Month: November 2021

 

November 9 Recap

By Marc Brafman

 

The most recent edition of the JCC fall softball season came to a close on Tuesday night. Thank you to all the players and captains for making our first fall trip in a long time a fun season. Without further delay the winning captain, Greg Leader, who took time out of his Mensch on a Bench decorating (it’s never too early in the Leader household) to report in. 

 

Team Leader entered championship night winners of six straight games, but needed to scratch, claw and fight from behind in both games to secure the title.

 

Team Solomon gave Team Leader all they could handle in the semifinals. Mike Gray pitched a fantastic game and Solomon’s crew came ready to hit. Team Leader entered the bottom half of the fifth inning down by a run. Two hits later, the game was tied with the winning run on second and nobody out. Team Solomon intentionally walked the next two batters (Anton and Rafi) to load the bases. Ultimately, the winning run was scored on a bloop hit by Matthew Leader to advance Team Leader into the championship game.

 

Like Team Solomon, Team Fogel came ready to play and their big bats plated six runs in the top of the first inning. Team Leader scored three of their own in the bottom half of the inning. The story of the rest of the game was stellar defense by Team Leader, allowing only one additional run in the following four frames, and their bats coming alive. Fueled by a big offensive fourth inning, Team Leader pulled away and won the championship game 14-7.

 

After the game, Leader was overheard urging teammate and future commish, Ryan Silverman, to make the fall season a dynasty league and keep the teams the same as this year. “Just think about it, okay?” Leader asked. “Every team reached the semi-finals this season. Why mess with that kind of parity?”

 

Congrats on a great season, Team Leader. 

 

First, some sad news. Former player, Ben Sandor, lost his wife to her long battle with cancer last week. Please keep him and another former player, his dad Doug, in your thoughts. 

 

In much happier news, shout out to rookie, Camden Kirzner, who is one of the bigger rally cats at UC. He dressed up in the Skyline Coney outfit all day on Saturday at UC’s game day and during the game. Not sure if he got free food out of it but he was all over Twitter and Gameday. 

 

A big thank you to Pat “Sunshine” Feldman, David “The Dr. of Style” Weil, Ryan “Hi-Ho” Silverman, Mark “Eddie Harris” Weisser, Rick Lefton, Mr. Mike and winner of the softball division of the race, Adam Cronstein, for your participation in the Oy Vey 5K race. We broke the race participation record this year so next year I’d like to see more of you out helping to support the J.

 

Evan Gildenblatt will now be the best dressed lawyer in the city as he officially became a lawyer this week. Way to go, Evan. 

 

It’s heartbreaking to see Jacob’s reaction each day when I tell him about the Reds moves this offseason. Watching the World Series, I was thinking, “Huh, maybe his kids will be able to experience the Reds winning since we sure won’t any time soon.” 

 

Finally, in college football this week I’m going to have to hold my nose and root for OSU to win out. Also, and this really pains me, UGA to beat Bama. I’ve seen 6 national titles. I can handle Bama not winning one this year if it means UC makes it to the final 4. SO, for you Bearcats fans, it’s pretty easy. Root for Utah, OSU, UGA and anyone beating Oklahoma. That’s all.

 

Don’t forget, registration for the Spring league is only 7 weeks away.  Hope to see you all in April!

 

 

 

 

November 2 Recap

By Marc Brafman

 

On a very cold night at the ballpark, both Jack Frost and an actual skunk (not to be confused by the normal skunk weed smell) were in the air last night. 

 

On field one it was Team Fogel vs. Team Buttermaker

 

Jeremy chimes in: 

Battling the frigid weather, defense seemed to be no problem for Team Fogel. Even with a quiet first few innings with the bats, the leather was flashed all around the field. There were not enough gold gloves to be given out and the JCC record for most outfield assists was shattered. Let it be known that the record books are loosely kept, but the 4 assists from the outfield of Team Fogel will not be forgotten. (Wes “Hungry like a” Wolf, and Jeremy “Hamilton” Fogel) each had a couple. The bats came eventually came alive and the defense continued to be stout which lead to a sweep of the final 2-game series of the season. “I almost had to put pants on last night Fogel said. When I got home last night I hopped right in the shower since there was definitely a lot of shrinkage.” On offense we were led by Pete “The Straw that Stirs the Drink” Soltesz, Josh Rosen, and a lot of errors by Team Buttermaker..

 

For Team Stu “The Mayor” Todd Wasserman crushed a double, Eric “Lombardi” Goldstein had a couple of knocks and Harry Meisner also hit the ball well. “We crushed the ball tonight but give Fogel credit for making the plays. Also, I need to draft faster guys. Goldstein and Brafman getting gunned down on the bases didn’t help us. We are looking forward to shocking the softball world when we defeat Team Leader next week.

 

Over on field 2 it was Team Leader vs. Team Kamrass:

Greg steps away from his future job on Skeleton Yard Wars, the new TV show coming to Lifetime to chime in:

Team Leader completed a perfect back half of the season, winning two against Team Kamrass. They did so without two of their key players, Anton Loon and David Wertheim, who were either out of town or saw the forecasted temperatures for Tuesday night.

 

Both games were close back and forth, relatively low scoring affairs. Jamey was Jamey on the mound, featuring a high level of accuracy and keeping hitters off balance. In fact, the biggest offensive inning of the night came when Jamey was on the bench. Teen rookie Peter Brownell had played all but two positions this season coming into the game – pitcher and right field. Leader let Peter start on the bump in game 2. That experiment was short-lived, as the rookie gave up five earned runs before earning an out. Leader quickly hooked Peter and his infinity ERA, sending him to RF for the rest of the inning – thus completing (within one inning) Peter’s quest to play all 10 positions in a season. We are checking with the historians, but we believe Peter has set JCC fall league season records for number of positions played, as well as highest ERA.

 

Key call-outs go to rookie Jarrod Wallerstein, who hit his first home run, key sub Dan Grefer, who was a vacuum at 3b and the River City skunk, who made a return appearance in left field.

 

The Oy Vey 5K race is this weekend. (Sunday) please if you haven’t already sign up: https://mayersonjcc.org/oyvey5k/ the money raised goes towards the Blue Jays program run by Mr. Mike. See you all out at the race on Sunday!

 

Stu informed us last night that he was really full from the mac n cheese he had for lunch yesterday during his weekly Tuesday early-bird special lunch with some prospective clients. In my head Stu and his friends have this type of discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGGi4SpPtqc

 

With all the pictures of Halloween with our kids I’m wondering if B-Rod dressed his kids up as JFK Jr. If you don’t know what I’m talk about look it up…

 

Speaking of looking things up I suggest you all look up the crazy Halloween story involving a coach for the University of Texas, a monkey and stripper named “Pole Assassin” which not surprisingly was Corey Norris’s nickname in college.

 

Next spring before the draft I suggest we have a 100-yard dash to see who is the fastest guy in the league starring Eppy, Todd, Mike Creemer and Eric “Lombardi” Goldstein. We might be there 2 hours, but it would be fun to watch

 

Congrats to the Braves for winning the World Series last night. Image if the Reds had the front office that the Braves had. Maybe that could have been the Reds last night and Joey Votto crushing the ball to RC the way Freeman did. But hey, we did a look at TJ Friedel and Art Warren.

 

Finally, as most of us who care about college football saw last night, somehow UC is ranked #6 in the college football playoff vote. Now if all UC and the other teams are being judged on is how they did in the first 8 weeks of the season I’m not sure how you can have an undefeated UC and Oklahoma for that matter behind 3 teams with one loss. When asked by ESPN last night why UC is ranked lower the guy in charge the AD from Iowa whatever his name is said well besides ND who has UC beaten? The answer is EVERYBODY. Did they ask besides Penn St who has OSU beaten or besides Ole Miss who did Alabama beat? Because the answer isn’t everybody. I’m not here to say that in 4 weeks UC should be in the top 4 if everything plays out like it should or might. What I am here to say is it is a sham and a joke that TODAY after beating two power 5 teams on the road by double digits and everyone else by a huge score (minus Navy) they aren’t ranked higher. It’s a shame for the players and people who care about UC and all of college football that this continues to happen. More on this next week.