I got rhythm...in the end

I had been dancing between the raindrops the whole game, walking five, but only one of them had come around to score. The winds in the San Fernando Valley were swirling, pushing my high-arc balls deep and off the plate. I should have been able to adjust to that – move a step or two back from the rubber, put a different spin on the ball – but nothing was working. I was aiming the ball, which is never a good idea for a pitcher. That gets you out of synch faster than a piece of cod from my Tubby the Fat Cat’s food bowl.

In the final inning, I walked one of the lowest-rated players on Time, the opposing team - for a second time in the game, loading the bases and endangering our fragile 9-7 lead. To paraphrase Yogi Berra, pitching is 90 percent mental, and the other half is physical. I was not pitching with confidence or fluid mechanics. That’s when Dave Aguilar, the Bucco second baseman, and a former manager himself, strolled over to me.

"I know you're a white guy," he said, taking the ball from me and rubbing it. "But do you think you could find some rhythm?" That made me laugh out loud. I retired the next batter to end the game.

The top three hitters in the Bucco lineup combined for nine hits and seven runs, highlighted by a blistering opposite-field homer, where the right fielder for Time could be heard as far away as our dugout exclaiming "Ahhh, shit" as the ball screeched on a banana trajectory over his head.

The defense turned two double-plays, both of them doubling a runner off first on caught line drives (one a spectacular grab by Aguilar) and that’s the best friend of a pitcher struggling with control.

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Mudhens Squawk but Buccos crow in the end.

Gene Sherman, a Russian Jew who escaped the Soviet Union in the late 1970s, crushed a two-run homer over the fluttering hands of the Mudhens right fielder and the Buccos again flashed the leather across the diamond in a hard-fought 9-5 victory.

The Mudhens loss ended their 15-game regular season winning streak, dating back to the start of the Fall-Winter season. Both teams are now 2-1.

I was in a much better rhythm, landing a variety of pitches for strikes against a strong Mudhens lineup, where every other batter was a lefty, and letting my fielders shine behind him.

"We just ain't hitting," a bemused Mudhens manager Mike Abeles, mumbled to himself as he crossed in front of me after being stranded at first. Abeles, 71, has been one of the more successful managers in the LA County league for the past dozen years. His career as a financial analyst for various big banks and a bridge club champion indicates that game strategy is in his wheelhouse. (He’s also one of the best hitters in the league.) I interviewed him later about good managerial practices.

It begins with the draft and having good scouting reports on all the players.

“I draft by position. I plan out who I’m going to try to take in each round. Sometimes it works out; it did last season,” when his Mudhens were undefeated, he said.

Good communication is key, as it is for any company manager.

“I keep stats and send them out every week with a little game recap. It’s a manager’s tool, and the other thing is it shows everybody how they’re doing, and so they can’t whine about why they’re not higher in the lineup,” Abeles said.

Then there’s the delicate question of when and how to improve a player. It’s senior softball, so you’re going to see a clown college unfold on the field at times.

“I never point a finger,” Abeles said. “But sometimes I do have to coach them up during the game. Like I recently told our first baseman not to stretch before the ball is thrown to him. Because then he’s not ready to adjust if the ball is thrown off the bag, which is most of the time in this league.”

“I try not to yell at players for doing stupid things,” he added. “I try, anyway.

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Mudhens pitcher Dan Hilquist was not on, but he had our lineup lunging at pitches well short of the plate in hitters' counts. This disappointed clean-up hitter Greg Waskul, who worked the Buccos only walk.

 "We have to stop swinging at 3-1 pitches," 
Greg kept telling me in the dugout. "The next one is either gonna be ball four or you'll get a really good pitch to swing at."

Jimmy Paul in left was involved in one of the best plays of the game. Racing to the foul line, a well struck fly ball clanked off the edge of his glove. He scrambled to get it and threw to Mark Lambert, the cutoff in shallow left, as the Mudhens runner rounded second. Lambert then turned around and fired a strike to Waskul, who was calling for the ball and presenting a burly target.

Jimmy told me later in the dugout that maybe he should have let the ball land foul. I told him no. First, it wasn't clear it was going to land foul. But more importantly, we would have been deprived of the opportunity to see him make a great catch!

We're a team that likes to go for it and make plays.