los Angeles County Senior Softball championship game last Thursday.

The Spare Parts beat the Buccos by the exact same score, and the game unfolded in an eerily similar way, when the two teams last met in the regular season on June 1.

The Spare Parts shredded the Buccos’ multifarious defensive shifts with sharply hit ground balls and flyballs that found grass all over the field. Just like the last time. Conversely, almost everything the Buccos hit seemed to be right at one of their fielders. Just like the last time.

It's miserable to get butt-kicked in a championship game. Worse than losing miserably is for one to play miserably in the debacle. And worse yet is to miserably manage the game.

Pitcher and manager Bill Tarrant, who was knocked out of last week’s semifinal victory with a calf injury, had a forgettable outing. Unlike the last time when he issued no walks to the Spare Parts, he handed out five free passes in the championship game and struggled to get his high arc pitch on the plate.

“I don’t think the injury was a factor,” Tarrant told the Pittsburgh Bill and the Buccos blog, which he also writes. “Donna (Sloan) kept imploring me in the dugout ‘Get your head in the game!’

“I think it was probably more mental than physical. Maybe the injury was niggling at me in the back of my brain,” said Tarrant who was wearing compression sleeves on his thigh and calf. “But I was kinda distracted the whole game, to tell the truth.”

Opposing manager Tom Griego, who lost the championship game with his Spare Parts team three seasons ago, had his head in the game.

“I wasn’t even following the score; I was just so focused on getting our players in the right places. Keeping the energy level up” Griego told Tarrant afterward. “We also played a pretty clean game.”

The Buccos were still in it after the third inning when Doug McIntyre doubled with the bases loaded to drive in three runs, and Greg Waskul, who had three hits in the game, drove in Doug for a fourth.

Both managers agreed the turning point came in the bottom of the 4^th inning with Spare Part ahead 7-4. With two on and nobody out, Deb Newman lashed a drive to left that Bruce Ravid dove for. Our third base dugout saw the ball trapped in the grass. Griego – and crucially the third-base umpire – saw it as a catch. The umpires conferred and confirmed the call. Mark Lambert racing to third on the play could not make an about-face in time and was doubled up.

“He got his glove underneath the ball, and while it rolled around, it stayed in the glove,” said Griego, 63, a former finance manager at Disney Corp.

It sucked the air out of our dugout and the Buccos’ energy could not be revived despite Donna’s exhortations.

Unlike the Buccos, Griego chose not to employ defensive shifts against the better hitters. “I have mixed feelings about it. In some regards, it can be smart. But we all have weaker players, and they need to play,” Griego said.

The  "weakest" player was the unlikely defensive star for the Buccos. Patty Rebbe was a catcher who had been out for much of the season after breaking a finger to block out the sun setting in left, trying to catch a throw to home in the first game of the season. Rebbe debuted at rover in the championship game, catching everything hit her way, including lunging for a sharply hit line drive in the second base hole, showcasing some of the best defensive play at that crucial position all season.

“I was nervous. I was excited. And I was happy to be a part of a very cohesive team,” Rebbe told the blog.

Rebbe, who co-owns Klein & Rebbe Tax and Accounting Services, said softball was her game in her 20s until children came along. She has three sons, ages 31-38, including two who were adopted from Russia in 1997.

The widow of five years took up the game again after the crushing isolation of the Pandemic “when I had time to reflect on my life.”

“I wanted to find something that would get me out and exercise. Meet new people. That’s when I thought about playing softball again.”