August 12 Recap
by Marc Brafman
On a hot and muggy night at Triple Creek we had 6 teams in action.
On Field One playing in front of a packed grandstand of Wolf family members, the game came down to the final batter as Team Brafman beat Team Weisser in walk-off fashion 11-10. In a back-and-forth game that was more of a pitchers’ and fielding duel than the final score would indicate, Team Brafman won on a walk-off bases-loaded hit by Weston “Hungry Like A” Wolf.
With some clutch hitting by the usual suspects of David Wertheim and birthday boy Griff “Benedict Arnold” Harris, along with a big two-run single by Dee Harris and a very effective pitching performance by Brad Wagner, Team Weisser took a two-run lead into the bottom of the 7th. Team Brafman came off the mat quickly with hits by Jeff “The Natural” Weisbrot and Weston. With one out, Coach Brafman had a big decision to make: pinch hit for Brandon “The Bird” Wolf with the speedster Travis Jankowski or stick with Wolf. “I figured with the game possibly going to extra innings I needed to keep my best players on the field,” Brafman said (a novel concept). Tonight, that was the right call as Wolf smoked a game tying double to LC to even the score. But Wagner pitched out of a jam and the game went into extra innings. In the top of the 8th, Wertheim and Harris not only got hits but scored runs using their youth and speed to again put Team Weisser up two.
Which brings us to the fateful bottom of the 8th. Duffy “Clap at the” Wolf(man) led off with a walk. One out later, Joel “Hallelujah” Buckley singled and after a walk of Weisbrot and a pop out, Coach Brafman had another interesting choice to make. Should he let Weston Wolf hit or pinch hit for him with the ageless wonder Christian Colon who has 3 hits all season but has only struck out 3 times? “My front office has left me with many choices to make or not make,” Brafman said. “With a DH this season and runs hard to come by, I figured that I’d rather have one of the best hitters over the last 10 JCC seasons hit than a guy who spent all year last year in AAA playing in the Columbus JCC league. Again, that proved to be the right call as Wolf lofted a ball to right that scored all three runs as Weisbrot scored just under the throw from RF. “After a very tough Sunday sweep it was nice to get back to the winning side of things,” Brafman said post game. We are 1-0 in the second half. Brafman would go on to say that we couldn’t have won this game without the fielding of Tyler “Big Bad” Wolf in RC, “The Hitman” Sam Hecht in RF, and Scott “Dire” Wolf at 2nd along with Zach “The Wild Horse” Zakem behind the plate keeping us in the game. A true team win.”
Meanwhile on Field Three, Joel “Sparky” Fogel continues to lead his team to wins, this time over the talented Team Schwartz:
Team Fogel got off to a 7-0 lead scoring 7 runs in the first and added on over the next 2 innings taking a 10-1 lead. Team Schwartz’s bats woke up scoring 5 in the 4th on the strength of a grand slam by Adam Cronstein. The momentum was shifting as Fogel’s bats shut down and the lead was dwindling. With Fogel up 11-9 in the top of the 9th, Jeremy Fogel led off with a walk, moved to 2nd on a long fly ball by Dan Gilbert and scored on Mike Gray’s single. This proved to be a big run because Schwartz came back in the bottom of the 7th scoring 2 to draw within 1 but couldn’t get that final run home. Final score Fogel 12- Schwartz 11. “I’m too old for this type of game,” Fogel said post game. “I didn’t come back to captain this year for games where we almost blow a 9-run lead. I’m just glad we were able to hold on in the end.”
Finally, over on Field Four, Team Groh defeated Team Lefton: The Birthday Boy Ken Groh checks in:
Team Lefton started off the top of the 1st by scoring 5 runs and Groh still is scratching his head on how that happened. “All I know is I struck out a guy who ended up at 3rd”. But the team just kept fighting and received some extra outs along the way that really helped. Groh scored 3 in the 1st and 4 more in the 2nd to take a 7-5 lead that they never gave back. The squad scored multiple runs every inning. Zac Swadner played an amazing 3B and scored 4 runs. “Handsome” Sam Castellini had 4 hits and had 2 RBIs. Reigning MVP Tyler “Bryce Harper” Stansbury had 2 doubles and a homerun and drove in 6 runs. The captain went 4-4 on the last day of year 44 for him also driving in 4 runs. Joel “The Wrath of” Kahn, Bryce Anslinger and Nick Depiano all had 3 hits each and combined to have 4 triples. David “BP” Snyder made 5 defensive plays and Mark Franklin who played his 1st game at catcher did well as the coach said that his dad would be proud. The team is looking forward to the 2nd half and is looking forward to Wednesday’s matchup vs the 1st half champs.
League Notes:
Ken also checks in with an update on his trip to Columbus to see Jason Faust: “I spent 2 nights visiting Jason Faust and I am pleased at his progress and his attitude. He is happy to be home with his wife and 2 boys and can do physical therapy at his home. He is very appreciative of all the support he has got from the softball league and told me he thinks he could pitch by the playoffs! Fighting spirit except I kicked his butt playing video games lol. I have to admit his 5-year-old son was better at hockey then his dad!”
Not only can you find the best Facebook political commentary this side of Mother Jones from David “The Doctor of Style” Weil but he now also has started growing pot in his garden. Not that he or I would know what that looks like.
It’s good to know what the JCC values in their sporting equipment as last Sunday I was pitching some balls to my son Jacob post game. James “Lynn” Swan was waiting for what I thought were the balls. “No,” he said. “I don’t care about the balls. You can keep those. I just need the bucket back.” So, note to all of you…the balls you can have, but the bucket is only for the J.
I have unconfirmed reports that after the game last night Eppy ate a couple of chicken wings that had been hiding in Steve Zawatsky’s beard since two weeks ago at the Silver Spring House.
With the very sad news that the Big Ten postponed their football season Alex “Earl Bruce” Lefton reported on what was on the minds of most Big Ten and OSU fans from Columbus. A National Championship without the most historic power conference will be suspect. They’ve (The Big Ten) been in every title game since the BCS started except in: 20,19,18,17,16,14,13,12,11,10,09,06,05,04,02,01,00 and 99.
On that note, a personal plea from me to all of you. Please wear your mask when you are out and about and tell all your college-loving sports fans to do the same. We as a country have messed up sports enough this year to help keep what we still have (UC football (at least today) SEC, Big 12 and ACC sports, high school sports and the Bungles and Reds). Do your part, don’t be a dope, put on a mask when you go out. I will now get off my soap box.
In this week’s “Catching Up With” I caught up with Eric “The Mouth of the Midwest” Gruen last week. Eric is using his time away from softball to play an obscene amount of golf (rivaling only Tiger Woods and Trump) and being the best dad he can be to his three kids while lamenting the fact he can’t go to Disney. “Of all the things I miss that Covid has taken away from me the ability to get a picture with Elsa and Anna from Frozen ranks right up there.” He wants everyone to know that he, along with his mouth and bunting ability, will be back next year.
Finally, this week in Fun Facts that Roger has learned since he isn’t playing softball. As you guys know, I’ve been following the news closer than ever and with all the news about the post office and people being able to vote through the mail being front and center this week. Did you know that the first bag of mail to travel by air (hot air balloon) was from Cincinnati in 1835? Roger also wanted me to mention that he has plenty of Felipe Lopez, Matt Latos, and Wily Mo Pena bobbleheads available for you to purchase if you’d like.
See everyone on the field next week. Stay safe wear a mask!!