Month: June 2025

Adam wasn’t kidding in his e-mail this week saying it was going to be hot out. But the heat had nothing on the hot action on the field. Let’s get to the games.

On Field 1 it was Team AJ vs. Team Kyle

Kyle for the winners:

We beat Team Goldhoff 6-4 in a defensive battle. Down 3-0 in the middle of the game we made a few great defensive plays to take momentum and followed it up with a 5-run inning to take the lead that proved to be the difference. Offensively David Weil had a few hits, Brian Goldberg had a key hit to spark a two out rally (and a great scoop at first in the 7^th inning), Ryan Silverman had a big hit to score two runs to take the lead, and I had my best game in years with 3 hits and a running catch on a deep fly ball.

Mike Gray pitched a great game getting some of their hitters off balance, and our defense had our strongest showing of the year with only a few misplays.

On Field 2 it was Team Wes vs. Team Stu

Special on-field reporter, Will Coleman, for the winning Team Stu:

Team Solomon worked Team Wolf for a 10-8 win on Field 2 in a battle of the blues that saw both impressive fielding and precise hitting.

The Carolina blue boys got on the board first and never trailed – the offense picked up right where it left off last week and jumped out to a 7-2 lead after two innings. Matt Brodof scored each time he reached base to lead the team’s 1-6 hitters, all of whom finished with multiple hits.

The muted royal blue bats did enough to hang around but were ultimately silenced by clutch pitching from captain Stuart Solomon, who even struck out fellow hurler Howie Schwartz. Eli Gould took away a base hit on a running catch in shallow right field, and Ben Charlton combined with catcher Alex Kraus to cut a runner down at the plate (no relay throw needed) ending an important two-out rally.

Captain Wes Wolf added a solo JCC home run in the bottom of the sixth to pull within 2 runs before the rest of the lineup went down in order to end the game.

Team Solomon looks to build on its first win streak of the year next week against Team Fogel on Field 3.

On field 3 we had Team Kenny G vs. Team Fogel

Ken for the winners:

Team Groh started off with a Tyler Stansbury double and an RBI single from SamcCastellini who also came around to score after hits from Pete Soltesz and Chris Von Holle but we left the bases loaded and Team Fogel plated 3 runs in the bottom of the inning on RBIs from Jeremy Fogel and Ryan Baum. Groh went up 5-3 with a Pete Soltesz triple and broke the game open with 9 runs in the 3rd inning sending 14 guys to the plate with seemingly everyone hitting a single. Steady defense from both teams and an RBI double from Danny Meisterman capped the scoring at 16-5. 

Wishing Todd Wasserman a speedy recovery from his broken finger. 

Finally on Field 4 it was the battle of the Marc’s Team Brafman vs. Team Simons

Marc Brafman for the winners.

Team Brafman continued their winning ways by beating a shorthanded Team Simons 9-3 (I think) For 5 innings it was a pitching and fielding duel as Jimmy Lefton and Mark Weisser kept both teams off the scoreboard. Team Brafman, winning 2-1 in the bottom of the 5th, finally came to life. The Special One, Mike Rothstein, singled, Zach Mayer singled and then Harry “Hood” Meisner also singled. Jimmy Lefton had the big hit of the game with a huge two-run double. Captain Brafman tripled him in and the scoring was continued by Rabbi Yitz who singled in Brafman to make it 6-1. Team Brafman added a couple of more runs in the bottom of the 6th to put the game out of reach.

As has been the case all year, Team Brafman’s defense was stellar all night. Mike Margolis, Zach “The Wild Horse” Zackem, Rick Lefton and Gary “Coach” Fisher all made nice plays in the field. (Rabbi Yitz, and Harry also made a couple of nice catches in the outfield) A special shout out goes to Jimmy who got the game ball. He has found the fountain of Youth and continues to pitch, hit and field like a guy half his age. Keep it up, Jimmy!  

Team Brafman tries to continue their torrid start next week as they take on Team Groh on Field 2. 

League notes:

A short week on birthdays:

Matt Brodof is the only one that came across my desk, so happy birthday Matt.

Also, Mark Tenenholtz is getting married on Saturday night, so Mazel Tov to the Tenenholtz family.

It’s JCC night at FCC coming up in Aug. 10. This is a fun night if you want to come see FCC play. Jewish Community Night at FC Cincinnati – Mayerson JCC

My favorite part about the Reds releasing The Candy Man is Nick Krall’s quote afterwards. He said his contract was “sunk cost” and that is the reason they are releasing him. It must be nice to sign a guy for twice his value, watch him stink up the joint when he played (which wasn’t enough) then flat out cut him all the while your job is safe. This is the same front office that signed Brad’s favorite player Garrett Hampson for $700K only to cut him after only 18 or so at bats. I guess I need to get Jacob more baseball lessons ASAP.

Good news. It looks like the Bengals are here for at least another 10 years. 

Roger is on a cruise in Alaska. I have a feeling even Bob Ross and his happy little trees  would move away from Roger if he started talking NHL hockey or XU basketball. 

Sorry this is so short this week. I’ll do better next week

See everyone on Wednesday.

Good afternoon everyone,

Sorry for the delay in the blog from last week and the non games for this week. From the week of June 11:

Team Brafman won in 9 innings over Team Wagner

Team Goldhoff won over Team Fogel

Team Wolf won over Team Simons

Team Grefer won over Team Groh

This week as you all know we had our first rain out which stinks. The games will be resumed from where you left off on Aug. 6th. 

Guys, a public service announcement from your favorite weather curmudgeon: According to USA Softball rules, any one of you can leave a game if you believe lightning is causing unsafe conditions. While we all want to play each Wednesday, the number one priority is to keep us all safe. It’s just JCC softball.

Now onto an extended league notes:

First, let’s all wish Todd Wasserman a speedy recovery from a nasty thumb injury suffered on Wednesday night.

Next, a ton of birthdays the last couple of days:

Michael “The Wrath of” Kahan

Randy “Tex” Broyles

Howard “Crazy Legs” Goldwasser

Ben Barnett

Jared Kamrass

Randy “Dentist to the stars of Finneytown” Sandow

Scott “Hungry like a” Wolf

Joel “Hallelujah” Buckley 

And me, so happy birthday to me 

If you have never been to the J Classic, I can’t recommend it  enough. What a great event. Big shout out to Rick Lefton who is the main man behind and in front of the scenes for that event and this year Brad Wagner was one of the co-chairs. Guys, even if you don’t play golf, tennis or pickleball come out and support the JCC at dinner or by volunteering next year. You won’t regret it.

The Oy Vey 5K is back (weather permitting) this year. I’ll get the link next week to start signing up.

Congrats to Bryce for finishing in 3rd place in a big pickleball tournament, and for braving the heat on Thursday going to the Reds game.

Speaking of the Reds while they are playing a lot better the last 10+ games, does anyone believe they will make a big splash to get better? I sure don’t. Are you telling me they could have gotten Devers from the Red Sox for a journeyman pitcher and 3-4 “prospects” that all could turn out to be Brandon Larson or Chad Mottola? Our front office isn’t smart or bold enough to make that trade, which is why the Reds will continue to hoard prospects and be a year away from being a year away.

How come we don’t have a sugar daddy in this city willing to pay 10 BILLION dollars for our team like that guy just bought the Lakers? Where is our Steve Cohen? Can we invite him into the JCC league?

A speedy recovery to rookie Jeff “Oscar Meyer” Wiener who pulled a calf muscle last week and is on the DL for a couple of weeks

If any of you have family or friends in Israel let’s all pray they are doing ok. And if you want to be more depressed I encourage you all to watch the movie Sept. 5 on Amazon. It’s about the 1972 Olympics when the Israel team was killed and how ABC Sports covered the 24 hours live on TV. It’s a fascinating movie.

Finally, Roger has started to buy me Alabama shirts from who knows where and asking if I want them. Does he do this for any of you OSU or UC fans? He will show up with a random Bama shirt and offer it to me.  So thanks Roger but I’m not sure if I really want a used Gump wearing Bama shirt from Goodwill.

See everyone next week. Drink plenty of water, it’s going to be hot. 

Marc

Another great night for softball (Adam has Mother Nature on Speed Dial this year so far) 

Before we start with the recaps, a reminder that it’s “WING NIGHT Presented by Big Gig Franklin” next week at the Silver Spring House. The entire league is invited so please try and make it. A huge thank you to Gig for his continued support of the softball league. This includes Team Solomon who is on the bye. 

Now onto the action. On Field 1 it was Team Brafman vs. Team Fogel

Marc for the Winners: In one of the cleanest team wins that I can ever remember Team Brafman beat Team Fogel 14 or 15 to 4 or 5 (Sorry, I can’t remember the score, BUT I do remember the hits from a steady Team Brafman). Playing in front of his Dad who Team Brafman now requires to come to every game, Harry “Hood” Meisner went at least 4-4 with a ground-rule double, TWO long homers over the fence and I believe another single to pace the offense. Not to be outdone, Rabbi Yitz had 4 hits including an inside the park homer, and while he might have hit for the JCC cycle, he contributed clutch hits all evening. Captain  Brafman continued his hot hitting as did Rick Lefton and Jeff “Oscar Meyer” Wiener. Back to Harry…when the Yitz kids run out to the outfield when he comes up and literally catch the balls going over the fence you know you are having a great night. 

On defense, Jimmy Lefton continued to find the fountain of youth on the mound while Zach Mayer, Gary Fisher, Mike “The Special One” Rothstein and Corey Meyers all made the plays in the field. Mayer as usual was steady in the field and made a between the legs, ala Brandon Phillips, flip to Gary to get a force out at 2nd. Jimmy summed it up post game: “We haven’t even scratched the surface on how good we can be.” 

For Fogel, Joel “Sparky” Fogel hit a two-run homer and Ryan “The Hebrew Hammer” Baum also had a couple of good hits. 

Team Brafman looks to continue their hot start next week vs. Team Wagner.

On Field 2, it was Team Simons vs. Team Wagner.

Marc for the winners:

In an epic rematch to begin the second half of the season, Team Simons locked horns with team Wagner. It started off as a dull, low scoring game, until it wasn’t. Team Simons tacked on the runs making it 9-1 going into the bottom of the 5th inning. The knockout blow was not delivered and Team Wagner was able to make it a ballgame. Team Simons ultimately prevailed 10-5 in 7 in a hard fought win.

On Field 3 it was Team Stu vs. Team Grefer

Stu for the winners:

Team Solomon won yesterday 22-7. “The Team showed that we are really here for each other,” said David Snyder, former Wise Temple President, and oldest on the team by more than 20 years.”This locker room is like nothing I have experienced before.” 

The offense started out hot, scoring 10 runs in the first inning. Cam “Crooked Nose” Kirzner went 4-4, scoring 4 times. There were hits by every member of the team. Matthew ” Gift of God” Brodof, Steven “Wreath” Shapiro, Stuart “Steward” Solomon, Ben “Son of the Right Hand” Charlton, and Jeremy “The Lord Exalts” Dock all went 3-4 with a number of the hits coming in 2 out rallies. The most fun of the hits was Stuart’s over the fence HomeRun to straight away center field. The ball hit the top of the red fence lining and over for the home run. Brandon “Prince” Lindsey had a huge triple after pitcher Scott “Come On Man” Wolf taunted him for taking too long to get into the box. 

Great defense from David “Beloved” Snyder made several very nice plays at 2nd base to limit Team Grefer. Eli “Ascended” Gould was excellent behind the plate throwing the ball back to the pitcher, not throwing balls into the outfield. While Dan “G-d is my Judge” McGrath continues to put dollars into the “Pop Up Jar”, his defense was outstanding, snagging several hard hit balls in LCF.

 Team Solomon looks to be a 2nd half team and a force to be reckoned with down the stretch.

After the game Oren Shmoel had this to say “Stuart’s team is so amazing. I love their vibe and I hope they win the rest of the games. It was a great honor to lose to them tonight.” 

Finally on Field 4 it was Team Groh vs. Team AJ

Kenny for the winners:

Tyler Stansbury and Sam Castellini started off with hits and they both came around to score in the 1st, but the 1st half champs won the inning by scoring 3 in the bottom half. With 2 outs in the 2nd Mathew Kraus and Danny Meisterman ripped singles and both came around to score on a Tyler hit to left. Steady Sam drove him in and Groh scored in the 3rd to make it 6-3. But Goldhoff scored 4 runs to take a 7-6 lead after 3. But Team Groh had 8 straight hits in the 4th, all singles except a Soltesz 2-run triple and Groh took a 12-7 lead. Pete drove in Jack Cohen to make it 13-7 and AJ’s squad cut it to 13-9. Jon Ruben led off the 6th with a double and Kraus hit a SF and then after a hit by Danny, Tyler launched one over the fence. Team Goldhoff scored 5 to cut the lead to 16-14 but David Solomon finished the scoring with a 2-run single and the score held up for a 18-14 win. Rookie Michael Heldman had 3 hits in a good JCC game. Thanks for umpiring, Gary Grefer.

League Notes:

Once again reminder that it’s Wing Night at the Silver Spring House next Wednesday.

Also next week it’s the J-Classic

This is an event near and dear to a lot of our hearts. It’s the biggest fundraiser of the year for the J, and means a lot to Scott “Shorty” Adams. If you would like to come to dinner, register for the raffle or come out and support the JCC please go to this web site: J Classic – Mayerson JCC

A happy birthday to Alex “Big AL” Lefton this week. We miss ya in the league

Editors note: Last blog I mentioned that Linda Rothstein was injured catching a pass thrown by Laurie Lefton. In fact it was Mallory Lefton who made the throw. My mistake and lets all wish Linda a speedy recovery.

Matt Miller would like to thank everyone who helped find his dog. Good news he is back home safely after a few days of running around.

In “What’s Roger Selling” this week, he came up to me last night with two Alabama shirts that he apparently found at the thrift store. He also had with him a game used Stan Kimbrough shoelace and a helmet signed by the 1997 Cincinnati Cyclones (or Maybe it was the Mighty Ducks. I can’t remember)

Until next week!

Marc

On a beautiful day for softball the first half of the season came to an end, and I didn’t even have to go into my rain out rant! Small miracles do happen.

Let’s give a big shout out to rookie capt AJ Goldhoff as he led his team to the first half title. Well done, AJ!

Now onto the action. In the early games on Field 2 it was Team Groh vs. Team Wolf

Ken for the winners:

Team Groh left the bases loaded in the 1st and 2nd innings getting RBI’s by Chris Von Holle and Jon Ruben keep the game close, but Team Wolf scored 2 runs in each of the 1st 3 innings to lead 6-2. In the 4th after an RBI from Sam Castellini, the MVP, Jack Cohen, hit his 3rd over the fence HR in 3 games to cut the lead to 6-5, but Wolf plated 4 runs to build a 10-5 lead. The top of the 5th changed the momentum with Groh starting off the inning with a single. Team Groh batted 13 with almost the whole team getting on base as they scored 8 to take a 13-10 lead. Team Groh would add 5 in the 6th and 6 in the 7th, scoring 19 unanswered runs, to win 24-10. Jack Cohen led the way going 6-6 with 5 runs and 7 RBI’s. Sub Griffin Harris had 6 hits, Pete Soltesz had 5 hits and a walk and scored 4 runs. Danny Meisterman, Groh, Von Holle and Castellini also had 3 hits and Todd Wasserman, Matt Kraus and Jon Ruben all added at the plate and with great defensive plays.

On Field 3 Team Brafman took on Team Solomon

Marc for the winners.

In the 9 years I’ve been in the league, I’ve seen some strange games and outcomes but Sunday’s might take the cake. Team Brafman came back from being down 12-7 in the bottom of the 7th to win 13-12 on a two out steal of home by Capt. Brafman. “That is a new one for me,” Brafman said post game. “As with all of our wins this season this was a total team effort.” After overcoming some shakey defense in the first inning that led to 5 Team Solomon runs,  Team Brafman as usual was led by Zach Mayer and Harry “Hood” Meisner in their comeback. Harry crushed a 3-run homer over the fence, then had a great double to drive in more runs later in the game. “The Special One” Mike Rothstein, Rick Lefton, Super Sub AJ Goldhoff and Gary Fisher also had big hits to help the team. On the mound Jimmy Lefton continued to find the fountain of youth by pitching a great game. 

In the 7th inning give credit to Team Stu whose bats came alive with 1 out. It seemed like the entire lineup got hits to put them up by 5. But Team Brafman came roaring back in the bottom of the 7th with hits by Ricky, Fish, and the top of our order. With two outs and trailing by a run, Rothstein and Brafman had back to back singles which brought up sub Joel “Sparky” Fogel. He hit a single to RC that scored Rothstein and moved Brafman over to 3rd. It was at this time that Fogel took off for second and Brafman broke for home. When the throw from the catcher went to second, Brafman scored for the winning run. Team Brafman finishes the first half 6-2.

For the late games,Team AJ took on Team Simons. AJ for the winners:

In another crazy affair the Goons pull out the win against Team Simons 18-17.

We jumped on them early in the first few innings and built up a lead of 15-4 on the backs of pretty much everyone on the team. However, The Simons Squad clawed back with a couple big innings and ended up taking a late lead 17-15. Big contributors for them were David Wertheim with 5 hits, sub Dylan Smith with 3 hits including a Grand Slam over the fence, Eric Gammarino with 4 hits, Anthony Skrapitz with 4 hits, Stu Weinstein with 4 hits, and Zach Michelson with a sick diving grab in right.

In the bottom of the sixth, Jamey Drennan started us off with a triple (after stealing home twice on the day), sub Ben Charlton knocked him in, Ryan Small tripled and Ian Conwell sac flied him in. That gave us the lead and we closed it out in the 7th. This was again a team effort with Ben having 4 hits, and Jamey Drennan, Adam Cronstein, Griffin Harris and Me having 3 hits.

We look forward to opening the second half of the season on Wednesday against Team Groh.

Finally on field 3 Team Fogel beat Team Wagner 14-10

League Notes:

If you have seen Matt Miller’s dog, Wally, please call (513) 827-8906. He is loose and running around near Harper’s Point. 

Condolences go out to David and Marc Wertheim on the death of Marc’s dad (David’s grandfather).

Also thanks to Marc for bringing Marx bagels to the game yesterday.

A happy birthday to Landon Krantz this week.

Do you all realize that the Reds have not won a series in which they lost the first game in over a year? They are also 1-9 in rubber games this season. And yet I am going to the game tonight.

And finally a speedy recovery to Linda “Julian Edelman” Rothstein who broke her shoulder catching a football thrown by Laurie Lefton after a day of fun last weekend. Get well soon.

See everyone Wednesday night as we start the second half of the season!

Marc