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IS A BIG SUCCESS AT KEELE |
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by Bob Fromer
Well, it was a busy, busy, busy (think Richard Scarry) weekend of softball at the BSF's 2009 Platinum, Gold, Bronze and Silver (we don't say “B & C” anymore) Co-ed Slowpitch National Championships at Keele University in Staffordshire on September 5-6, where the rain held off until the finals on Sunday afternoon, there were great games, shock results and two more titles for Manchester, and everyone went home and lived happily ever after.
Except for those who ran into the usual motorway traffic jams on the way back and swore a lot.
“It's a softball final and it's raining – what a surprise!”, said one wag. That's “wag” with small letters. But this weekend of clouds and wind and a bit of sun was a huge improvement over 2008, when the C Nationals (sorry – Silver and Bronze Nationals – Liz and Lesley will slap my wrist!) had to be cancelled altogether and the Platinum and Gold Nationals were reduced to a one-day affair in the mud.
This time, the only mud was on Pitch 6 in the right-hand corner of Keele's vast open spaces. Pitch 6 is at the bottom of a gentle slope, so all the water drains down there and the pitch resembled a very firm chocolate pudding with grass on top. Nice for infielders, though – the ball didn't so much skip as plop.
So there were 30 teams from as far apart as Glasgow and Portsmouth playing on eight pitches with one-hour game slots until the finals, no new inning after 50 minutes, and the poor umpires barely having time to take a drink of water before two more captains were bearing down on them with intent. Some of those umpires were having their first go at this level of softball – a new BASU policy of “throw them in at the deep end because they'll never get there otherwise” – and it worked surprisingly well.
Amazingly, there were a number of full seven-inning games played under those parameters, and one astonishing contest between MI5 and Chaos in the Platinum Page Playoff was over in about 33 minutes.
That's what happens when you get very few hits, no errors, no walks, great defense and only a handful of runs. It's like those posters in the airport walkways. “Boring!” “Enthralling!” You choose!
Yes, But Who Won?
Well, I'm getting to that! You can't have everything in tweet-sized chunks – it's bad for the concentration!
So in the Platinum Nationals....
No, wait!
I know it's early, but here comes the duck (“Quack! Aflac!”) with your trivia question. Namely: which is the only team in the history of British softball to win two different co-ed slowpitch National Championships in the same year?
“Wow, I don't know, Ted – that's a tough one! How is that even possible!?”
Well, we'll come back to it. Just watch for the sodding duck....
Ok, ok … I know you all have better things to do, probably on Facebook. Websites and prose paragraphs are just so 2004! So here's a quick rundown of what happened in each competition.
PREMIER NATIONALS
Hang on! Those took place all the way back in August at some other university in Reading! What am I thinking?
Except, well, there were a couple of teams out there that were so full of A-grade players that I could have sworn....
No, no – Liz and Lesley are going to slap my wrist again! We don't have A, B or C-grade players any more, we just have NSL Nationals and NSL players and other Nationals and players named after heavy metals and some of those Nationals are more open than others, and some are just for league teams (except when they're not), and – oh dear, the BSF is going to have a lot of sorting out to do over the winter!
And anyway, those teams packed chock-full of what used to be called A-grade players didn't even win the Platinum Nationals! So that's all right then!
PLATINUM NATIONALS
Seven teams, six of them league teams, representing London (MI5 and Breakers), Manchester (Greensox and Mavericks) Bristol (Guppy Spotters), Edinburgh (Chaos) and the East Midlands (Pyros). Ok, who do you think won (if you don't already know)?
Well, MI5 and Chaos were the teams full of star (however they're classified) players, along with the traditionally strong Greensox, and those teams finished 1-2-3 in the round-robin, with MI5 on 5-1 and Chaos and Greensox on 4-2.
But four teams make the Page Playoffs, and squeezing into the fourth spot was Breakers, who went 1-3 on Saturday but came back to win their last two pool games against the Guppy Spotters and Pyros on Sunday morning, and thus edged out Pyros (who also finished 3-3) on head-to head.
The Page Playoff system takes the top four teams in rank order and has 1 play 2 and 3 play 4. The winner of 1 v 2 goes straight to the Grand Final, and has quite a long wait to see who will join them. The loser of 3 v 4 can pack the beer and kids into the cars and go home. Then the loser of 1 v 2 plays the winner of 3 v 4 for a spot in the Grand Final. Simple and subtle: the top two teams earn two bites at the cherry and a tournament winner who comes from the 3 v 4 game is going to have to earn their win by playing an extra game.
Page Playoff Games
Anyway, the 1 v 2 game was MI5 v Chaos, and most people expected the two teams to meet again in the Grand Final. Earlier in the morning, they had played a crisp seven-inning round-robin game that Chaos had won 6-4. This time, they outdid themselves and played that 33-minute seven-inning affair, with Chaos winning again by a score of 3-1. A heavy-hitting MI5 lineup that included Dan and Sean Spinks, Steve and Amy Rice and other luminaries didn't manage a run until the bottom of the seventh inning, and then they left the tying runs on base. Chaos scored one run each in the first, fourth and sixth innings, and that was that.
Meanwhile, Breakers took on Greensox in the 3 v 4 game. The result wasn't necessarily a foregone conclusion, since Greensox had only beaten Breakers by 5-4 on Saturday, and Breakers, who used to be a middling kind of Gold-type team from the GLSML, with players who were growing old together gracefully, had upped the ante this season by adding players such as Steve Hazard, Jeff Swindell and Laura Brockman to their squad (although Laura wasn't at Keele this weekend).
However, the question of who might have won the game was never really resolved because it was never finished. Breakers were up by a few runs when Greensox suffered one bad ligament injury and were reduced to nine players. The rules allow you to play on in those circumstances. But when another Greensox player was hit in the face by a hard-hit ball that took a bad hop, and one eye immediately closed and swelled, the game was over.
So Breakers – perhaps unexpectedly – came up against MI5 in the Page Playoff game whose name no one knows. Is it a “semi-final”? A “pre-final”? A “final” (before the Grand Final)?
Regardless, the key point was that MI5 still couldn't find their bats. Having scored just one run against Chaos in the 1 v 2 game, they could only manage the same total here. But Breakers weren't exactly lighting up the scoreboard either, and as the innings went by, a Breakers team conditioned by years of gallant failure against teams they considered their betters kept waiting for lightning to strike and for MI5 to bury them. It never happened, and Breakers finally scored a few runs and looked in wonder at their 5-1 win that put them into the Grand Final. MI5 will think about why they only scored six runs total in their last three games.
The Grand Final
It was a similar story in the Platinum Grand Final. Chaos took a 1-0 lead in the first inning on a double by Bruce Wilson and a single by Neil Wardrope and the two combined again to add another run in the third. Meanwhile, Breakers went up and down pretty meekly in the first three innings and appeared to be waiting for the deluge of Chaos runs that would match the rain that had started when the game began.
But when the deluge never came, Breakers shook off the remains of their inferiority complex and put up five runs in the top of the fourth. With one out, Jeff Swindell and Vicky Chapman singled, Steve Hazard blooped a key double that fell just inside the right field line, Tanya Moran was the beneficiary of an error (and later scored on another), Marty Roseman singled and Kelly Page drove a sacrifice fly to right-centre field.
And Scottish response came there none, apart from one more run in the fifth inning when Kevin Haggart's triple drove in Neil Wardrope.
Still, when Breakers came to bat in the top of the seventh, leading by a nervous 5-3, the outcome was very much in doubt. “We just need another three runs – that'll do us,” muttered long-time Breakers stalwart John Croucher. And no sooner said than done. Singles by Marty Roseman, pitcher Adam Stuttle and Catherine Wright and a sacrifice fly by the selfsame John Croucher did the trick and gave Breakers an 8-3 lead going to the bottom of the seventh.
But it still took the Breakers flashing some leather to bring the trophy home. Chaos leadoff hitter Ruth Macintosh smashed a one-strike pitch straight back up the middle, but Adam Stuttle flung out a gloved hand and the ball stuck.
Then Neil Wardrope lashed a line drive over shortstop, but Steve Hazard threw himself up to an impossible height and snagged the ball in the webbing of the glove at the top of his leap.
Chaos had had enough, and when Shawna Hendry hit a little pop fly back to Adam Stuttle, Breakers had their improbable Platinum title.
Long-time Breaker Richie Harrison, who was reduced to the role of scorekeeper on Sunday through injury, said, “After yesterday [when the Breakers had gone 1-3], I'm just elated. It's a tribute to the team – they wouldn't give up. We thought if we could just win a couple of games this morning, we might have a chance. But I can't believe it! It's the pinnacle of my career – even if I wasn't playing!”
Final MVPs: Ruth Macintosh (Chaos) and Steve Hazard (Breakers).
Final Standings
1 - Breakers
2 - Chaos
3 - MI5
4 - Greensox
5 – Guppy Spotters
6 - Pyros
7 - Mavericks
GOLD NATIONALS
Seven teams, representing London (SPAM, Mescalitos, Raiders Gold, Clapham Thunder and Oddsox) and Manchester (Lions and Jammy Dodgers). Hmm....
SPAM were the defending champions, and they didn't win a game on Saturday. But then, they didn't lose many either, with an unlikely day that saw them start with a 9-8 loss to Raiders Gold and then draw 6-6 with Mescalitos, 7-7 with the Jammy Dodgers and 8-8 with Lions (not in that order). Those draws made for an interesting table at the end of Saturday in which Mescalitos and Lions led and SPAM were just off the bottom.
But as with Breakers in the Platinum Nationals, two confident wins on Sunday morning – 13-5 over Oddsox and 9-0 over Clapham Thunder – put SPAM right back in the hunt. When the round-robin was over, it was Mescalitos and Lions in the 1 v 2 Page Playoff game while SPAM and Raiders Gold faced each other in the 3 v 4 game.
Page Playoff Games
Mescalitos had been favourites for much of the tournament, and they did nothing to suggest otherwise when they saw off the Lions 9-5 in the 1 v 2 game to advance to the Gold Grand Final.
Meanwhile, SPAM continued to pick up momentum and avenged their one defeat at the hands of Raiders Gold with an emphatic 16-4 win in the 3 v 4 game.
This brought SPAM and the Lions face-to-face for the right to play Mescalitos in the final.
SPAM carried on where they had left off against Raiders Gold with four quick first-inning runs, which started with a walk to Simon Gordon and was capped off with a three-run home run to right-centre field by John Boyd.
Lions could only counter with one run in the bottom of the first. But in the second inning they started to do their thing – spray base hits to all parts of the field – and the result was six runs on six hits and two SPAM errors and a 7-4 Lions lead. Consecutive singles by Adam Roberts, Angela Killian and Kris Hadwin got things started and a two-run double by Ed Watkinson was a key blow.
SPAM pulled back to 8-7 in the top of the fifth inning when singles by Becky Hickey, Simon Gordon and Mark Bowman brought in two runs. But Lions pulled away again in the bottom of the fifth with three of their own on singles by Lindsay O'Farrell, Kris Hadwin and Ed and Michelle Watkinson and another SPAM error, and 11-7 was the final score.
The Grand Final
Mescalitos had beaten the Lions in both the round-robin and the 1 v 2 game, but this form went out the window in the Gold Grand Final. Lions were irresistible, scoring early and often in a 17-5 rout of Mescalitos to take yet another title at what used to be called B and C levels back to Manchester.
“Quack! Aflac!”
Ah, the duck. Ok, so which is the only team in the history of British softball to win two different co-ed slowpitch National Championships in the same year?
It's Manchester Lions, silly, because they won the postponed 2008 Silver Nationals that were re-staged at the end of May this year in Manchester, and thereby got promoted to play in the Gold Nationals at Keele. And now they've won that as well, who knows what's next...? Platinum? The NSL? The American League East?
What is beyond doubt is that the Lions are currently the best of some very competitive teams below NSL and Platinum level that keep winning championships for Manchester (see the report on the Silver Nationals below) through teamwork, good fundamentals, considered pitching and strong hitting, and long may it continue.
Final MVPs: Gill Kennaugh and Ed Watkinson (Manchester Lions).
Final Standings
1 - Lions
2 - Mescalitos
3 - SPAM
4 - Raiders Gold
5 - Clapham Thunder
5 - Oddsox
7 - Jammy Dodgers
SILVER NATIONALS
Eight teams, representing Leeds (Puddings), Manchester (Camels), Bristol (Creamers), East Midlands (Sheriffs and Tigers), Windsor & Maidenhead (Ascot Blues) and London (Raiders Blue).
In the Silver and Bronze competitions, semi-finals and a final for the top four teams replaced the Page Playoff format.
The rejuvenated Puddings from Leeds topped the group at the end of round-robin play, with the Bristol Creamers just behind. The Sheriffs from Nottingham and the Camels from Manchester slipped into the other two semi-final places, with Camels, in fourth place, drawing the short straw of a semi-final against the first place Puddings.
But this proved no obstacle for the Camels, who knocked the Puddings out of shape and out of the tournament with a low-scoring and tense 3-1 win. In the other semi-final, Bristol Creamers saw off the Sheriffs by 10-3.
Camels always looked to have the edge in the Silver Final, and brought yet another trophy up the M6 to Manchester with a 12-6 win.
Final MVPs: Tori Corin (Creamers) and Steve Bennett (Camels).
Final Standings
1 - Camels
2 - Creamers
3 - Puddings
4 - Sheriffs
5 - Ascot Blues
6 - Raiders Blue
7 - Tigers
8 - Knicks
BRONZE NATIONALS
Eight teams, representing London (Raiders Red, Comer's Homers and the LASL All-Stars), Oxford (Devils), Glasgow (Legends), Scotland (Powersquad), East Midlands (Pyros 2) and Newcastle (Knights).
It's been four or five years since a team from the Oxford Softball League took part in a National Championship, though the league has been progressing quite nicely in the meantime.
And maybe Oxford will send teams more often, since the Oxford Devils, league winners in 2008, lost only a single game all weekend, and that by a single run, in taking the Bronze title.
The Devils topped the round-robin group with a 6-1 record, losing only by 5-4 to Powersquad, but avenged that defeat in their semi-final with a convincing 9-1 win.
In the other semi-final, Comer's Homers prevailed over Raiders Red in an all-London clash by 13-9.
The final between Devils and Comer's Homers, the last game to finish, was a fluctuating affair, with the lead changing hands several times. But the decisive hit by the Devils' John Sullivan brought in three runs, won the game by a score of 9-8 and earned him the Male MVP award for the final.
BSF President and Oxford Devils player Stella Ackrell said, “We had a great weekend, and this win should encourage whoever wins the Oxford League this year to enter the Nationals again in 2010.”
Final MVPs: Laura van der Bijl (Comer's Homers) and John Sullivan (Oxford Devils).
Final Standings
1 - Devils
2 - Comer's Homers
3 - Raiders Red
4 - Powersquad
5 - LASL All-Stars
6 - Legends
7 - Pyros 2
8 - Newcastle Knights
NATIONALS NOTES
There are very good reasons for playing all four finals at these Nationals at more or less the same time. Everyone wants to set off for home as early as possible, everyone can be together when the trophies are awarded and so on. But the result is that all four finals are played with virtually no spectators and no atmosphere, and then suddenly there are eight teams plus the umpires and a few others front and centre for what becomes a packed and vibrant Closing Ceremony where the awards and thank-yous are handed out. When the Platinum Grand Final began in light rain on the pitch directly in front of the clubhouse, you could have heard a pin drop, and the number of people watching who weren't on either team could be counted on the fingers of two hands. There may not be an answer to this, but finals with a lot of people watching are always more fun for players and spectators alike, especially when the game is close.
The weekend was full of good fielding plays, and a few great ones (as GB player Fiona Hunter said, who was there as an umpire, “The standard just seems to keep going up.”). The catch by Steve Hazard at the end of the Platinum Final, described above, was one of the plays of the weekend. But the best play this reporter saw (and I saw only a tiny fraction of the games played) was a catch made by Clapham Thunder's right-centre fielder Jason Kittinger in his team's final group game against SPAM. The play came when SPAM's Simon Gordon hit a rising line drive over Jason's head. Jason turned, raced back as hard as he could, and then flung himself at full stretch, snagged the ball in mid-air and held it as he hit the ground. Willie Mays, eat your heart out!
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