April 14 Recap
By Marc Brafman
On a picture-perfect night at Triple Creek, for the first time in two years, 8 teams took the field and man was it nice to welcome back all the guys that sat out last year and welcome in the rookies. Once again kudos to Rick, Mike C, and the staff at Triple Creek for getting the fields in tip top shape. Let’s go to the recap
Field One
Team Brafman defeated Team Grefer 11-9 in somewhat controversial fashion.
Team Brafman got the scoring going in the first with a 2 out single by rookie Ben Rosenberg (H-Bomb) to take the lead. After Grefer came back to take a short 2-1 lead Brafman’s team stormed back to score 5 in the top of the 2nd. Big hits were from Rabbi Yitz (who went 3-3), Sam “The Hitman” Hecht and the Commish Rick T. Another big play was a perfect bunt laid down by Alan “Family truckster” Lessure which not only moved the runners up a base but scored one.” I’m just trying to make contact and move the runners along,” Alan said post game. “I’ve been in this league over 45 years, and I know that getting the ball in play is all that counts.” (Side note…when Alan faced off against Howie, that’s about 95 years combined JCC softball playing between the two. We should all be so lucky to play that long) Team Grefer came back to take a short lead, but once again it was the combo of Rosenberg, Yitz and Hecht that powered the Brafman offense. On the defensive side of the things, the two plays that stand out were Mitch Evans snagging a hot shot down the third base line and throwing out Adam Wolf at the plate and Fink snagging a comebacker up the middle. The controversy came at the end of the 6th with darkness coming quickly the ump called the game an inning early. “Not since Gabby Hartnett hit his famous homer in gloamin’ in 1938 has so much been made over sunlight at a ball game,” Brafman said post game. “Despite what Team Grefer was saying post game, we would have been happy to continue to play. But hey, the ump couldn’t see the strike zone for either team during the game so maybe he was worried he couldn’t see it at night either.” One final note on this game. It’s always nice to see teammates get excited for their players and the reaction from team Grefer when Scott Wolf got his first hit was what makes this league so special.
Field two:
Team Schwartz defeated Team Kamrass 18-12
Team Schwartz picked up where they left off in the playoffs last year by defeating Kamrass 18-12 last night. “We hit the ball well,” Taylor said post game. Mike “Dirty water” Rothstein went 5-5 and played a solid SS. Eric Goldstein had two big hits and rookie David Perlmutter had a 2-run single in his first ever AB. “I was proud of the middle of our order because they had their hitting shoes on. Corey (Schwartz and Norris), Cronstein and Soltesz all had multiple hits. And since I’m the best player in the league and the clear #1 pick, I was even comfortable moving myself to 3rd base this season. Look out Wagner I’m coming for you!!” Not to be overlooked, Adam Heldman hit an inside the park homer for Team Kamrass.
Field 3
Team Lefton defeated Team Weisser 20-17
“When the final score is 20-17 in week one of the JCC softball league, you know what type of game it was,” Jimmy said post game. “We are happy to get the win, and like we predicted at the start, our team will go as far as Griff “Benedict Arnold” Harris will take us. As I told Brafman this morning there were a lot of good plays but more bad plays in this game for both teams. I think we will get better as the season goes on. But one play that did stick out to me was the amazing, backhanded stop at 1st by Mike Margolis in the bottom of the 7th. That helped us win.”
Recap from Roger from the losing team:
HIGHLIGHTS…
Josh Rosen……………5 for 5
Steve Zawatsky………4 for 4
Scoring runs wasn’t the problem for Team Weisser, thanks to some hot hitting off the bats of Josh “Mr. Cub” Rosen (5-5), Steve “Z” Zawatsky (4-4), “Handsome” Sam Castellini (3-5) and “Stormin” Norman Frankel (3-4), but the defense was in hibernation form. It was downright offensive!
“Balls that would have probably been outs were not,” captain Mark Weisser said afterwards. “We weren’t making the routine plays, but it was due partly to the sun and it being the first game of the young season.”
He added, “I fully expect us to get better as the season goes along, or else I might go a bit crazy on the mound.”
Howard Goldwasser was heard after the game, “I didn’t commit an error, so don’t blame that on me.” It should be noted that no balls were hit to him!
Weisser concluded, “I like this team and we’ll be alright. This was just not our night.”
Finally, we head to field four where Ken Groh reports:
Team Groh 19 Team Loon 9
Trailing 2-0, Ken Groh tied it up with a 1-out single, and later scored to make it 3-2 after 1. The 2nd inning saw a Jeff Weisbrot grand slam increase the lead to 7-2. Rookie Zach Michelson and Todd Wasserman scored in the bottom of the 3rd to make it 9-2 Groh. After Team Loon plated two runs in both the 4th and 5th innings, the game was 10-6, but Team Groh broke the game open scoring 5 to lead 15-6. After giving up 3, Bryce Anslinger ended the game with a triple as Groh won 19-9. Jeremy Fogel (4 hits and 3 runs) and Ryan Baum (4 hits and 2 runs) had great games, but Jeff Weisbrot was the player of the game with 3 hits, 4 runs and 6 RBIs to lead Team Groh. Groh drove in 4 but was more impressed with the great defense that saved many runs on this great opening day!
Special notes:
Ken Groh was happy to have his good friend Jason Faust drive down from Columbus to watch the game! “He keeps a terrible scorebook, but I was very encouraged to see him back at Triple Creek.”
Rookie Zach Michelson collected his 1st career hit in the JCC an RBI single up the middle – congrats Zach!
Sad news…Jeff Weisbrot will miss the next month of the season.
Team Solomon recap:
I forgot Team Solomon was on the bye this week so when I asked Stu for his recap this is what he sent me:
After coming home from a hard day working in the coal mines, I was able to cut the grass. After Kate and I put the young’uns to bed, I re-watched OU’s magical run in this year’s NCAA tournament before Kate and I made sweet love till dawn.
League notes:
Fink speaks for most of us today when he reported that he feels like he ran a marathon he was so sore this morning.
One huge mistake I made in the pre-season preview was forgetting that Team Lefton has 4 sets of different families and not three. Somehow, I forgot about Dee and Griff Harris…
If you ever wanted to see Bob Ross play softball, you get your wish watching Rafi play for Team Kamrass
Dr. Bob Pelberg is in the running for play of the year. On a ball that was clearly foul, and had zero chance of going fair, he did a full Pete Rose dive to make sure the ball was not going to come back into play.
Andrew “Macho Man” Gage brought out his Macho Man Randy Savage sunglasses last night announcing that he didn’t care how dorky he looked. They were great glasses. It should be noted that later in the game he had to borrow Team Capt. Marc Brafman’s sunglasses because he needed them to be darker. DIG IT!!
Now that it’s springtime, if you are looking for Jewish baked goods you can’t go wrong with these: https://www.facebook.com/Sweet-Butter-Bakery-110547014434942/
Because you all care so much about my opinion on UC basketball, I am VERY happy about our new coach. I think he is going to get us back on top in no time, and since we got cheated out of a real crosstown shootout this past year, I look forward to beating XU at Cintas this year in front of their fans.
I know there are a lot of music fans in the league. How two such titans of rock ‘n’ roll can come up with this crapola of a song is baffling to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN9YLLQl7gE
If getting Covid or herpes interests any of you, Roger is selling a collection of used plastic stadium cups. (On a side note, I once went to a bachelor party for one of my friends from college. He gave us drinks in his older brother’s vintage 1986 Houston Astros stadium cups with pictures of Mike Scott, Glenn Davis and Nolan Ryan on them. That was almost 20 years ago, and we still make fun of him) So if you want to be that guy please contact Roger ASAP.
See you on the field next week.