6/28/2019

The Savage Gardeners reminded the SF Softball League’s Open-CC division on Tuesday night that the old dog still has some bite. With a furious rally in the final two innings, the Gardeners salvaged a tie against perennial contender Liquid Experience and may have breathed new life into the former champs.

Trailing 21-9 in the bottom of the 6th, the Gardeners scored five to pull within seven. Starting pitcher Dane Dobrinich and the defense came up with a critical shut-down inning in the top of the 7th, setting the stage for an epic rally and finish.

Second baseman Philip Zackler, proud owner of a brand-new Lexus (it’s a lease), got things started with a leadoff single. James Ball, who had gone to Moscone earlier in the night and showed up late as a result, followed with a hit of his own to put runners on the corners. Consecutive RBI singles by Marshall Kratter, Tristan Besse, and Dave Watters suddenly cut the deficit to four with no outs and runners again on the corners.

Tyler Davis hit into the first out of the inning, forcing Watters at second, but delivered Besse to cut the lead to three with one out and slugger Kyle Kretchmer bounding to the plate. Kretchmer had already hit a prodigious blast over the tall fence in right back in the third – the ball is still missing – and promptly crushed his second of the evening. 21-20, one out. We have a ballgame.

After a flyout for the second out of the inning, the Gardeners were down to their final out, but only one to tie, two to win. Matt Bou got things rolling again with a walk followed by a Dobrinich single and Bou motoring around second and sliding into third. Runners at the corners, two outs, and Zackler back up at the dish. Zackler came through for the second time in the inning, bringing Bou home with a single to tie the game, 21-21.

That brought up Ball, who hit an absolute piss missile back up the middle, only to be stabbed out of thin air by the Liquid Experience pitcher who was merely trying to defend himself. With no time remaining, the game was called a draw.

It was a frustrating yet inspiring conclusion to a game that began inauspiciously. With Ball in an Uber on his way from Moscone, the Gardeners took the field as the home team in the top half of the first with only nine men. Several ill-timed defensive miscues staked the visitors to an early 6-0 lead.

Ball arrived just as the Gardeners came into the dugout for their first at bat, and the offense was able to cut into the early deficit with a pair of runs. Kratter led off with a double, followed by a Besse walk (his fourth of the young season). After a Watters flyout moved both Kratter and Besse up a base, a Davis groundout scored Kratter followed by a Kretchmer triple to deliver Besse.

A Besse single and Kretchmer’s first homerun of the night scored another pair in the third. But Liquid Experience continued to chip away throughout the night, building a 14-4 lead heading into the bottom of the 5th, where the Gardeners mounted their first of three significant rallies to close the game.

Kratter and Besse got things started with back-to-back singles. Watters doubled to score Kratter, then a Kretchmer walk was sandwiched in between a pair of outs. But clutch, two-out, two-run hits by Bou and Dobrinich put the Gardeners right back in the game, trailing 14-9 after five.

In need of a scoreless inning to keep it close, the Gardeners failed to shutdown the Liquid Experience offense, as the visitors hung seven runs and appeared to put the game out of reach.

Trailing 21-9, consecutive hits by Ball, Kratter, and Besse (RBI) led off the inning. Watters then smashed a 3-run homerun to cut the lead to 21-13. Davis and Kretchmer singled to put runners on 1st and 3rd with no outs. Ewbank then scored Davis on a fielders’ choice to close out the scoring in the 6th and pull the Gardners within seven, setting the stage for the miracle in the 7th.

Kretchmer led the way at the plate, going 4-4 with the two homeruns and five RBI. Besse also had a 4-4 night, scoring five times and driving in two of his own. Watters continued to his hot start, as well, going 3-5 with the homer and another five RBI, adding to his team-leading total of 12 RBI after two games.

Dobrinich was tremendous on the hill again for the Gardeners, particularly in the 7th holding Liquid Experience scoreless and giving the offense a shot.

The Gardeners will be back at it on Tuesday, July 2nd against Kekambas. First pitch at 6:30pm at Moscone 1.

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3/23/2019

A dramatic, walk-off Grand Slam by Tyler Davis propelled the Savage Gardeners to a 25-24 win on Tuesday night. The game-winning blast avoided what would have been a disappointing loss after the seeing the Gardeners two 10-run leads down the stretch.

After consecutive rainouts the previous two weeks, there was concern the delay may hinder the Gardeners in the opener. But those concerns were washed away early as the team hung six runs in each of the first two innings, jumping out to an early 12-2 lead.

In the first, Marshall Kratter drew a leadoff walk to get aboard. After two quick outs, the Gardeners saw eight consecutive batters reach. Davis singled, then Dan Ewbank and Tristan Besse lined back-to-back run-scoring singles. A walk to Ari Hersher loaded the bases back up, followed by RBI singles from returning veteran Chris Norton and longtime ace Mike Edde. James Ball finished off the scoring with a two-run single.

It was more of the same in the second as Kyle Kretchmer tripled to start the inning. Davis drove him in followed by another Ewbank single. Besse and Hersher delivered back-to-back RBI singles to make it 9-2. An Edde SAC fly was sandwiched between walks to Norton and Ball, then Kratter delivered the big blow of the inning with a 2-run triple in the left-center field gap. When the dust settled, the Gardeners held a 12-2 lead after two.

OCO hung three in the third to close the gap to 12-5, but the Gardeners matched the number in their half of the inning to put the lead back at 10. Ewbank lined a tailing shot over the right fielder’s head for a 2-run blast, driving in Davis, then a Hersher walk and Norton single set up Edde’s second sac fly of the day.

But a perfect storm came in over Moscone 1 in the middle innings, with a warm and cold front coming in from opposite directions. The OCO bats started got hot while the Gardener defense went ice cold. By the time the system moved out, OCO had taken a 17-16 lead heading into the bottom of the fifth.

The Gardeners responded in their half, showing a resiliency that was prominent during their championship run in Spring of 2017. Besse started the rally with a base hit and moved into scoring position on a Hersher walk. Edde drew a one-out walk to load the bases, then Besse came home on a sac fly from Ball. That set up another big blast from Kratter, who tripled for the second time in the game scoring Hersher and Edde and retaking the lead, 19-17. Watters promptly brought Kratter home with a booming double to make it 20-17.

OCO scored two in the top half of the sixth to make it 20-19, and after a scoreless trip to the plate by the Gardeners, they went to the final inning protecting a one-run lead.

It quickly disappeared, as OCO came out swinging and hung a five spot on the board, claiming a 24-20 lead as the two rivals went to the bottom half of the 7th.

Edde and Ball got things started with consecutive base hits, successfully turning the lineup over with two on and no one out. Kratter singled to load them up followed by a Watters RBI single. 24-21, bases still loaded, no one out.

After a pop-out for the first out of the inning, Davis stepped to the plate and hit an absolute piss missile into Moscone 3 that put an abrupt, dramatic end to what was an instant classic.

Davis finished the game 5-for-6 with five RBI to lead the offense. Kratter had himself quite a performance out of the leadoff spot, reaching base all six trips with two triples and four RBI. Ewbank had a four-hit night including the homerun, Besse chipped in with three singles and two RBI, and Ball/Edde each drove in three runs to help pace the offense.

The Gardeners will look to build off the momentum of the season-opening win as they’ll pay a visit to Liquid Experience this coming Tuesday, March 26. First pitch will be at 6:30 at Moscone 2.

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4/21/2018

It has undoubtedly been a bizarre season for the Savage Gardeners this spring. As the team entered “Week 7” of its spring schedule, the Gardeners were 0-2. Let me repeat: after six weeks, the team had two official games to its record. With two early rainouts and two games to be concluded at a later date due to time, the team was struggling to find its rhythm and a feeling of normalcy.

“[The season has] been one of the weirder ones I’ve been a part of in my career,” reflected Manager Tristan Besse. “Even more bizarre given my first year at the helm here. Not much has really been in our control, so all we can do is go out and play. But even that hasn’t been much of a guarantee with the weather.”

Seeking that “feeling of normalcy” was front and center on Tuesday night as the Gardeners visited the SF Seals at Jackson 1 field. And even that got off to a weird start. With urgent work matters popping up on Besse right before first pitch, the skipper was forced to remove himself from right field for the first couple innings.

But the team responded, batting 10 in the top half of the first inning and jumping out to an early 6-0 lead.

“We really needed that. I think being the visiting team was hugely important to this team tonight. Had we gone out, given up a few in the top half, we easily could’ve come out flat to start the game. We’ve struggled with that since our opener (incomplete game) against Olympic Club and I think the rainouts played a big part. But we found some rhythm early and captilized on it.”

Shortstop Marshall Kratter got things going with a one-out triple that cleared the outfield on the fly. That was followed by six consecutive base hits from David Watters, Dan Ewbank, Kyle Kretchmer, Mike Edde, Dane Dobrinich, and a two-run base knock from Besse that concluded the scoring.

Seals came back with five of their own in the bottom half, but the Gardeners returned with another six spot in the top of the second. Back-to-back singles by Jamie Philliposian and the returning Phil Zackler got things started. After a fielder’s choice at third erased Philliposian, Kratter once again came up with another big hit, driving an RBI single to score Zackler. After the Seals solicited a rare flyout from Watters for the second out, Ewbank continued his hot hitting with a two-run double, which set up what has become one of the most predictable outcomes in sports: a (two-run) homerun from Kretchmer at Jackson 1. Kretchmer’s towering blast made it 11-5, and the Gardeners would tack on one more after consecutive singles from Edde and Dobrinich set up Besse’s RBI single to make it 12-5.

Once again, the Seals hit their way back into it matching the Gardner six spot with their turn in the second. But the third inning is where the tide changed.

Wernick led off with a single. Philliposian doubled. Zackler and Hersher noted RBI singles. Then after two quick outs, Ewbank capped off the scoring with an absolute piss missile over the left center fielder to make it 17-11.

Then in the bottom half of the inning, Edde and the defense got the coveted “shutdown inning”, holding the Seals scoreless.

The Gardeners failed to capitalize in the top of the fourth as they went down in order, with Besse shamefully grounding into an inning-ending double play. But the defense stood tall, holding the Seals to three in the bottom half, then just a single run in the fifth after another scoreless trip to the plate. Despite two consecutive scoreless innings offensively, the Gardeners still found themselves with a two-run lead, 17-15.

Feeling a sense of rejuvenation, they returned to the garden in the top of the 6th for some raking. Back-to-back singles by Hersher and Kratter set the table and the middle of the order sat down to eat. Watters (RBI) and Ewbank each ripped doubles, then Kretchmer cashed in with a two-run single to stretch the lead to 21-15.

And once again, Edde and the defense held the Seals’ offense scoreless in the bottom half. After a scoreless trip half innings of their own in the 7th, the Gardeners withstood a small two-run rally in the bottom half before wrapping up their first win of the season, 21-17.

“This was as complete an effort as I’ve seen from this team,” assessed Besse after the win, his first official win as manager of the club. “We strung hits together, played consistent defense and made some big plays when we needed to. But I believe it was all driven by the energy the team brought tonight. We’ve missed that but I’m hoping we recaptured it tonight. We have as much talent, if not more, as any team in this league. But when we don’t have the energy we had tonight it shows in the box score and we were flat the last couple weeks. That’s on me.”

The win improves the Gardeners to 1-2, and there’s no question they needed it. It puts them right back in the hunt as they head into next week against Fall 2017 champs Olympic Club Open, a team they hold a 26-13 lead over in one of the games yet to be finished.

Added Besse, “That’s a big one. Their record may indicate they’re having a bit of a championship hangover, but we know that’s a heck of a ball club over there. Good litmus test for us next week and whether or not we’re a championship team right now.”


News and Notes

Scott’s Turf Builder Player of the Game
Dan Ewbank
Ewbank went 4-4 with his third homerun of the season, three RBI, and threw out another runner at the plate. The left fielder has made these types of performances the norm this season, as he’s currently batting .913 and tied for the team lead in RBI (17) with Kretchmer.

Next up:
Olympic Club Open (0-3-1)
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
9:10pm, Jackson 1

Make-ups
After their game against OCO on the 24th, the Gardeners will have to make up two rainouts from earlier in the season:

Motherload (3-2)
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
8:00pm, Jackson 1

City Crew Mens (2-3)
Tuesday, May 8, 2018
7:40pm, Moscone 2

The incomplete games will not be concluded until after the rainout games are registered. At that time, the league will assess the impact of those games on the playoff standings and schedule them accordingly. The league has indicated they may be scheduled another night of the week pending field availability. As they stand, those games are:

Gardeners lead Olympic Club Open 26-13, top 5, two outs, runners on 1st and 3rd with Besse batting.

Kekambas leading Gardeners 37-21, top 5, two outs, runners on 1st and 2nd with Besse batting.

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2/19/2018

On Monday, first-year manager Tristan Besse announced the Savage Gardeners 2018 Spring schedule. In addition, Besse shared that the Gardeners would see all 14 of their core players return to action.

The Gardeners season will start on Tuesday, March 6 as they'll open up against contender Olympic Club Open. They'll later wrap up the regular season with a rematch against OCO in what should hopefully serve as a solid test before the team's postseason run. The rest of the schedule will see other familiar foes - Motherload, Leo's, City Crew Men's, Kekambas, and S.F. Seals - as well as league newcomer Stormy Daniels. Sources indicate the team consists mostly of mid-20's republicans from the Marina.

With everyone returning this Spring, the Gardeners will look to return to the top of the mountain as they did last Spring when they captured the first title in franchise history. The Summer and Fall seasons saw the team narrowly miss the postseason, though the team finished strong in the Fall with a 33-13 win over City Crew Men's in the regular season finale.

The lineup will once again be led by slugger David Watters, who steps down as manager after two seasons at the helm. Watters had taken over for longtime field manager JJ Warren, who stunningly left the team early last Summer to retire back East in NYC. Watters is the career leader in hits, average, doubles, triples, homeruns, RBIs, and OBP and it's not even close. He'll be firmly entrenched at the top of the lineup, as will perennial leadoff hitter Ari Hersher, career leader in runs, singles, and walks. The Gardeners will lean on the duo to kickstart the offense and set up run-scoring opportunities for the heart of the order.

And waiting there for them will be the likes of Kyle Kretchmer and Dan Eubank. Kretchmer, playing a bit of a reduced schedule of late, has clubbed 15 homeruns and 67 RBIs in his last 14 games. His video game like numbers and display of power have captured the nation, and the league has undoubtedly been put on notice with word of his return. Ewbank has caught fire himself the last few seasons, batting .610 while supplying 7 homers and 57 runs batted in over the past three seasons while gunning down a plethora of runners from his left-field position.

Mike Edde returns as the ace of the staff and will help anchor that middle of the lineup. In addition to thwarting opposing offenses, Edde has swung a hot stick of late carrying a .670 average over the past 4 seasons, including a .735 campaign back in the Fall of 2016. His battery mate the last few seasons, Martin Wernick, will return in a more regular capacity and Besse was optimistic about his potential to help the lineup.

"Martin's been banged up the last couple seasons dealing with a hammy, but with rest and rehab this offseason we're excited to see what he can do with less limitations out there. He swung it pretty good on a bum leg and the sky will be the limit once he's able to cut if loose out there."

Around the horn Besse expects to see a steady mix of Marshall Kratter, Dane Dobrinich, and Jamie Philliposian, Dave Huffman, and Phil Zackler all seeing work at multiple positions. Kratter, who will once again lead the infield from the shortstop, had a bit of a down season last Fall with the stick but Besse expects a bounce back campaign.

"It felt like he was pressing a bit there at the end. It's a long season, and with how much we rely on him in the field and the effort he gives every play you almost have to expect it. But he's come into Spring Training fresh and ready to go, and it's on me to figure out how we can better help Marsh manage his mileage throughout the year."

Dobrinich comes off a strong Fall where he hit .667 and will see most of his work up the middle paired with Kratter. "Dob will give us some innings on the bump, give Edde a blow now and then. We need some depth there so we'll give him and [Matt] Bou a few looks."

Huffman (.588) and Philliposian (.619) look to build off strong campaigns at the plate and will see innings all around the infield, though mostly between third and second. Zackler, who sits fourth all-time in games played, was limited to one game last season but expects to see steady work at second and behind the plate in his 17th campaign for the Gardeners.

Out in the outfield, with Ewbank and Hersher locked in on the left side Besse will deploy a rotation of Bou, Dan Gatta, and himself on the right side. Bou, who battled back from injury last season, hit .545 to help steady the back end of the lineup. Gatta enters his 19th season at third all-time in games played (125) behind Hersher (145) and Watters (144). He hit .579 over 5 games last Fall. Besse expects to return to his spot in right field while taking on managerial duties, and the lefty will look to build off the 5-for-5 performance in last Fall's season finale that salvaged what had been a difficult season with the stick. The .602 career hitter hopes some minor adjustments at the plate have him positioned for more consistency in 2018.

"We saw a few things on film late last year and made a couple adjustments before the season finale. The results spoke for themselves, so we've spent the winter building on that and hopefully can be more reliable at the plate and just keep the line moving."

The team comes in with a lot of optimism and while there's once again a new face calling the shots, Besse said it's business as usual.

"Nothing changes except the handwriting on the lineup card. We're here to compete, win games, and put ourselves in position to be one of the final four teams competing for the title. Get in, then win."

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10/28/2017

With playoff hopes erased a week earlier, the Savage Gardeners entered Tuesday’s Fall season finale looking to build some momentum heading into the long offseason.

Player/manager David Watters certainly didn’t expect to see his team lay down and take it, saying before the game, “This will be a real test of our team’s character, seeing how we respond tonight. We have nothing to play for except ourselves, but that should be enough. I expect a strong performance from our guys.”

And the Gardeners gave Watters just that, slaughtering City Crew Men’s 33-13 in one of the most explosive offensive performances in recent memory. In fact, the 33 runs were the most scored since March 29, 2016, when the Gardeners routed The Good Guys, 41-6.

It was balanced attack all night, as every Gardener player finish with at least 3 hits and 2 RBI. Kyle Kretchmer (5 for 6, 2 2B, HR, 6 RBI) and Watters (4 for 6, 2 2B, 3B, 5 RBI) led the onslaught for the Gardeners. Mike Edde (2B, 4 RBI) and Tristan Besse (3 RBI) both added 5-hit performances at the plate.

The game did get off to a bit of an inauspicious start for the Gardeners, however. CCM jumped out to an early 4-run lead in the top of the 1st, and the Gardeners scratched across a lone run on a Watters 1-out triple and Kretchmer 2-out RBI blooper to right.

After CCM added five more in the top of the 2nd to make it 9-1, the Gardeners had dug themselves quite the hole. But they grabbed their tools, went out into the yard, and immediately got to work. Besse and Marshall Kratter opened things up with back-to-back singles. After a fielder’s choice cut down Besse at 3rd, Matt Bou and Dan Gatta contributed RBI singles to cut the lead to 5-3. A fly out to left made had CCM one out from limiting the damage, but the Gardeners proceeded to send 10 men to the plate before the final out was made.

Watters started the 2-out rally with a 2-run double to bring home Bou and Gatta. Edde delivered Watters with an RBI single, and Kretchmer followed with a two-run blast into the tennis courts in right. Ewbank followed with a homerun of his own, clearing the outfielders in left and rolling all the to infield at Jackson 1, and suddenly the game was tied, 9-9. Besse singled to jumpstart another rally, then promptly scored on a Kratter RBI triple to claim a lead they would not surrender the rest of the night. Four consecutive singles by Jamie Philliposian (RBI), Bou, Gatta (RBI), and Dane Dobrinich (RBI) gave the Gardeners a 13-9 lead. It appeared the Gardeners may get two more when Watters roped one to left, but CCM’s left fielder completely stretched out and robbed what likely would’ve resulted in a 2-run homerun. Despite that play, the Gardeners had taken control of the contest.

“That inning really the pivotal moment in the game for us,” said Besse. “Down 9-1 early in what some may see as a meaningless game? Sure, there’s certainly an opportunity there to pack it in and head home, especially after a competitive yet frustrating season like the one we’ve had. But our guys are better than that – we came to fight and we sent them wobbling back to their corner after that second round.”

Edde held CCM at bay in the top of the 3rd, limiting the opposition to a 3-run lead and protecting the lead as the Gardeners went to the bottom of the inning ahead by a run. The ace pitcher then helped his own cause leading off the inning, doubling to left followed by a Kretchmer base hit. Ewbank roped an RBI single to score Edde and Besse delivered Kretchmer with an RBI single of his own. Two quick outs, one of which was a Philliposian RBI groundout, had CCM nearly off the ropes again, but the Gardeners staged yet another long, two-out rally. Bou singled to move Philliposian up to second. Gatta and Dobrinich added RBI singles, bringing up Watters who delivered a 2-run double to right center. Edde, who had led off the inning, then scored Watters with an RBI single and came around on a Kretchmer RBI double. Ewbank singled followed by RBI singles from Besse, Kratter, and Philliposian. When the dust settled, the inning was a mirror image of the one before: 17 men to the plate and 12 runs scored. A 25-12 lead and blood everywhere had the league office scrambling to notify next of the kin for CCM.

Edde once again helped his own cause in the 4th, holding CCM scoreless then knocking an RBI single to score Dobrinich for the only run of the inning for either team. CCM managed a single run in the 5th to halve the lead at 26-13, but the Gardeners would go back on the offensive in the bottom of the inning, eventually forcing officials to step in and stop the fight.

Ewbank kicked things off with a double then quickly scored on a single from Besse, his 5th hit in five trips to the plate on the evening. Kratter hit into a fielder’s choice as Besse was cut down at second. Philliposian followed with a single and Kratter hustled around second and advanced to third, setting up a sac fly to right field for Bou. After a Gatta single put runners on 2nd and 3rd with two outs, Dobrinich, Watters, and Edde all added RBI singles before Kretchmer closed out the scoring with a 2-run double off the wall in right. 33-13, a 20 run lead, and the umpires had seen enough.

Edde’s performance on the mound and at the plate (5 hits, 4 runs, 4 RBI) earned him the final Better Homes & Gardens “Gardener of the Game” award of the season.

“Huge win for our guys tonight,” said Edde after the win. “Great defense behind me and we swung the bats the way we know we’re capable of. [It’s] always great to get run support like we had tonight, but we took care of business in the field and kept them out of it once we took the lead. That was the key.”

The Gardeners close out the Fall 2017 campaign with a 3-5 record, but their run differential of +10 was actually better than S.F. Seals (+8), which claimed the 4th and final playoff spot. A solid season with some close losses, and while another missed postseason certainly stings, Watters doesn’t feel the team is that far off from where they were two season ago as league champions.

“We’re really not,” said Watters. “Last week against Seals was our only non-compete of the season. Four losses by four runs or less. Ball bounces a little differently here or there, we’re a six, maybe seven-win team. Just gotta keep working hard this offseason and come back in the Spring ready to go. I’m fully confident we can get back to the top of the mountain with this group of guys.”

Watters said the team will take a couple weeks to regroup and recharge before they start up their offseason training program and voluntarily workouts. They’re also hoping to compete in a tournament to get some game reps in before the Spring season. Continue to check back here at the Gardener Gazette for all your exclusive Savage Gardener insider coverage and information as we bring you updates throughout the offseason.

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10/21/2017

The Savage Gardeners rolled into Jackson 1 on Tuesday night with momentum on their side and in control of their own playoff destiny. Having scored 50 runs in the last two games and fresh off a bye week, expectations were high. That all apparently meant nothing as the Gardeners came out flat and couldn't overcome an early deficit in an embarrassing 23-11 loss to S.F. Seals.

The Gardeners failed to score in the first three innings, with only two batters reaching base - an Ari Hersher single in the 1st and Tristan Besse, who reached on an error by the second baseman. Meanwhile, Seals piled on the runs, plating six in the first, 11 in the second, and a trio in the third as they jumped out to an early 20-0 lead. Winter had come.

The Gardeners were able to scratch a couple across in the 4th. Martin Wernick led off with a walk. Hersher followed with a single down the right field line - apparently forgetting the score and need for baserunners, or just being greedy and trying to boost his own OPS, Hersher was gunned down at second trying to stretch it into a double. Nonetheless, Wernick reached third and was brought home by a David Watters RBI single. Dane Dobrinich moved Watters into scoring position with a base hit and Watters came around to score on a Dan Ewbank double. The Seals responded with another three in their half of the inning, however, and thus the deficit had actually widened.

Now trailing 23-2 and running out of innings and time, the fifth brought some life to the contest as the Gardeners mounted their most significant rally of the game. Five consecutive singles from Jamie Philliposian, Marshall Kratter, Matt Bou, Dan Gatta (RBI), and Martin Wernick (RBI) plated two runs and had the bases loaded with nobody out. That brought up Hersher, who had a plethora of options to plate a run and keep the rally going. He opted to exercise none of them, instead electing to pop out to short. Watters picked him up, crushing a bases-clearing triple to right center field to make it 23-7 and injecting some life into the Gardener bench.

After another flyout to short for the 2nd out, David Huffman singled to bring in Watters. Ewbank followed with a triple to score Huffman and Besse delivered Ewbank with a base hit to center to close out the scoring in the 5th. After the dust cleared, the Gardeners had made it a 23-10 game and there was suddenly newfound hope.

Meanwhile, Dobrinich, who was filling in for ace Mike Eddy, started to settle in on the mound as the righty got the all important shutdown inning in the 5th and blanked the Seals again in the 6th. The Gardener offense, however, was unable to capitalize on its momentum scratching across just one more run in the 6th - a Wernick RBI single to bring in Bou, who had reached on a single to lead off the inning. Ewbank added his second triple of the game in the 7th with two outs, but Besse ended the game on a fly to right as he made an attempt to reach the moon but failed to launch.

The loss drops the Gardeners to 2-5 and ends their playoff hopes for the Fall 2017 season. They'll wrap up the season this coming Tuesday, 8pm at Jackson 2 against City Crew Men's.

Dan Ewbank captured the Better Homes & Gardens "Gardener of the Game" with his performance at the plate and in the field, going 3 for 4 with two triples, a double, RBI and run scored and also gunning down a baserunner at the plate and nearly nabbing a second.

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10/16/2017

Heading into Tuesday’s matchup with Ball So Hard University, the 1-4 Gardeners were desperately in need of a win, and likely needing to win out to make the postseason.

That same evening they also welcomed back Phil Zackler, the longtime vet and owner of the fourth most games played in Gardener history. Inspired by his return to the lineup, the Gardeners responded with a 24-16 win, improving to 2-4 and keeping their playoff hopes alive.

The game did have an inauspicious start for the Gardeners, however, as the students from BSHU staked themselves to an early 3-0 lead after the top of the 1st. But once again the Gardeners had an answer in their half of inning, scoring multiple runs in the 1st for the sixth time this season, this time all coming with two outs. After two quick outs to start the game, Dane Dobrinich got things started with a single, advancing to second on an error by the first baseman. Kyle Kretcher promptly delivered Dobrinich with a base hit to start the scoring. After a single by Dan Ewbank, Tristan Besse drew a walk to load the bases, setting up a 2-run single by Matt Bou. A base hit by David Huffman made it 4-3 and put a wrap on the first frame.

After a scoreless second, BHSU retook the lead with another three spot to make it 6-4. But in the bottom half the Gardeners opened up the floodgates hitting around the order for the second consecutive game. Dobrinich once again got things going from his new home in the 3-hole with a base hit. Kretchmer proceed to hit a ball 500 feet, only to be caught because the defense had essentially set up 500 feet away. But Ewbank stepped up next and said, “I got you, fam”, crushing a 2-run homerun to left center. Tie ball game, 6-6. Besse and Bou followed with back-to-back singles, then Huffman, who apparently was blind playing without glasses, crushed a homerun of his own. 9-6 Gardeners.

Jamie Philliposian got things going again with a base hit. After a Zackler fly out to center, Hersher singled to put runners on first and second and bring slugger David Watters to the plate. At that point Watters was uncharacteristically 0 for 2 and had the players, umpires, fans and media all speculating what could be the cause. Was he injured? Was the 1-4 record and uncertainty of his coaching future weighing on the talented slugger? Theories abound, he quickly put those to rest with a prodigious 2-run triple. 11-6 Gardeners. That brough up Dobrinich for the second time in the inning, and for the second time (and third of the game) he singled bringing in Watters. 12-6 Gardeners. Kretchmer tripled to bring in Dobrinich and close out the scoring in the 3rd and it was 13-6 Gardeners.

The students scored a trio in their half of the inning to narrow the lead to seven, but the Gardeners immediately responded with five consecutive singles to start the 4th. Besse, Bou, Huffman (RBI), Philliposian, and Zackler, who capped off the stretch with a bases loaded RBI single. Hersher drew a bases-loaded walk, then Watters hit into an RBI fielders choice to drive in another run. One out later, Kretcher crushed a 2-run double to cap things off and stop the bludgeoning. 19-6 Gardeners and the route was on.

After allowing a pity run in the bottom of the 4th, the Gardeners more or less put this thing out of reach with a ham bone in the 5th, again with two outs. Besse drew a leadoff walk but managed to tag up on flyouts to left and left-center field, putting him on 3rd with two down. Philliposian delivered him with an RBI single, then Zackler followed with his second hit of the contest. RBI hits from Hersher and Watters, who plated two, stretched the Gardener lead to 23-7 and BSHU was quickly running out of innings, time, and dignity.

They did answer with eight in the bottom half of the 5th, but when you’re trailing on the scorecards that much it’s gonna take a lot more than that for a knockout punch. Bou scored Kretchmer (2B) to cap the scoring in the 6th, and after BHSU plated another run in the bottom half, time had officially run out.

With the win, the Gardeners now find themselves in an interesting position as the playoffs near, in large part because of run differential which is +4 despite a 2-4 record. Due to record and run differential, Leo’s (6-1, +35), Kekambas (4-2, +16), and Olympic Club Open (4-3, +26) seemingly have three of the four spots locked up. City Crew Men’s currently holds the 4th and final playoff spot at 4-3 (-2). Should the Gardeners defeat S.F. Seals (4-3, -1) this Tuesday evening, they become a 4-loss team, lose the head-to-head and run differential and are likely eliminated. This will then set-up what should be a dramatic, winner-take-all game on 10/24 between Savage Gardeners and City Crew Men’s for that final ticket to the dance. But it all starts tomorrow evening at Jackson 1 as the Gardeners will face a must win to force the issue in the final week of the regular season. And with how competitive they’ve played all season and the momentum from this latest win, this is definitely a team no one will want to face when the lights brighten and the stage gets bigger.

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8/05/2017

Needing a win and some help to make the postseason, the defending champion Savage Gardeners put up an absolute stinker on Tuesday night at Jackson 1 against Motherload in a depressing 8-4 defeat. With the loss, they finish the season 3-4, with week 7’s suspend game against Flatliners no longer needing to be completed.

It’s a depressing box score to look, as the Gardeners failed to take advantage of Mike Edde’s brilliant performance on the mound. They mustered 15 hits, the team’s lowest hit total since Game 1 of the playoffs last season against, you guessed it, Motherload in a 14-8 loss. They benefitted from the 1-seed and were able to rebound and capture the title, but this time around the next game they play will have to wait until the Fall.

Things did start out auspiciously for the home team, as back-to-back singles by Dave Watters and Edde in the 1st set up a sac fly by Dan Ewbank to stake them to an early 1-0 lead. After a scoreless 2nd, Motherload tied things up with a run in the top of the 3rd, but after Matt Bou singled and advanced to second on an error, Ari Hersher drove him in with a base hit and the Gardeners reclaimed the lead, 2-1.

Motherload answered with three in the 4th, and the Gardeners quickly responded as a triple by Ewbank and a base hit by David Huffman made it 4-3, Motherload. A four-run 5th by Motherload reclaimed the lead, and they never let it go as the Gardeners struggled throughout the night to adjust to the opposing pitchers’ arsenal and approach. They squandered a great scoring opportunity in the 6th, putting runners on 2nd and 3rd with two outs and Tristan Besse at the plate. Besse had gone 11 for his last 12 and already had two hits on the evening, but the right fielder got under a high delivery and flew out to right center.

The Gardeners plated one in the bottom of the 7th, with Bou singling and coming around on a base hit by Watters. Edde drew a walk to load them up for Ewbank, but a fielder’s choice to second on a ground ball up the middle wrapped things up.

With the loss, the curtain falls on the Summer season for the Gardeners, and there are already rumblings manager Dave Watters could be on the hot seat. Certainly unfathomable how a manager could find himself in such a position having just guided the franchise to its first championship in nine seasons, but sources indicate the front office is frustrated by how the team finished out the season. This will certainly be one to follow closely in the coming weeks, though worth noting Watters was spotted signing up the team for the Fall season over the weekend.

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8/05/2017

The baseball gods giveth, then taketh. That was story at Jackson 1 on Tuesday evening as the Savage Gardeners saw the lights go out on them and likely their playoffs hops in a suspended contest against the Flatliners.

With both teams at 3-3 and in a three-way tie for 3rd, the game had major playoff implications as a win would put one in the driver’s seat for one of the final two spots, whereas the loser would find themselves in need of a win and some help in the final week of the season.

And while the game itself was suspended at 10:30 due to the lights going out, the Gardeners couldn’t help but feel as if they’d lost the game, but most certainly momentum in their quest to erase nine-run deficit in the 7th.

Trailing 23-14 in the 7th inning, the Gardeners plated 3 runs and had runners on 1st and 2nd with one out. Jaime Philliposian grounded one up the middle that appeared to be a double play ball. But the shortstop mishandled it, booting it across the infield and failing to record an out. The stroke of luck brought life to the Gardener bench, and Martin Wernick strode (read: hobbled) to the plate already a perfect 4-4 on the evening. But after a brief conference at the plate, the umpires called the game with the lights expected to go out within moments. And they did. The game was officially suspended, and will be made up should the outcome determine the final playoff spots for the Open CC championship starting on Tuesday, August 8.

The theatrics in the 7th were perhaps fitting given what transpired throughout the evening, with both teams seeming to have a flair for the dramatic. The Gardeners got things going in the first, as ace Mike Edde was back on the hill and posted a zero in the top half. David Huffman got things going in the bottom half with a one-out single, Edde followed with a single of his own, and Dan Ewbank put the Gardeners on the board with an RBI single. Tristan Besse then stepped to the plate and deposited one over the fence in right, and just like that it was 4-0.

Edde posted another zero in the 2nd, including a huge K for the third out of the inning. Back-to-back base hits by Wernick and Ricky Perez, followed by a walk by newcomer Nick Nagy, loaded the bases with one out. Ari Hersher hit a sac fly to right to plate one, and base hits by Huffman and Edde made it an 8-0 game.

The Flatliners’ bats came to life in the 3rd, scoring six to cut the deficit to two. Edde posted another K, this one looking, to help the Gardeners escape further damage. But the Gardeners once again hit one of their cold spells, failing to score in the 3rd and 4th while the Flatliners chipped away and eventually took a 17-10 lead.

The Gardeners found new life in the 6th, however. Edde and Ewbank opened things up with back-to-back singles, setting up RBI base hits by Besse and Dobrinich. Philliposian drove in another with a sac fly, and Wernick’s 4th hit of the night drove in a pair to make it 17-14.

But the Flatliners responded, and in a BIG way, in the top of the 7th. With a pair of runners on and two outs, a batted ball up the middle brought Dobrinich to his right and the savvy veteran laid out, smothering the ball and somehow coming up with it. He popped up and threw to first, but the off-balance throw was wide of Nagy. It was an incredible play, and for a moment looked like the Gardeners would carry momentum into the bottom of the 7th with only a 3-run deficit to erase. But the play extended the inning and put runners on 2nd and 3rd. The Flatliners 3-hitter was due up, and with two homeruns already on the night, including a prodigious blast to the pitchers’ mound on Jackson 2, the Gardeners opted to put him on. Their cleanup hitter, who’d been trying to go oppo all night, ran into one to left clearing the bases and extending their lead 21-14. Another hit and homerun staked the Flatliners a 23-14 lead and seemingly on their way to victory.

However, the Gardeners would not be denied as they clawed back in the bottom half of the inning. Hersher led off with a base hit. After a fielder’s choice at second, Edde singled followed by an RBI double from Ewbank to plate Huffman. Besse smoked his 4th hit of the night, a 2-run single to right, and it was suddenly 23-17. After a Dobrinich single, Philliposian’s batted ball was misplayed up the middle. But Wernick and the Gardeners will have to wait for a chance to complete the comeback, with next week’s game against Motherload likely determining if the game will be concluded at season’s end. Stay tuned, this one isn’t over. Or is it?

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8/05/2017

In a close, back-and-forth affair at Jackson Field on Tuesday evening, the S.F. Seals literally walked off with a 21-20 win over the Savage Gardeners.

The Gardeners, playing without their ace Mike Edde, turned to Matt Bou who pitched admirably in the loss. After getting torched for 17 runs in the first three innings, Bou settled in holding his opponents scoreless over a three-inning stretch. But the Seals apparently thought they’d attended a March of Dimes event, choosing not to swing at Bou’s offerings in the 7th inning and walking their way to a poorly earned victory.

Things started out well for the Gardeners as they jumped out to a quick 4-0 lead in the top of the first. Five straight hits to open the game by Hersher, Kratter, Watters, Besse, and Dobrinich followed by sac flys from Bou and Philliposian did the damage. The Seals answered with three of their own in the bottom half, but the Gardeners responded in the second. RBI singles by Watters, Besse and Bou put Savage back on top, 7-4.

But the Seals were resilient, taking a 9-7 lead after two. Newcomer Nate Ergian led off the top of the third for the Gardeners with a base hit. A single by Martin Wernick moved Ergian into scoring position, setting up Ricky Perez for an RBI base hit. It should be noted that this was Perez’ first AB of the game. He’d mistakenly gone to Moscone for the game, having to re-route back to Jackson after realizing his mistake. Classic.

An offensive explosion by the Seals staked them to a 17-8 lead after three. Savage added one in the top of the 4th on an RBI single by Philliposian plated Dobrinich. The Gardeners went quiet in the 5th, perhaps a “calm before the storm”, if you will. Moving to the top of the 6th, they were running out of time and in need of a big inning to try and cut the deficit. And boy did they ever.

Kratter led things off with a single and was promptly delivered by Watters, who smacked a booming triple through the outfield. Besse brought Watters home with a base hit and was followed by a Dobrinich walk to put runners on 1st and 2nd with nobody out. A fielder’s choice and pop out to third sandwiched a base hit by Philliposian, and it appeared the Gardeners drive may stall there. But they showed that championship resiliency from a year ago with eight consecutive hits to suddenly reclaim the lead.

Wernick and his bum leg lit the fire with a hobbling, 2-run double to bring Bou and Philliposian around. Perez added an RBI single and Hersher followed with a base hit of his own to put runners on 1st and 2nd for Kratter, who promptly smoked a ball to the fence in right center. Speed took over, as Kratter motored all the way around for a 3-run homerun and the Gardeners suddenly had the lead.

And they weren’t done. Watters started things back up with a double, and Besse collected his 5th hit of the day, an RBI triple to right that skated by the right fielder and to the fence. A Dobrinich double plated Besse, putting Savage up 20-17. It looked like the Gardeners would score another on Bou’s base hit to left, but a bullet of a throw from left cut down Dobrinich at the plate.

We went to the bottom of the 6th with the game seemingly flipped on its head, but that’s when the Seals put their bats away and refused to take a swing as Bou searched for the command he’d shown in holding them scoreless over the previous three innings. With the walk-a-thon taking a toll on everyone, including the game clock, a bases loaded walk with the game tied and time expired prompted the officials to call the game and send the Seals off with a cowardly 21-20 victory.

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7/22/2017

Tuesday’s contest against Leo’s was not just game 5 of a grueling 8-game season and an opportunity to climb back over .500 for the first time all season. For the players in the Savage Gardeners clubhouse, the game weighed heavier than most. After nine years at the helm, on the field, and managing the book, JJ Warren had recently been ex-communicated to New York City, leaving the team searching for answers and a new identity.

Prior to the game, player/manager Dave Watters was asked what impact the recent events would have on the team’s psyche and ability to finish out the season.

“We’re focused on the players we have in the locker room right now, and making sure they’re prepared for this week’s game against a tough, well-coached Leo’s team.”

That focus certainly paid off, as the Gardeners sprinted out to an early 18-0, briefly looking back before cruising to a 20-14 win and improving to 3-2 on the season. The win was significant, the team’s third in a row as it cements the Gardeners back in the thick of the playoff hunt in its first season as defending champions.

Asked about how the team was able to cut through the distraction of Warren’s departure, lead-off hitter Ari Hersher kept to the script. “JJ who? We don’t have one of those on our roster. We’ve got 10 guys here that are committed to one goal, and that’s to repeat as champions. We got the first, but we’re not done. Anyone not in this clubhouse can’t help us achieve that goal.”

Hersher got things rolling in the top of the 1st with a leadoff single, moving to third on a double by Watters. A two-run double by pitcher Mike Edde started the scoring and a string of four-straight hits with Dan Ewbank, Tristan Besse, and Dane Dobrinich all following suit. It appeared Leo’s may escape further damage after two quick outs, but consecutive RBI hits by Jaime Philliposian, a one-legged Martin Wernick, Marshall Kratter, and Hersher and Watters (again) had Leo’s looking around asking ,“What the fuck just happened here?”.

Edde made quick work of Leo’s in the top half of the second, the coveted shutdown inning in these parts, and the Gardeners ran right back to the bat rack. A leadoff double by Ewbank was followed by an RBI single from Besse. After a pair of force outs, Kyle Moltenblac ripped an RBI single to left to score Dan Gatta. Philliposian promptly delivered Moltenblac, his 2nd of four RBIs on the day, and the Gardeners were in control, 12-0 after two.

It was more of the same for Edde in the third, another shutdown inning with the All-Star pitcher responsible for all three outs, including a double up of a runner off first after snagging a line drive out of thin air.

In the bottom of the third, Kratter got things going with another base knock, followed by Hersher’s third hit of the day and a walk to Watters. Edde capitalized, padding the lead with a two-run single. A single by Ewbank loaded them up again and another run came in as Besse sharply grounded into a 4-6-3 double play. Again, with Leo’s seemingly on the verge of escaping further damage, the Gardeners rallied with four consecutive hits by Dobrinich, Gatta, Moltenblac, and Philliposian. End of three, 18-0, and fans starting to flood the exits as they look to get an early beat on traffic.

But Leo’s made it known they wouldn’t go quietly into the night as they finally got to Edde and the Gardener defense, posting 14 runs over the next three innings while the Gardeners went quiet on offense.

Suddenly finding themselves in a four-run game, the Gardeners grabbed the tools back out of the shed. Wernick and his one leg drew a one-out walk – solid awareness by the Leo’s pitcher there – and Kratter followed with his 4th single of the game, putting runners on 1st and 2nd for Hersher. The crafty leadoff hitter knocked an RBI double, his 4th hit of the game and 5th time on base. Watters followed with an RBI single to left scoring Kratter. It looked like Hersher would also score on the play, but a perfect 8-6-2 relay cut him down at the plate ending the rally. But the damage was done, as the Gardeners padded their lead to six and Edde quickly cleaned up in aisle 7 with a 1-2-3 inning sending the Gardeners on their way with the 20-14 victory.

The Gardeners (3-2) return to action next Tuesday, July 18 with a tilt against S.F. Seals (2-3).

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Game Notes:

With their respective four-hit games, Hersher and Kratter were named Co-Players of the Game, sponsored by Scott’s. All great Gardeners use Scott’s for their lawn care. Roll with the winners and make your yard a Scott’s yard.

Moltenblac’s strikeout looking in the first inning stunned everyone, and for good reason. In 18 seasons of Savage Gardener history, no one had accomplished the feat. In one at-bat he managed to become the career leader in strikeouts.

Philliposian has endeared himself to Gardener nation since being called up two weeks ago. In his first action since a quick cup of coffee back in 2015, his groundout in the top of the 6th snapped a streak of six consecutive hits.

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6/30/2017

The Savage Gardeners walked 17 times Tuesday night.

That’s a shitload.

The 21-18 come-from-behind victory at KKU Field against Ball So Hard University (BSHU) saw both pitching sides struggle with walks. Yet in the end, the Gardeners took greater advantage of their walks – spacing them move evenly throughout the game – to pull out the win and even their season record at 2-2.

The Gardeners as a team batted .593 for the game. Yet because of all the walks, their on-base percentage (OBP) was insanely higher at .702.

“We just kept walking and making their pitcher throw strikes,” manager Dave Watters commented as he smoked a cigar and crushed an 11-year old fan in Street Fighter in the arcade room in the locker room after the game. “Nah, who am I kidding. They just suck and we’re better.”

The game definitely was a weird one – BSHU scored ten runs in the first inning – most of them on bases loaded walks. In a strange twisted fact, BSHU scored ten runs in the first inning WITHOUT RECORDING A HIT. Yes, heading into the second inning, the Gardeners were pitching a no-hitter down 10-2.

As the away team for the third time in four games this season, the Gardeners got to set the tone early at the plate. Yet without mainstay leadoff batter Ari Hersher, they were forced to improvise. Third baseman David Huffman took over leadoff duties and did his job well, reaching base four of the five times he came to the plate. To lead off the game he – you guessed it – walked, the first walk of 17 the Gardeners drew against BSHU pitcher Ricky Vaughn. Following his lead in that first inning, the left center fielder Watters walked. First baseman Kyle Kretchmer (3-for-4, six RBI) then casually doubled in Huffman and second baseman Dane Dobrinich sacrifice flied in Watters.

Kretchmer also passed the 100 career RBI mark in the game, becoming only the eighth Gardener to do so.

Then BSHU put up ten runs without getting a hit. It was a disaster of an inning with a boatcrapload of walks. And what a reader can deduce – since there were so many walks – is that the Gardeners’ Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde clearly was not pitching. Because Edde doesn’t walk guys. His last recorded walk was in 1977.

After getting the win last week, Edde’s turn in the rotation won’t come until sometime in the future. We’re not sure when he’s slated to pitch next, yet all we at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) can say is that the Gardeners will be needing it. Triple-A callup Martin Wernick started the pitching and over-the-hill player J.J. Warren finished it out, yet they both discovered how much harder pitching in slow-pitch softball actually is. It looks easy, yet it’s actually more difficult than at first glance. It’s sort of like skee-ball where you’re trying to simply roll the ball in the 20-point cup yet you keep missing right or left and the ball keeps falling into the 10-point trough at the bottom.

So yeah, Edde was out, so the Gardeners were clearly handicapped on the mound. Their bats and defense made up for it though. Down 10-2 after one inning and after standing still in the field defensively after watching walk after walk after walk from their positions – thus conserving tons of energy – the Gardeners put that potential energy (high school physics term – remember that? Kinetic vs. Potential energy? So fun) to use with a huge two-out rally in the second inning. After right center fielder Dan Gatta drew the first of his four walks for the night (we don’t think he saw a good pitch until his last at-bat) the pitcher Warren should’ve taken a walk next, yet instead he selfishly swung at a high pitch ball four only to ground into a 4-6-3 double play. This put two outs on the board instead of two runners on the board with no outs, kind of fucking up the inning. However, the rest of the lineup didn’t really give a shit how many outs there were and decided to do damage on their own. The other Triple-A callup Jamie Philliposian singled after Warren, then the catcher Wernick drew a walk. Huffman’s first of two singles scored Philliposian easily, then Watters drew a walk himself. This loaded the bases with two outs for left fielder Dan Ewbank, who, if you recall, smacked a grand slam last week. At this point in his career he also had 16 RBI in ten plate appearances with the bases loaded to go with a .714 average. Well, he boosted both of those numbers with a lined double to left that scored Wernick and Huffman. The hit upped his career bases loaded average to .750 (6-for-8) while making it now 18 RBI in 11 plate appearances with the bases loaded.

This put the Gardeners in another dangerous situation – for their opponent of course. Runners on second and third for the cleanup hitter Kretchmer. Kretchmer – who is hitting home runs at an absurd pace this year – kept that pace up with a three-run round-tripper to center to cut the score to 10-8. It was his sixth home run this year; it’s only been four games. He’s hitting a home run every 3.2 plate appearances – six homers in 19 plate appearances this season. He has a definite shot at breaking the single-season home run record of 11 home runs shared by Watters and Stu Jackson.

BSHU scored three in the bottom of the second to extend their lead to 13-8. They then didn’t score for the next two innings as the Gardeners’ defense shut them down. The Gardeners had a two-run third inning (Warren and Wernick earning RBIs on sacrifice flies that scored shortstop Marshall Kratter and Gatta, respectively) and a two-run fifth aided by another Wernick RBI and a Huffman RBI single. They put up a goose egg fourth inning in between.

With the score close at 13-12 through the Gardeners' at-bats in the top of the fifth inning, BSHU then started hitting again and pushed five runners across the plate to make it 18-12. Then the top of the sixth inning happened and the Gardeners strolled their way around the bases for a momentous rally.

Kretchmer led off with a walk.

Dobrinich walked.

Kratter walked.

Gatta walked.

One run across, 18-13 now. You can clearly see the pattern here. BSHU’s pitcher Vaughn simply could not find home plate and the Gardeners were patiently taking advantage of it. Then Warren stepped up, and – instead of keeping the walk streak going and making Vaughn sweat harder on the mound – swung at the first pitch and hit into another 4-6-3 double play, his second of the game. We don’t even have to look through the stats because we at USASSY already know that this feat has never happened before: never has a Gardener hit into two double plays in one game.

Well that streak just got broken. A run scored to make it 18-14, yet now their were two outs. Hearts and rally deflated.

Yet once again, the rest of the lineup didn’t give a shit that there were two outs. Philliposian, who finished 3-for-3 and scored three runs, singled to center. Kratter scored. Gardeners now only down three, 18-15.

Wernick and Huffman both then drew walks to load the bases for Watters. Watters’ infield single to third base plus the overthrow to first allowed Philliposian and Wernick to score to cut the deficit to one run at 18-17. Watters took second on the play; Huffman moved to third.

The pitcher Vaughn then didn’t want anything to do with Ewbank so he walked him on three straight crappy pitches for the Gardeners’ 16th walk of the day. It was also only Ewbank's second walk in his career - two in 226 plate appearances, or one walk every 113 plate appearances. It's the third-highest FWR (Fuck Walking Rate) of all Gardeners, past and present.

That simply led to more trouble: bases loaded for Kretchmer. Kretchmer made it look easily by slapping a two-run single to right that scored the tying and go-ahead run. Fuck yeah. Gardeners now up 19-18. Dobrinich up next drew a walk to load the bases, this time for Kratter. Dobrinich’s stats for the night, by the way, looked like this:

- 1-for-1 in five plate appearances.

He had a single to go with three walks and a sacrifice fly. So he batted 1.000 for the game.

Also, if you combined Dobrinich's, Gatta's, and Wernick's game stats, they had the following:

- 14 total plate appearances
- 3 recorded at-bats
- The rest of the 11 plate appearances were either walks or sacrifice flies.

Kratter with the bases loaded then slashed a double to center for two key runs, the “Harvey’s South Lake 7AM Gambling Session to Pay for the Top Floor Breakfast Buffet Fuck That Dealer Ace Showing No I Don’t Need Insurance” Insurance Runs of the Game, pushing Ewbank and Kretchmer across the plate and extending the Gardeners’ lead to 21-18. After Kretchmer’s go-ahead single, this was the second-most important hit of the game. A three-run lead heading into the last inning was way more comfortable than a one-run lead. You could actually say that any hit was the most important hit of the game – Philliposian’s two-out singles that started two different rallies; Ewbank’s two-out, two-RBI double in the second inning; Watters’ two-RBI single; as examples. So we take it back and we won’t rank the hits. All the hits were important. The parts all contributed to the whole – the parts being the Gardeners’ hits, and the whole being the Gardeners’ winning.

So the Gardeners entered the last inning – the bottom of the sixth, because of time constraints – with a 21-18 lead. Watters caught a running flyout for out number one. Gatta caught a wind-aided slicing fly ball for out number two. BSHU then got two hits to put runners at the corners before batter Jake Taylor grounded to Kratter at short. Kratter’s easy flip to Dobrinich covering second ended it, allowing the victorious Gardeners to walk all over the field and congratulate the shit out of each other and slap the shit out of high-fives, on par to what they had done all throughout the game – walk the shit out of the ball.

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Stat of the Week I:

8………Seasons in which the Gardeners, as a team, had fewer than 17 walks in the FULL SEASON. The Gardeners as a team walked 17 times alone on Tuesday.

Stat of the Week II:

If you're reading this on the homepage, look below at the Leader Board for Summer 2017.

Yeah. Someone is having a good season.

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6/23/2017

Facing an 0-2 record so far this season, the Savage Gardeners needed to do something: voodoo dolls, not shave, wear the same underwear – anything – to turn their season around.

Having Mike Edde pitch and Kyle Kretchmer hit for the cycle seemed to do the trick.

Last season's Cy Young winner Edde pitched a complete game victory, striking out two and pitching a shutout final inning to preserve a 20-18 away game victory. He also pitched a shutout second inning, while only giving up six runs in the final five innings. We’re neglecting the unexpected 12-run first inning that the opponent Durty Pigeons put together, yet after that Edde put their bats on ice.

Then there’s Kretchmer. The Gardeners’ slugger first baseman started his hitting with a solo home run over the right field fence in his first at-bat.

In his second at-bat he doubled off the right center fence, lining the ball just low enough to keep it in the park and avoid the only-one-homer-over-the-fence-rule, which he had already satisfied with his shot in the first.

His third at-bat saw a triple head into dead center.

His fourth at-bat he singled.

If you add those up, Kretchmer hit for the cycle, and in a difficult order no less, saving the easiest leg (the single) for last. He added an opposite field single in the last inning for good measure to cap his 5-for-5 night. He easily earned the Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game Award for his seemingly effortless efforts.

The 20-18 victory at Stu Jackson Ballpark put the Gardeners in the win column and simultaneously put the fear back in their division’s eyes. The champion Savage Gardeners are officially back, and once they get on a roll, they can’t be stopped, kind of like Dan Gatta on a hot streak at the craps table.

The Gardeners’ defense played spectacularly throughout. We at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) tracking the game saw no overthrows or plays where the Pigeons were given extra bases.

The bats hit consistently and the gloves played flawlessly. That combination produces victory for the Gardeners, like it did Tuesday evening. Edde struck out batter Carlos Baerga to end the first inning, then added a second strikeout on a curve to Jose Mesa in the second inning. Behind him, the defense provided their own awe-inspiring plays.

With a runner on first in the third inning, Pigeons batter Charles Nagy hit a ball in the hole between first and second base. Second baseman Dane Dobrinich reached over in the hole to snag the bouncer, and with time to throw to first, instead chose the more freely-flowing play of spinning and firing to shortstop Marshall Kratter covering second. The throw was there just in time to get the force out of the lead runner.

Immediately after, next batter Jeromy Burnitz slapped one to Kratter. Kratter’s toss to Dobrinich and Dobrinich’s throw to Kretchmer at first completed the 6-4-3 double play that quickly ended the inning.

Dobrinich’s defense didn’t end there. In the high-pressure last inning, the bottom of the sixth, he and Edde combined to easily earn the Simon & Garfunkel’s The Boxer in a Pink Jumpsuit Defensive Play of the Game. With the Gardeners holding a two-run, 20-18 lead, Pigeons batter Billy Ripken leading off the inning chopped a hopper into the four-hole. Both Dobrinich from second base and Kretchmer from first base went for the ball, with Dobrinich’s running it down in the hole. Yet with Kretchmer brought off of first base going for the grounder, there was no one to cover the bag and get Ripken. So Ripken had a leadoff single and the Gardeners were in trouble.

Check that.

Out of nowhere, Edde from the mound had hustled over to cover first. Dobrinich threw to him in time for him to step on the bag and record the out.

One down.

Inning saved. Or more accurately, inning saved – Part I.

On the next pitch, with one out, batter Wayne Kirby sliced a liner to short right field. Another hit, Pigeons starting to rally.

Not so with Tristan Besse in right field. Besse sprinted in, slid on his knees, and caught the falling liner just before it hit the ground, resulting in an eruption of cheers from the stands and cumulative clenched right hand fist-raisings from the other Gardeners in the field in deference to Besse’s actions. Inning saved - Part II.

With two out, the Pigeons decided to make it close by tripling to put the tying run at the plate. Yet a popup to short left field was snagged by a running-backwards Kratter on the next batter, closing out the victory for the Gardeners.

To add to the defensive drama, Gatta in right center had made a running catch with two outs in the inning before to strand a runner at third and keep the Gardeners within one at the time, 18-17.

For both teams to get there though, the game took an interesting path. The away team Gardeners opened the top of the first strong. Like, real strong, like Dave Watters doing shoulder DB presses with no spotter. Letting the Pigeons’ pitcher Dennis Cook practice not finding the plate, left center fielder Ari Hersher kept his patience leading off and took a three-pitch walk. Third baseman David Huffman then doubled him to third with a shot to right center. Cook still couldn’t find the plate as he walked Edde to load the bases for the Gardeners’ cleanup hitter, left fielder Dan Ewbank. Ewbank then did what has happened only 12 other times in Gardeners’ history – hit a grand slam. His bases-clearing slam put the Gardeners up 4-0 after only four batters. Ewbank (two) joined Watters (four) and Stu Jackson (two) as the only Gardeners with multiple grand slams in their career. He had hit his first grand slam only recently, in Week 4 of the 2017 spring season.

Kretchmer followed with his solo shot to make it 5-0. Kretchmer’s cycle was also only the sixth in Gardeners’ history, and the second of his career. He’s now the only Gardener to hit for the cycle more than once. Casey Cole, Stu Jackson, Matt Mason, and Johnny Moran are the only other Gardeners to also hit for the cycle.

And hitting for the cycle shouldn’t be taken lightly. There have been 1,663 player box score lines in Gardeners’ history. (A box score line is simply a player’s stats for a game. For example: Ari Hersher – 2-for-3, three runs, two singles and two walks in Week 3 constitutes one box score line.) So there have been over 1,650 opportunities for a player to hit for the cycle in a game. And it’s been done only SIX times total. That equates to roughly one cycle hit by a lone Gardener every three seasons. We’d expect to see the next cycle three seasons from now, it’s that rare.

So to recap, we’ve got the 13th grand slam in Gardeners’ history and the 6th cycle in Gardeners’ history. And they both happened in the same game. Pretty freaking impressive. Dan Ewbank and Kyle Kretchmer.

Even weirder? Let’s compare their stats in Week 3 of the summer season (Tuesday) to Week 4 of the 2017 spring season:

Week 3 Summer Season, June 20, 2017:
Dan Ewbank – Grand Slam
Kyle Kretchmer – Cycle

Week 4 Spring Season, April 11, 2017:
Dan Ewbank – Grand Slam
Kyle Kretchmer – Cycle

In conclusion: THEY ACHIEVED THESE RARE FEATS IN THE SAME GAME ONLY TWO MONTHS AGO. The Gardeners won that game as well, so it seems like we’ve found a winning formula:

Ewbank Hits a Grand Slam + Kretchmer Hits for the Cycle = Gardeners Win

So Kretchmer in his career hit the fifth and sixth cycle in Gardeners’ history. Ewbank added the eleventh and thirteenth grand slam in Gardeners’ history (Watters had hit the twelfth somewhere between the two games). And hitting a grand slam is a tough enough feat in itself. The math: There have been 249 bases loaded plate appearances in Gardeners’ history. With only 13 total grand slams, it equates to one grand slam every 20 bases loaded plate appearances. To put it easier – a grand slam happens 5% of the time with the bases loaded. Ewbank has hit two of those 13 grand slams.

Back to Tuesday, to continue the runs in the first inning, Kratter singled with one out, Gatta singled with two, then catcher/left center fielder J.J. Warren doubled in Kratter. With runners on second and third, Hersher – batting for the second time in the inning – singled to center to score Gatta and Warren and make it 8-0.

The Pigeons in the bottom half then started out on fire. They literally hit like crazy, putting up 12 runs to take a 12-8 lead. The only good note was Edde’s striking out Baerga swinging to end the inning.

So that’s 20 total runs scored by both teams in the first inning. It portended to be a shootout – who would reach 40 runs first?

Alas, both teams combined scored 18 runs total the rest of the game. One inning – 20 total runs. Five other innings – 18 total runs.

Edde added strikeout number two in the second inning, one of his two shutout innings for the night. The Gardeners had clawed back two in their half on Kretchmer’s RBI double to score Edde then Kratter’s double to center that scored Kretchmer.

Kratter nicely finished 3-for-4 for the night with two doubles, a single, and two RBI. Edde went 1-for-2 with a single and a walk, yet, along with his pitching, selflessly added his value at the plate with a sacrifice fly in the fifth and a sacrifice fly in the sixth. Just sacrificing the shit out of the ball. His sac-fly to right center in the sixth inning proved ultimately to be the go-ahead run. So not a bad outing – get the complete game win on the mound and hit the go-ahead RBI. The RBI in the sixth also put Edde at 100 RBI for his career, becoming only the seventh Gardener to reach 100 career RBI.

A shutout Gardeners’ third led to the Pigeons’ extending the lead to 14-10 with a two-run third of their own. The Gardeners brought it to 14-12 in the fourth with a leadoff solo homer by Ewbank followed by Kretchmer’s triple then his scoring on Dobrinich’s sacrifice fly to shallow left center. Despite Dobrinich’s current slump at the plate, he’s still been bringing it defensively, playing the Gardeners’ most sound defense all night with three key groundout putouts. And when the entire Gardeners’ infield doesn’t make any groundball errors, which happened Tuesday, they’re bound to win.

In the bottom of the fourth the Pigeons pushed it to 17-12.

The Gardeners countered by cranking the heat back up to scalding. Huffman (3-for-4) doubled in a run. Edde’s first sacrifice fly scored another. Then with two outs, the Gardeners tallied three more. Kretchmer singled in Huffman. Besse broke out of his mini game slump to single to center after Kretchmer, putting two on for Kratter. Kratter’s second double of the night then scored Kretchmer to make it 17-16. Dobrinich tied it up at 17-17 with an infield single to score Besse.

The Pigeons then scored a run to take the lead at 18-17, then got a runner to third base with two outs in the fifth. Yet a running catch of a liner in short right center by Gatta ended the huge threat, leading the Gardeners into the sixth inning only down one run.

Yet with only seven minutes left in the game (in baseball there’s a clock? WTF?), the top of the sixth looked to be the Gardeners’ last chance at the plate. A leadoff single by Warren then a walk by Hersher put two on base for Huffman. Hersher’s walk came on a 3-2 full count, thus solidifying the view that getting on base in any way possible matters most in situations like this. Getting on base boosts the odds of scoring. Getting on base delights the ladies. Getting on base puts pressure on the defense. And Huffman contributed to that pressure by singling in the tying run with a single to left.

Now with the score knotted at 18-18 and the Gardeners’ having no outs, runners at the corners, and 3-4-5 batters Edde, Ewbank, and Kretchmer coming up, the outcome of the game was clearly predetermined. Edde’s sacrifice fly that scored Hersher from third put the go-ahead run across to make it 19-18. Huffman in a heads-up play tagged from first to second. And his tag proved momentous. Ewbank then hit a tailing fly ball into foul territory in deep right field. Right fielder Paul Sorrento made the catch, and Huffman tagged to third. Yet Sorrento’s relay throw went wide to second base, allowing Huffman to burn around third and cross home plate to give the Gardeners a two-run cushion at 20-18. There we had it – a walk and two sacrifice flies helped the Gardeners push three runs across in the sixth inning, allowing them to have a two-run lead and send Edde back out to the mound in the sixth to close it out.

The Dobrinich-to-Edde second baseman-to-pitcher 4-1 play made it one out. Besse’s hustling catch made it two, then after the triple, Kratter’s drifting catch sealed it.

The Gardeners were back.

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Stat of the Week:

.815………David Huffman’s career batting average at Jackson 1. It’s the highest field-specific batting average of any player at any of the four fields. To the delight of both Huffman and the Gardeners, the Gardeners have three more games at Jackson 1 this season.

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6/17/2017

Still feeling the hangover effects of a championship – yet not playing like the champions they are – the Savage Gardeners Tuesday continued their championship aftermath summer season with a 12-8 loss to the Olympic Club all decked out in their jerseys and shit.

After a 21-17 loss in the away game season opener, the Gardeners came home for week two and the ring ceremony, only to disappoint the home crowd with an eight-run output at the plate.

“We’re trying not to suck,” manager Dave Watters quoted to the media after the game as he took a swig from his team-sponsored Gatorade® Arctic Blitz-flavored 20-oz bottle, flipped off a shitty self-centered millennial snapping a duck face selfie in the background, then busted out 100 pushups behind his press conference table. “We’re not succeeding though at trying not to suck. We’re trying, yet right now we’re sucking.”

Playing with another cobbled-together crew with multiple guys either on the DL or fighting injuries, the Gardeners simply couldn’t bring together the consistent hitting and chemistry they so often displayed in last season’s championship run. This was also the second game this season they’ve had to call up a ballplayer from their minor league organization to fill in for a game. [A minor leaguer is defined as a player who doesn’t play consistently for the Gardeners, someone whom the Gardeners' organization has to contact that day to try and fill in for that night.]

This isn’t to discredit any of the callups that have to fill in. It’s simply more difficult for the Gardeners to have a full team of chemistry. Since the Gardeners moved up to the CC Division full-time in the spring 2015 season, when they’ve had to recruit a player from the minors to play, the team's numbers are below:

- Record with minor leaguers playing: 13-14 (.481 win percentage)
- Runs scored per game: 14.3
- Runs allowed per game: 17.6
- Run differential: -3.3 runs

Nevertheless, the Gardeners are the motherfucking Savage Gardeners, and they should be able to beat anyone at any time. The team they beat, however, on Tuesday at KKU Field, was themselves.

Defensively they played decent, limiting the Olympic Club Matching Fancy Jersey-Wearers to only 12 runs. A five-run second inning and a four-run seventh inning accounted for nine of those 12 runs. In the other five innings, the O-Club only scored three runs total. Last season's Cy Young winner Mike Edde was back on the mound, dialing up three shutout innings while hitting-wise starting the game with two straight hits at the plate to extend his hitting streak to six at-bats at the time, dating back to last season.

Yet the bats fell flat for the Gardeners, as two rally-killing double plays sadly thwarted their attempts at producing some runs. They had their chances too, as they never let the O-Club’s lead get too far away from them. After the third inning, they were always within three runs of their opponent. Below are the scores after each inning until the seventh:

After the 1st inning: 1 (Gardeners) – 1 (Olympic Club)
2nd inning: 2-6
3rd inning: 5-6
4th inning: 5-8
5th inning: 6-8
6th inning: 6-8

So what the fuck, this game was tight the whole way through. The O-Club had a four-run top of the seventh to make it 12-6, yet still the Gardeners were in it throughout. Or maybe we should’ve changed the Gardeners’ name to the Kretchmers. Yes, that’s more accurate – the Kretchmers were in it throughout.

That’s simply because the Gardeners’ first baseman Kyle Kretchmer pretty much carried the team. He had 75% of the team’s RBI – six of the eight runs. He hit 4-for-4. Two of those hits were home runs – one a three-run blast in the third and the second a two-out, fuck-this-no-scoring-shit-I’m-gonna-hit-a-bomb-no-matter-what solo shot in the fifth inning. He added an RBI double in the first and an RBI single in the seventh. And the single in the seventh was a beauty, batted against a defensive shift where the opponent stacked three players in a straight line in right field – the second baseman in short right field, bringing the left center fielder over to a normal right fielder's spot, then playing the right fielder pretty much in the right field bleachers to catch any home run ball.

So yeah, Kretchmer had six of the Savage Kretchmers’………er………Savage Gardeners’ eight RBI.

The Gardeners had to make do with myriad problems to start. Edde and second baseman Dane Dobrinich got stuck in traffic headed to the game amidst the sellout crowd making its way to KKU Field to watch the championship ring ceremony and banner-raising. The Cy Young winner and Championship Game MVP Edde was supposed to ride a white horse during the ceremony, yet because the traffic held him up, the Gardeners’ front office simply switched out the horse for a cow, slaughtered it, then made some pretty tasty hamburgers.

Another obstacle was mainstay leadoff batter and left center fielder Ari Hersher’s nursing a calf injury. Thus – since he was limited in stealing bases like Willie Mays Hayes or making diving catches in the outfield like Gregor Blanco in Matt Cain’s 2012 perfect game (a game in which Hersher was in attendance, by the way*) – he was forced to play catcher all game and bat in the #7 spot in the lineup.

*[On that perfect Wednesday evening in 2012, Hersher had offered a game ticket to one of the staffers here at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY). The idiot staffer was tired that day and turned the tickets down. Then that night Matt Cain pitched his perfect game, which was ultimately was recorded as the second-best pitched nine-inning game ever (Kerry Wood’s 20-strikeout performance in 1998 is rated the best, according to Bill James’ Game Score statistic). So Hersher was there to see (and USASSY's staffer was NOT there to see) one of the greatest performances in the entire history of baseball.]

Right center fielder Dan Gatta battled a groin injury to go 2-for-3, and, as mentioned, the team had to call up a player from their farm system – Ricky Perez from the Double-A Groveland Grovelers – to play the outfield. There were issues all around, yet the Gardeners tried to make the best of it. Even though they didn’t.

The brO-Club scored one in the top of the first yet the Gardeners gained it back with Kretchmer’s double that scored the third baseman Watters in the bottom half. The brO’s then had a five-run second yet gave left fielder Dan Ewbank some action in left field, flying out to him twice in the inning. Ewbank had four flyouts to him for the night, tops on the team, showing his Garden Hoe fiancée Leah in attendance why he’s been the Gardeners’ starting left fielder since 2015.

Hersher catching behind the plate had zero flyouts hit to him, which was totally not fair since he’s a fielder extraordinaire. He still was able to find himself in a leadoff position though (despite not being at the start of the game) by leading off the second inning with a single to right then scoring later on a two-out double by the Double-A callup Perez.

It was a rare sight too, not seeing Hersher lead off the game. Hersher has led off 129 of the Gardeners’ 156 games (83% of the games) in the Gardeners’ history.

And to mention a stat that USASSY introduced last season that is totally taking the world by storm, the Gardeners’ ANGLO (.806) vs. NOT-ANGLO (.481) shows a clear difference:

- ANGLO stands for Ari’s Nutty Game Leadoff On-base percentage (.806)
- NOT-ANLGO stands for NOT-Ari Nutty Game Leadoff On-base percentage (.481)

Hersher’s OBP to lead off a game is .806 – he gets on base 80.6% of the time to lead off the Gardeners’ hitting. All of the other players leading off a game (a.k.a. NOT Ari) have a combined OBP of .481. It’s quite a difference. The math (.806 divided by .481) comes to Hersher’s getting on base to lead off a game 67% more of the time than anyone else batting leadoff.

This isn’t a knock at any of the Gardeners who have ever led off a game in place of Hersher. It’s simply a testament to the value Hersher adds as the leadoff batter.

Digging deeper into the math, in general when the leadoff batter of an inning gets on base, the Gardeners average scoring 3.35 runs an inning versus when the leadoff batter gets out (1.45 runs). It’s almost a two-run difference. By missing Hersher in a leadoff position, the statistics work out to the Gardeners’ essentially giving up 1.1 runs** to start the game. It’d be like starting the game handicapped already down 0-1.

**[The math (nerd alert, skip over): Hersher’s OBP leading off a game (ANGLO) is .806, or an 80.6% success rate. Multiplying that number by the average runs scored when the leadoff batter gets on base (3.35) gives you .806 x 3.35 = 2.7. This 2.7 number is the expected number of runs scored that inning when Hersher leads off.
With a NON-ANGLO of .481 (above) multiplied by 3.35, we get an expected 1.6 runs scored that inning if Hersher is not leading off the game. Hersher’s expected 2.7 runs minus the non-Hersher expected 1.6 runs equals a difference of 1.1 runs.]

Sadly, this stat also inadvertently reflects a Trumpian world where the Anglo is good and the non-Anglo is bad.

Leading 6-2, the O-Club tried coming out swinging in the third. After a popup to Dobrinich at second, they put runners on second and third with one out. Next batter Matt Walbeck grounded to David Huffman at shortstop. Huffman looked back runner Brad Radke at third base, then threw to Kretchmer at first for the out. Well, Radke then tried to run home and score, yet Kretchmer played heads-up baseball, obviously ingrained from his roughly 15-years-plus Little League-through-college baseball career, running straight at Radke then tossing to Hersher at home. Hersher ran Radke back to third base before flipping to Watters, who easily put the tag on for the totally normal 6-3-2-5 double play.

With the Gardeners’ getting out of the inning unscathed, they shifted their mindset in their batting and simply said, “Let’s let Kretch do his thing.” So with one out Edde and Ewbank both singled, putting two on for Kretchmer in the five-spot. Kretchmer then launched a three-run jack to right center to cut the score to 6-5. It was his third homer in seven at-bats at that point in the season.

Two innings later Kretchmer came up again, this time with nobody on and two outs. He added his second bomb of the day to bring the Gardeners within two at 8-6 (the O-Club had scored two in the fourth then none in the fifth). So far Kretchmer for the season was looking at statistics of

8 AB
4 HR

A scoreless full sixth inning saw the 8-6 score head into the seventh, where the Clubbers then put up four runs to take a 12-6 lead into the bottom half. A leadoff single by Watters led to an easy RBI triple by Ewbank to make it 12-7 in the Gardeners’ last at-bats. Kretchmer’s single to score Ewbank capped the scoring at 12-8.

The nonchalant loss put the Gardeners in a rough patch – an 0-2 record – after blowing up the city of San Francisco with their first championship in their 19-season, eight-year existence. Falling precipitously from their before-season odds of -500, right now the Vegas +150 odds aren’t too hot for their repeating as champions. Unless, of course, they start manning up, looking themselves in the mirror, slapping themselves in the face, and turning this shit around (hint hint).

[Cue motivational speech that fires up the Gardeners to start winning, starting in Week 3.]

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Stat of the Week:

52%............Kyle Kretchmer alone has 52% of the Gardener’s RBI this season (13 RBI of 25 total runs)

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6/10/2017

Still riding off of their high from winning the Spring 2017 San Francisco Softball Fuck Everyone Else We’re Better Than You Championship, the Savage Gardeners entering the summer season in their season opener clearly were still feeling the effects of the two weeks of parties, celebrations, parades, Las Vegas XS bottles and models parties with Flo Rida and T-Pain, and multitudes of TV appearances (Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Good Morning America, The Today Show, Cold Pizza, Around the Horn, NFL Primetime, The Weather Channel, The View, Maury, Jerry Springer, The Price is Right, Family Guy, Mr. Rogers, Sex and the City [Phil Zackler guest-starring as Charlotte’s Yankee ballplayer boyfriend], Ballers [Dan Gatta as a Browns linebacker represented by The Rock], the Bachelor [Zackler again], Family Matters [Ari Hersher playing Urkel’s dad Carl Winslow], and Sesame Street [Dave Watters as Big Bird]).

So after dealing with the exhausting offseason party and TV commitments, against the Flatliners to start the summer season the Gardeners fell short at Stu Jackson Ballpark Tuesday evening, losing 21-17.

“I’ve barely slept in two weeks since winning the championship,” right fielder Tristan Besse commented at his locker after the game, where he had gone 3-for-4. “The parades, TV appearances, media attention…it’s way more than I thought it’d be. I didn’t know how big the Gardeners’ winning the championship meant to their fans, to this city, to the entire United States of America. Even Kim Jong-un called us from North Korea congratulating us. I know he’s weird and shit, yet it still was cool that he’s a fan. He said I’ve surpassed Eric Thames as his favorite player now. I also didn’t know people cared more about the Gardeners’ championship than the Chicago Cubs’ championship from last year. When we did our celebratory tour and parade through Chicago, they told us that TWICE as many people were there for our parade than were there for the Cubs’ parade. It was pretty cool. The female groupies though…they’re a bit cuckoo. Someone tell them to stop with the attention, I’m married man!”

The loss didn’t hurt the Gardeners’ pride too much though. The monkey has been lifted off their backs and they know now they can compete with anyone as well as being the target of all the other teams’ envy – every other team in the division now gunning for the champs.

The Gardeners played the opener without a couple of key players. Also in which they were the away team, by the way. WHAT THE FUCK SF SOFTBALL ORGANIZERS? This is the defending champions, and you’re sending them on the road to open the season?!?! It also delayed the ring and pennant-raising ceremony a week.

Yet yes, the Gardeners entered the season missing a few players, namely the most indispensible player on the roster, Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde, resting his arm and taking some time off to spend time with his family. Because if you recall, Edde pitched three complete games in two nights in the spring playoffs – two games on a Tuesday and the championship game on Wednesday – all on little sleep due to his new as-of-that-Monday fatherhood status. We at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) have combed through the entire MLB historical statistical database, and we haven’t found a single instance of a pitcher throwing three straight complete games with no rest – least of all in the playoffs. Seriously, MLB pitchers these days need four, five days of rest before throwing again, and that’s only in the regular season to boot. Edde pitched a doubleheader and a game the next night (while also scoring the championship-winning run) – three straight games, no rest, pitch count going way beyond what is healthy for a starter.

So he’ll be resting a few games this summer to keep his arm fresh. And the Gardeners are completely okay with that – he’s earned the right to take time off as well as never have to pay for a drink in the city of San Francisco again.

The Gardeners also played without championship roster outfielders Dan Gatta (7-day DL), Matt Bou (60-day DL), J.J. Warren (always injured), third baseman David Huffman (considering Mexican citizenship following the footsteps of fellow Gardener Kyle Kretchmer), and All-Star catcher Phil Zackler. Zackler couldn’t play because he had just pulled the trifecta – quit your job, move out of your apartment, break up with your girlfriend.

Nevertheless, they welcomed back new Mission resident and third baseman Alan Donner and activated outfielder Trey McCalla from the 10-day DL. Kretchmer – who unfortunately had to miss the entire playoffs while moving to Mexico as part of MLB’s international outreach program – was back in the lineup as well, playing first base. He stepped right back into playing without missing a beat, hitting three home runs. Technically it was only two, since the third was called an out for going over the fence after he had already used the only-one-homer-over-the-fence-rule. Yet through his first three at-bats he had already hit two homers and added a single, contributing seven RBI, and it was only the fourth inning. In the sixth it would’ve been three more RBI yet because of that stupid fence rule the umpires had to give him an out. And he wasn’t even trying to hit it over the fence. He took a lighter swing trying to keep the ball in the ballpark, yet it still carried farther than any full swing by any other Gardener, save maybe Watters. We don’t say that to knock the Gardeners – we only say it to delineate that Kretchmer is pretty much on a different world in terms of power. It’s kind of like he’s Barry Bonds with his power and every other Gardener is Eric Sogard.

So yeah, Kretchmer had seven RBI through his first three hits. His two-run homer to center in the top of the first inning made it 3-0; left center fielder Hersher had scored on a sacrifice fly by Dan Ewbank one batter before that made it 1-0. Hersher had singled off infield umpire David C'monman!'s shins to lead off the game.

The Flatliners scored six in the bottom half to take a 6-3 lead then shut out the Gardeners in the second. In their batting half, first batter John Smiley flew out to Hersher, second batter Hal Morris singled, then the Gardeners turned a Watters-to-Marshall Kratter-to-Kretchmer 1-6-3 double play to end it. With momentum on their side, Hersher led off with a single in the third and moved to second on the overthrow to first that landed in the nacho cheese metal container in the concession stands. After the Flatliners’ pitcher wiped the cheese off the ball, Watters singled Hersher in, Kratter singled, Ewbank half-sac flied to left to advance Watters and Kratter to third and second, respectively, then Kretchmer singled to center to push both across.

Tying the game at 6-6 was good, yet the Flatliners had other plans. They pushed it to 9-6 with a three-run third, yet the Gardeners took the lead after that with a five-run fourth inning, all with a two-out rally. Hersher singled to right center with two outs, then Watters singled behind him to left. Hersher rounded second on the play then hustled and took third on the single to left.

Then he took home on the single to left. Yes, on a standard single to left field, Hersher scored ALL THE WAY FROM FIRST BASE.

[Nerdy USASSY stat fact: With a runner on first, there have been 1,073 singles in Gardeners’ history. The runner on first has scored on a single only 15 times, or a miniscule 1.4% of the time. Which makes sense. It’s pretty hard to score from first base on a single.]

Watching Hersher’s aggressive moves, the Gardeners collectively in the dugout started murmuring among themselves, stirring a little buzz of activity. Transferring that buzz to the bats, Kratter in the three-hole singled Watters to second then Ewbank in the cleanup spot sliced a nice tailing single to right to easily score Watters and cut it to 9-8. With two on for the slugging lefty Kretchmer now, everybody knew what was coming up next. We don’t even have to write about it because it was so damn obvious what would happen.

And it happened of course.

And the Gardeners now had an 11-9 lead.

Someone then had to go chase down the ball over the fence in right field.

The lead was short-lived though. The Flatliners roared back for six runs in their half, turning the game in their favor and taking a 15-11 lead into the fifth. The Gardeners seemed like they drank a fifth right before their fifth inning, as they then went three-up, three-down. The Flatliners capitalized on the lull and pushed the score to 21-11 after a six-run inning. Ewbank singled in Watters for a run in the sixth, then Watters pitched his second shutout inning to keep the Gardeners still in it at 21-12 heading into the last inning. They didn’t give up either, with Besse's leading off with a single, Donner’s kicking Besse off the basepaths and fielder’s choicing himself on base, then McCalla’s doubling Donner to third. Catcher Casey Keenan’s infield single put the bases loaded into Hersher’s hands and bat, where a single scored Donner and kept the bases loaded for Watters.

Watters then cranked a deep grand slam to left for his fifth hit of the game. The score was cut now to 21-17 and Watters had his fifth grand slam of his career recorded, only the 12th in Gardeners’ history. Ewbank (3-for-4, 3 RBI) had a double later yet ultimately couldn’t score and soon enough the loss was in the books.

The Gardeners shrugged if off though. They were forever champions, and no one could ever take that away from them, not even John Olerud.

The End.

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If you thought that last sentence referencing John Olerud is confusing, it’s because you’re right – it is. It doesn’t make any sense. We simply wanted to write a sentence that made no sense whatsoever, so we just Googled “random baseball players” to end the sentence with and somehow his name came up. Fielding helmet and all.

So we’ll continue the trend and just end on a random player’s name we came across, a guy who played from 1917-1921 for the Cubs, Phillies, and Cardinals, and whose name sounds like a nickname either made up by or suitable for Matt Cordova:

Pickles Dillhoefer

The End.

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Stat of the Week:

85%.........If the leadoff batter of an inning gets on base for the Gardeners, they will score runs in that inning 85% of the time. If the leadoff batter gets out, they will score runs in that inning 46% of the time.

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5/27/2017

It’s about time.

On a lazy weekend in 2009, the Savage Gardeners’ current left center fielder sat on a couch conversing with his friend Beau, who was maybe a bit stoned. A curious look crossed Ari Hersher’s face as he quizzically cocked his head at Beau and wondered why his friend was so enraptured by the music video from the 1990s band Savage Garden coming from the TV screen [popular hits include “Truly Madly Deeply” in 1997 and “I Knew I Loved You” in 1998]. Watching the Australian pop duo of Darren Hayes as vocalist and Daniel Jones as instrumentalist, Beau couldn’t help but be mesmerized.

“The ‘Savage Gardeners,’” Beau determined. “That’s going to be our softball team name.”

And on that night in 2009, a legendary organization was born.

Hersher in the room with Beau can claim himself as an original member of the organization, as can Wednesday’s first baseman Dave Watters, All-Star catcher Phil Zackler, and right center fielder Dan Gatta. In truth, Gatta is actually the longest standing member of the organization, playing on the pre-Savage Gardeners-named 2008 team. Yet to have four original Gardeners still playing strong through nine years is quite remarkable and is a testament to the positive culture the Gardeners represent.

For a quick summary, a brief historical timeline of the Gardeners is below:

2008 – Organization founded as “Jammin’ Jenny Finch”
2009 – Team renamed “Savage Gardeners” by a stoned guy on a couch
2009 through 2016 – Zero championships
2010 – USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) stat-keeping era begins
2017 – Dave Watters takes over as manager
May 24th, 2017 – First championship

The four original Gardeners weren’t the full core of Wednesday’s championship team though; they were only a part of the core. The full core included…

Hersher in left center
Watters at first base
Mike Edde pitching
Dan Ewbank in left field
David Huffman at third base
Dane Dobrinich at second base
Tristan Besse in right field
Marshall Kratter at shortstop
Gatta in right center
Zackler catching

…as well as two rehabbing players on the DL, Trey McCalla and Matt Bou. Add in the Gardeners’ new citizen of Mexico Kyle Kretchmer as well as pop-in player Pat Reilly and we’re covered.

Seems like a pretty big core, right? Well that’s because the list of core players above is, in order, the full lineup from Wednesday for the 2017 San Francisco Muni CC Division Champion Savage Gardeners, etched into immortality as well as on a dusty lineup card that is already being shipped to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown for framing, along with the manager Watters’ face, which will be sculpted into a bronze bust.

Because on Wednesday night, May 24th, 2017, the Savage Gardeners edged Leo’s 17-16 at Steven Jackson Memorial Stadium to capture their first championship ever in their nine years of existence. That’s 16 seasons in the USASSY era (since 2010) plus a few more seasons prior, for a rough estimate of 19 seasons played. Nineteen seasons, one championship. Not a hot ratio, yet now that there is one under the organization’s belt, the championship dynasty has officially begun. Las Vegas odds already have the Gardeners as 1:5 favorites for the summer 2017 season.

Winning the championship was no small feat and isn’t being taken lightly – by players or critics or fans alike. What was pointed out by the second baseman Dobrinich postgame is that being champions in the city is no small peanuts – San Francisco is a large metropolitan city in the United States. Check that – an internationally well-known metropolitan city. And the Gardeners are the champions of the highest division in the city. So, deductively, these 14 players above make up the best softball team in the ENTIRE CITY OF SAN FRANCISCO, a population of over 850,000 people.

To add some context, if you heard that some guy was on the championship softball team in the top league in Chicago, you’d say that’s pretty cool.

If you heard that some guy was on the championship softball team in the top league in Phoenix, you’d say that’s pretty cool.

Heck, if you heard that some guy was on the championship softball team in the top league even in Salt Lake City, or in Orlando, what would you say?

You’d say that’s pretty cool.

So if you heard that some guy was on the championship softball team in the top league in San Francisco, what would you say?

Exactly.

What was pretty cool also was the game against Leo’s on Wednesday, which ended on a bases loaded walkoff RBI single by Dobrinich that scored Edde for the winning run.

The road to the championship game hit its bumps though. After a 6-2 regular season record (technically 5-2 since one game was postponed and never finished), the Gardeners cruised into the four-team playoffs as the #1 seed, earning the right to double elimination against the #4 seed Motherload in the semifinals. And that #1 seed double elimination card came in handy, as the previous night, Tuesday, the Gardeners lost the first game to Motherload, 14-8, then turned it around in the elimination game by winning 19-17 to move on to the championship game.*

*[We at USASSY will only be writing about the championship game and not all three playoff games. There were plenty of events in both semifinal games to note, yet we’re going to recap only the epic championship game. Game one sucked, yet in game two Dobrinich homered and had 5 RBI in the game. And Edde threw a called-looking strikeout, which were a couple of the main highlights. Oh and Zackler having sex with “Happy Gilmore’s” Virginia Venit in the bushes between innings. The statistics for each game are listed though.]

[P.S. – Incredible Stat That Seems Unfathomable Yet Is 100% True: This was the Gardeners’ first playoff win since September 2014. That’s 966 days without winning a playoff game.]

After the non-coin flip on Wednesday, since the Gardeners earned the right to be the home team because of a combination of being the #1 seed and being more handsome than their opponent, they and their Cy Young pitcher Edde took the field pretty damn confident in their game.

And just to put things in context, Edde had become a father on Monday morning. Then he played in the doubleheader Tuesday AND in the championship game Wednesday, all within 70 hours of his wife’s (exalted Garden Hoe Margot) giving birth. So he was pitching on not great sleep while having a newborn back home. Yet due to Margot’s legendary status, she was (we think) okay with the Gardeners’ needed star pitcher playing in the three playoff games.

“I’ll be back home soon anyway,” Edde had reassured his wife before jumping on the team bus headed to Wednesday’s game. “We’ve got a championship game to win. I’ll be back home soon.”

In the top of the first inning, Leo’s scored a leadoff home run then didn’t do anything else. They put a runner on first after a flyout to Hersher in left center when batter Vin Baker lofted a fly ball to Ewbank in left. Ewbank easily made the putout, yet base runner on first Adam Keefe decided he was going to run to third anyways, leaving first base right when the ball left the bat and way before Ewbank caught it. When Ewbank made the catch and relayed it in to Watters playing third base, Keefe was simply sauntering between second and third, unaware that there were now only two outs. Watters’ easy toss to McCalla filling in at first base completed the 7-5-3 double play.

[McCalla played first and Watters third, moving Huffman to shorstop for the first inning as the Gardeners’ star shortstop Kratter was still working on arriving to the ballpark due to his prior commitment of coaching a high school team to an 11-inning victory. However, whatever idiot scheduled that game on the night of the mothafuckin’ Savage Gardeners’ championship needs to be executed.]

Hersher led off the Gardeners’ hitting with a hustling double to left, scoring later on fellow Sactown-mate Ewbank’s sacrifice fly to left, tying the game at 1-1 after the first inning.

Leo’s scored two back in the second to go up 3-1, yet the Gardeners did the same with one of their stud players contributing the Champion® Brand T-Shirt Clutch Play of the Game. With two outs after Besse had singled and Kratter had doubled, putting runners on second and third, Zackler stepped to the plate. Given the chance to tie the game at 3-3 or fly out in classic Zackler-style to left or left center, Zackler opted for the more heroic option. He doubled to left to score both Besse and Zackler, tie the game at 3-3, and provide the sign the Gardeners needed to confirm that they were indeed going to win the game. When the #10 hitter pulls through with two outs in the clutch like that, it’s quite the favorable omen that shit’s gonna go well – your team is bound to win.

Leo’s pushed back for two more in the third to go up 5-3. A groundout to Dobrinich at second was sandwiched between two flyouts to Ewbank. For all three playoff games, Dobrinich made nine total putouts (eight groundouts, one flyout), tying him with Kratter at short (seven groundouts, two flyouts) and Besse in right (nine flyout putouts) for the most defensive plays in the playoffs. The trio contributed to three-sevenths (42%) of the total outs for the playoffs.

Looking at a 5-3 deficit yet on the heels of the inspiring two-out, two-RBI double by Zackler in the inning prior, the Gardeners let the cattle loose and blew the fuck out of the farm. Leading off the bottom of the third, Watters singled. Then Edde singled. Then Ewbank singled.

That loaded the bases for Huffman, a career .429 hitter at that point at Jackson 2. No shame in that though – Huffman simply shook it off and singled to right center, plating Watters and Edde and tying the game at 5-5. Dobrinich doubled behind Huffman to score Ewbank and give the Gardeners the lead at 6-5. Besse sacrifice drag bunted down the first base line to strategically score Huffman from third and move Dobrinich over as well. This allowed Kratter to easily single in Dobrinich, have Gatta follow with a single, then give Zackler the opportunity to sacrifice fly Kratter in from third base to make the score 9-5 in the Gardeners’ favor.

So they were up four runs with two outs, having scored six runs so far in the inning – a good enough rally. Time to call it quits.

“Fuck that,” countered Hersher. His single to right moved Gatta to second and put two runners on for Watters.

And Leo’s pitcher Danny Manning should’ve know what to do with Watters in this situation. Or in any situation for that matter…

You don’t pitch to him.

Up to that at-bat, Watters was 17-for-18 with runners on first and second at Jackson 2. That’s only ONE TOTAL OUT and a .944 average with runners on first and second at Jackson 2. Seven of those 18 at-bats had been home runs. That’s one home run every THREE at-bats. Actually better than that (every 2.6 at-bats, to be precise).

Yet Leo’s decided to pitch to him. And Watters decided to make them pay for their mistake, crushing a three-run no-doubt-about-it blast over the right field fence for the Kelly Evans CNBC Hot Drive of the Game that pushed the Gardeners’ lead to seven at 12-5.

Edde singled behind Watters yet ultimately didn’t score in the inning. His single was only one of his team-leading four hits in the game where he reached base all five times he came to the plate (four singles, one walk), for a game batting average and OBP of 1.000, no big deal. “Hey sleep deprivation – who’s the wild man now?”

A two-run fourth and one-run fifth by Leo’s chipped back at the Gardeners’ lead. The Gardeners put up zero in the fourth, yet leading only 12-8 heading into the bottom of the fifth, they didn’t want Leo’s to get too comfortable. They also didn’t want to make it comfortable for themselves either, waiting until there were two outs to start creating some damage. With two down, Hersher drew a walk. Before Watters could even step up next into the batter’s box, Leo’s pitcher Manning threw four straight balls for an intentional walk. He was having none of Watters after Watters’ three-run crush in the third. The problem though was that he walked Watters to get to the #3 hitter.

Has that ever happened, in the history of baseball – walking someone to get to the #3 hitter? Apparently Leo’s didn’t think about the Gardeners’ #3 hitter being Edde. Where Edde actually hits BETTER with two outs and runners in scoring position (.690), than if there were just two outs (.662), or if there were just runners in scoring position (.647), or if there weren’t runners in scoring position (.627). Essentially what we at USASSY are saying is that Edde hits BETTER WITH TWO OUTS AND RISP over all other situations. Bring the pressure and Edde brings the bat.

Which he did of course, singling to center to score Hersher. Ewbank singled to right center next to score Watters, Huffman singled behind him to score Edde, then Dobrinich doubled in Ewbank.

Four straight hits – station-to-station hitting – and four straight runs were scored. That’s when the Gardeners are at their best – having runners on first and second, or first and third, and scoring one runner at a time and moving the runners around to first and second for the next batter, or first and third. They’ve done it multiple times for multiple runs in multiple games this season, and it seems to be their winning formula. That and Zackler’s musk, of course.

With an eight-run, 16-8 lead, the Gardeners ceded back four more in the sixth to hold a 16-12 lead into the last inning (they couldn’t score themselves in the sixth for insurance runs). Yet the four runs in the sixth could’ve been way more as Leo’s was rallying hard with no outs. Batter Mookie Blaylock had singled to right with runners on first and second, allowing base runner Matt Geiger to chug around third and head towards home for an easy run. Yet in the Seven Minutes in Heaven Heads-Up Turning Point Play of the Game, the catcher Zackler casually blocked home plate. The right fielder Besse’s relay to Watters at first then to Zackler at home got there after Geiger had ran home. Yet because of Zackler’s blocking the plate, Geiger had missed the plate, running past it like a dumb dumb. With umpire Ed Hochuli not making any safe call on Geiger’s scoring, Zackler easily put the tag on him, allowing Hochuli to make the out call, put the first out on the board, and stop the flow of Leo’s hitting.

Gatta in right center and Ewbank in left both made running catches for the other two outs of the inning, limiting Leo’s to four runs. Ewbank’s catch came on a bases loaded shot to left that he reached up for, running backwards, for a game-saving out.

So heading into the top of the seventh, it’s Gardeners 16, Leo’s 12.

THE SAVAGE GARDENERS ARE THREE OUTS AWAY FROM THEIR FIRST CHAMPIONSHIP.

Yet as if God or the screenwriter for the Kevin Costner movie “For the Love of the Game” were writing the script, there had to be drama and not an easy inning. With a runner on first and no outs, Besse made an insane diving catch just past the foul line in right on a fly ball by the #2 batter Keefe, putting an out on the board and not allowing Keefe to have another swing or shot at a hit.

With only two outs to work with, Leo’s could only put up four runs to tie the game at 16-16. Could’ve easily been more without Besse’s diving stop, which earned the One More Catch Defensive Play of the Game Award.

With runners on first and second and one out, Huffman at third made a force play for out number two, yet Leo’s still had the go-ahead run on second base. Edde then dialed up his deadly curveball on the next batter Gheorghe Muresan. Muresan lifted a fly ball to left center which Hersher calmly camped under to end the inning.

So now we have a 16-16 tie game, bottom of the seventh inning, and the Gardeners coming to the plate with a chance……to……win… …the……championship.

And boy those odds shot up when the PA announcer announced the leadoff batter for the Gardeners:

“Now batting, pitcher, Mike Edde.”

Edde put a 2-1 pitch up the middle to center for a leadoff single. The Gardeners’ dugout erupted.

As Ewbank strolled to the plate up next, Leo’s pitcher waved to his left fielder to “back the fuck up.” Ewbank spotted this and changed his swing, dropping in a single to short left that put himself on first and Edde on second.

No outs, winning run on second.

Huffman then came to the plate with one thing on his mind – move Edde to third in any way possible. Because if you’ve got a runner on third with only one out at the worst, you’ve got pretty damn good odds of scoring him. And his plan worked, as Leo’s pitcher Manning couldn’t find the plate and walked Huffman on three straight pitches, loading the bases for Dobrinich. It was also the first walk of Huffman's career (106 plate appearances).

No outs, bases loaded, bottom of the seventh inning. Championship runner – new father Mike Edde – on third base.

With the entire Gardeners’ dugout up against the fence, Dobrinich worked the count to 3-1 then calmly slapped a single through the six-hole that made the Gardeners’ dugout erupt in a pent up nine years’ worth of exuberant roars and cheers.

And with Dobrinich’s single to left – and to the Gardeners’ delight and his wife’s delight and his newborn son’s delight – Edde was back home.

The Gardeners were champions.

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5/19/2017

Needing a win to lock in the #1 seed for the playoffs, and needing a win to show those dudes in warm-up jackets and uniforms and matching pants and yacht shoes who’s the boss, the Savage Gardeners frustratingly fell short in a 23-17 loss to the Olympic Club Tuesday at KKU Field.

The loss dropped the Gardeners all the way in the standings from first to………..first. The league apparently knew the Gardeners would win last week’s postponed game against Motherload if they resumed it, so they probably simply said, “Fuck rescheduling it,” and printed the bracket for the playoffs with the Gardeners in the #1 spot. The matchup is against #16 seed North Central South Central Appalachian State-SUNY West Central, winners of the play-in game against Monmouth.

Regardless, the Gardeners still weren’t too pleased with their effort Tuesday.

“Today’s game graded at about a ‘C,’” second baseman Dane Dobrinich quoted to reporter Jenny Dell after the game. “We had the two huge double plays defensively, yet scoring only three runs in the first four innings didn’t help our cause.”

“Yeah, we’ve got to get the bats going earlier in the game,” manager and first baseman Dave Watters stated as he took a break from watching the A’s-Mariners game on the 43-inch HDTV screen each player has in his locker. “I can’t just hit bombs and save our team every week. We’re the Gardeners. The mothafuckin’ Savage Gardeners………(voice drifting off as the A’s game turns from a 5-4 deficit to a 6-5 lead in the ninth on a homer by)……….Matt Joyce!”

What?

“Matt Joyce!”

What?

“Matt Joyce!”

The Gardeners could’ve used Matt Joyce in the bottom of the seventh inning, as, after taking a 16-15 one-run lead into the seventh, they gave up eight runs to the Olympic Club to stare at a 23-16 deficit in their final at-bats.

The eight-run seventh inning wasn’t the only hole in the Gardeners’ game on Tuesday. They didn’t score a run in innings one, three, or four, only garnering three hits total in those three innings.

That hurt.

Throughout the past few games, the Gardeners had been consistently scoring runs each inning – both keeping themselves in control of the game and keeping the pressure on the opposing team. Going o-fer in the first four innings (except for a three-run second inning) provided no solace for the Gardeners’ fans and gave the Olympic Club a sense of peace in being in control of the ballgame, as they took a break from paying their exorbitant club fees.

Yet to counter that point, the defense had played fairly well through those first four innings, only allowing seven runs total. Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde pitched a shutout third inning and only allowed one run in the fourth. The Olympic Club scored two in the first and four in the second to hold a 6-3 lead after two innings and a 7-3 lead after four.

A leadoff solo shot to right by left fielder Dan Ewbank in the second put the Gardeners on the board, then RBI singles by right fielder Tristan Besse and Dobrinich added two more. Left side infielders David Huffman and Marshall Kratter scored on the two hits, both of them having reached base with infield singles. The third base and shortstop duo both batted 3-for-4 for the night with two singles and a double apiece.

What the Gardeners lacked in their bats in the first four innings they made up with their gloves defensively. Three separate plays all easily made this season’s MLB Top Ten Web Gems list. After a two-run first inning, with two outs and runners on first and third in the top of the second inning, the Olympic Club had already scored four runs in the inning to take a 6-0 lead. Working on keeping the rally going was batter Drazen Petrovic, who crushed a deep fly ball to right field that was easily heading towards landing on the Moscone 2 infield – your standard Kyle Kretchmer shot. Hustling back and reaching out and over his shoulder with his gloved right hand was Besse, making the insane over-the-shoulder grab for the out that saved the blast’s from being a three-run home run and a deflating 9-0 deficit for the Gardeners. Instead, the catch got the Gardeners out of the inning, allowing them to push across three runs in their half to keep it close at 6-3. Besse of course had an RBI with RISP in that inning, maintaining his career RISP average above .700 at .716.

Fellow outfield mate Matt Bou in right center snagged the other two outs in the second inning.

To add some infield defense, in the first inning, with one out and runners on second and third, Olympic Club batter Horace Grant drilled a grounder to Dave Watters at first base. Watters ran to first for the putout, then fired home to All-Star catcher Phil Zackler blocking home plate, where he was in prime position to make the tag on baserunner Sean Elliott trying to score from third. Which was obviously a dumb move on Elliott's part. Just dumb. Dumb like designing a racecar in the shape of a rabbit that’ll poop out little real rabbits out the back that’ll run around the track. Simple proof that you don’t test the obvious Watters-to-Zackler 3-2 combo.

In fact, you don’t want to test any combo with Zackler – softball or otherwise. Especially if you’re a lady and you’re trying to rope him in. Too much good looks. Too much status. Too much charm.

Too soon.

Yet on the softball field, in the third inning, Zackler and pitching mate Edde looped Kratter at shortstop into the fray to make their own new combo. With one out and runners on first and third, batter Dan Majerle hit a grounder up the middle. Edde scooped it, and, without looking – and by instinct – with a fast sweeping underhand throw, pitched to Kratter covering second. Kratter got the force, then fired back across the diamond to Zackler at home, where runner on third Kenny Smith was crashing in. Yet Smith hadn’t learned from the Watters-Zackler double play in the first inning, and Zackler got the tag down in time for the rare yet sexy 1-6-2 double play, ending the inning.

Thus, the Gardeners ended two rallies by turning double plays - ending in tags at home plate no less. They almost added a third double play in the fourth inning when a running Kratter snared a ball hit up the middle and backhand flipped it to Dobrinich at second. Batter Chris Mullin beat the throw to first, yet he ended up not scoring because Edde caught a blazing liner up the middle for the third out. Those fuckers were hitting up the middle all night, so when Edde caught the liner to end the fourth inning, he essentially did a mic-drop with the ball and walked off the field, staring down the scared and trembling Olympic Club dugout. No jerseys or warm-ups jackets or sponsorship shit could hide them from that stare.

The Olympic Club made it 10-3 after the top of the fifth when they scored three in the inning. Flyouts to Bou in right center, Ewbank in left, and Hersher in left center ended it, starting a string of eight outfield flyouts and one infield popout for the Olympic Club, nine straight flyouts total. Weirdly enough, they flew out (outfield and infield) 16 times in 21 outs. Four outs came in the two double plays, and the other out was the force play up the middle by Kratter and Dobrinich. So the Olympic Club flew out 16 times and grounded out only three times (a 5.3 to 1 ratio), not putting the ball on the ground that much. Still can’t beat Huffman’s career flyouts to groundouts ratio of 8.3 to 1, where, for historical context, the Gardeners’ team average is 1.7 to 1. Huffman has 33 flyouts and only four groundouts in his career. When asked about it, his rationale is simple: “Chicks dig the long ball.”

So the Gardeners did everything defensively to win – as a higher ratio of flyouts to groundouts usually hurts a batting team – yet on the Gardeners’ batting side they couldn’t put hits together early enough, or for a last inning rally either.

The bats finally came alive in the bottom of the fifth inning, despite the 10-3 hole in which the Gardeners had dug themselves. Yet it was something as simple as a leadoff walk by Dobrinich that tilted the pressure onto the Olympic Club. Their pitcher Derrick Coleman started getting rattled, with Bou singling off him then Dan Gatta drawing a walk to load the bases. The All-Star catcher Zackler then did the right thing and followed an outside pitch to right field, sacrifice flying in Dobrinich for the Gardeners’ fourth run of the game. Hersher followed with a sacrifice fly as well to cut it to 10-5, yet now there were two outs and only a runner on first in Gatta. Guess it’s time to give up on the inning and head into the sixth down 10-5.

“Fuck that,” claimed Watters. Facing a strong headwind coming in from left field, Watters hit a shot to left just low enough to not get caught in the wind yet high enough to clear the left fielder. He trotted around the bases for a two-RBI home run, the 78th homer of his career. In fact, Watters hits homers at the best rate with two outs (6.2 plate appearances per home run. With zero outs it’s 6.9 PA/HR; with one out it’s 9.0 PA/HR. Overall he’s at 7.2 PA/HR.).

With the score now 10-7 and no runners on base, the Gardeners finally called it in and headed to the sixth inning.

“Fuck that,” claimed Edde. He kept the rally going by singling to right center. [Not coincidental stat we at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) just noticed: The Gardeners’ current one-two-three hitters in the lineup (Hersher, Watters, Edde) are one, two, and three in career on-base percentage (OBP).]

Ewbank singled behind Edde to put runners on first and second for Huffman to single in Edde with a hit to right center as well. Outfielder Pat Reilly followed Huffman’s single with an RBI single to second base to bring the Gardeners down one at 10-9.

So there we had some perfect run manufacturing: Dobrinich’s leadoff walk started to rattle the pitcher Coleman. Bou and Gatta both then got on base with a single and another walk. Zackler and Hersher sacrificed in two runs. And with two outs, Watters, Edde, Ewbank, Huffman, and Reilly all produced hits to add four more runs instead of giving up on the inning. They tried not to suck that inning, and they succeeded – they did not suck.

The fancy pants enemy then had their own shindig thing and scored five runs in the top of the sixth to push the lead back higher at 15-9. Yet the Gardeners kept their momentum intact from the fifth inning and carried it into their at-bats in the sixth. With one out Dobrinich singled, Bou drew a walk, and Gatta singled to left to score Dobrinich. Zackler fought off an inside pitch to earn an infield single to load the bases, where Hersher fielder’s choiced in Bou to make it 15-11.

Yet now there were two outs and the Gardeners gave up again.

“Fuck that,” claimed Watters, again. He singled to left to score Gatta, Edde singled to center to score Hersher, then Ewbank doubled to left to push Watters across and cut the score to 15-14.

Fuck yeah Gardeners. Ewbank’s RBI also put him on the cusp of the top ten of the Gardeners’ single-season RBI record books (he’s currently at #12 with 25 RBI this season).

That was a good enough rally – brining the Gardeners within one at 15-14, so they called it an inning.

“Fuck that,” claimed Huffman. With Ewbank on second and Edde on third – and two outs nonetheless – Huffman hit a shot to center that easily scored Edde to tie it at 15-15. Wendell Kim coaching third base waved Ewbank around third, then held him up, drawing a throw to the plate. On the throw home, Huffman dashed for second. Olympic Club’s catcher Tim Hardaway fired to second to try and get the speedy Huffman, yet the ball tailed into the outfield. Ewbank easily trotted home to give the Gardeners the lead at 16-15 and Huffman ended up on third. With a one-run lead heading into the seventh inning, and after coming back with a seven-run inning, the Gardeners felt confident in their chances at shutting the game down.

The enemy had other plans and simply hit the ball everywhere around the field, pushing eight runs across to take a 23-16 lead before turning it over to the Gardeners. Bou tripled in Kratter for a run in the bottom half, yet that was all they could muster before time ran out.

Despite the loss, the Gardeners still easily made the playoffs. So they’ve got a chance. What was all that one-in-a-million talk? Their odds are way better than that. Especially if one of their key players keeps up his hot bat by not getting out. We’re obviously talking about the guy who led the Gardeners in hitting against Olympic Club with a 1.000 average – Dave Wat……no wait………hold on………….if it wasn’t Watters, it was obviously OBP champ Ari Hers……….no………it wasn’t Hersher either…

The Gardener who led the team with a 1.000 average against Olympic Club?

Phil Zackler. Duh.

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Stat of the Week:

8…………Seasons since the Gardeners last were a #1 seed in the playoffs – the Spring 2014 season. It’s their fourth overall #1 seed in 16 seasons, and first #1 seed in their eight seasons in the upper CC Division.

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5/12/2017

With a playoff spot locked in and a couple sodas down the hatch, Savage Gardeners third baseman David Huffman simply was focused on getting hits on Tuesday.

“I don’t hit well on this field [Jackson 2],” Huffman quoted pregame to Erin Andrews, as he rotated in and out of the batting cage with fellow Gardener Matt Bou. [Partly true-ish, his coming into the game having a .435 (10-for-23) lifetime batting average at Steven Jackson Memorial Stadium.] “Just looking to put the ball in play tonight, give 110%, take it one game at a time, bring our A-game, take it to the next level, help our teammates, and live in the moment.”

Huffman lived in the moment from the get-go, in the first inning doubling home two runs in his first at-bat. He singled home another run in his second at-bat, in the second inning, and added a putout at third base in the Gardeners’ matchup Tuesday evening against Motherload that was called in the bottom of the sixth inning because the city of San Francisco doesn’t like keeping the lights on too late.

Nobody really knows how they’ll score the game or if the Gardeners will have to make up the 1.5 innings that weren’t played.

The Gardeners had just finished their at-bats in the top of the sixth inning with a 16-10 lead when the umpires called the game because apparently the lights were about to go out. So maybe it was a “win,” maybe it wasn’t, yet who really cares, because everyone gets a blue ribbon and a participation trophy and the Gardeners played well enough to earn a moral victory in their precious hearts and also a cooler of CapriSuns and orange slices to help replenish their tired bodies, since the game started at midnight.

With a win in the regular season finale this upcoming Tuesday, the Gardeners likely won’t have to finish off the postponed game, as they’ll have locked in the #1 seed for the playoffs. For some reason they still may have to play though, if only to determine Motherload’s seeding for the playoffs, yet who really knows or cares. If they do have to play, it’s simply an opportunity to get more base hits in the books. Good luck to the umpires though in resuming the postponed game – each team would likely have to have the same lineup on hand, which sounds pretty impossible. Whatevs digdog, we’ll simply say the Gardeners won. Because they played like they did win.

Huffman earned two hits in his first two at-bats to buck his poor hitting trend at Steven Jackson Memorial Stadium, at least to start the game. We don’t know what happened in his other two at-bats – maybe someone spilled milk on our scorebook, or we forgot to log them or something – so those stats/possible outs are lost to the ages.

Statistics that we at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) do have though from Tuesday’s matchup against Motherload are statistics from the first three batters in the Gardeners’ lineup – left center fielder Ari Hersher, first baseman Dave Watters, and Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde. Among the three of them, they reached base 11 of 12 times (a whopping .917 OBP): six singles, three doubles, and two pretty much intentional walks to Watters. They collectively reached base 11 times in a row, with the only out coming in Edde’s last at-bat, a well-drilled shot that Motherload second baseman Stacey Augmon somehow blindly scooped with his backhand for a force out.

With three hits to start the game, Edde had extended his hitting streak to ten straight at-bats before the groundout in the fourth inning. Edde’s at-bats included a single, a two-RBI double, and a two-RBI single in innings one, two, and three, respectively. His four RBI led the team.

Catcher/right center fielder Dan Gatta also played hot in his first game back in almost a month, batting 3-for-4 with an RBI.

The visiting team Gardeners got their licks in early in the first inning, with Hersher leading off the game with a single, Watters drawing a three-straight-balls walk behind him, then Edde reaching first on an infield single. Left fielder Dan Ewbank fielder’s choiced in Hersher, then Huffman said “Fuck this field” and ripped a double to right center to plate Edde and Ewbank and push the Gardeners up 3-0.

Motherload scored a run in the first, yet a spectacular over-the-shoulder Darin Erstad-like warning track catch by Bou in right center stopped all damage henceforth. Later with a runner on third and two outs, Bou caught a tailing fly ball for the third out, holding the Gardeners’ lead at 3-1.

Through the first four innings, the Gardeners hit consistently, simply stretching their lead each inning run by run. The second inning saw every Gardener get an at-bat. A leadoff single by second baseman Dane Dobrinich, single down the left field line by Gatta, then fielder’s choice by Bou put runners at the corners for Hersher to slap an infield single to shortstop to score Dobrinich. After Watters was walked intentionally for the second time, Edde roped a double to center that scored two more in Bou and Hersher.

Ewbank’s single next scored Watters, then Huffman finished off the run-scoring with a single to center, pushing Edde across. Ewbank finished the game at 23 RBI for the season, only one behind leader Kyle Kretchmer.

Up 8-1, the Gardeners and Edde on the mound held Motherload to a lone run again, and at 8-2 after two they sat pretty like the Giants’ playoff chances. [We believe – just flap your arms like an angel’s wings flying.]

The Gardeners added three more in the third inning on a Gatta one-out single, then a two-out rally by none other than the OBP all-stars, or, to be precise, the top of the lineup. With Gatta on first, Hersher singled to left to put runners on first and second. Then Watters absolutely mashed a ball off the fence in right center, scoring Gatta and bringing Hersher across the plate as well. Yet in a rare occurrence, because the ball was hit so hard, it went through the outfield fence and was deemed a ground-rule double, keeping Watters at second and moving Hersher back to third. There may have been a gap in the fence that the ball fell through, yet we can’t confirm that, so we’re simply going with the fact that the ball tore a hole through the fence.

So Watters had a second RBI (Hersher’s scoring) and a triple (which would’ve been his career team-leading 18th) taken away, leaving the Gardeners only up 9-2 with runners on second and third and two outs, instead of Watters on third and Hersher’s scoring.

The lost RBI all worked out though, as Edde in the number three spot singled to left to score both baserunners and push the lead to 11-2.

The Gardeners had the game pretty much in hand throughout as Motherload only scored two runs in the third inning – making it four runs scored total in three innings. Your local heroes in the fourth then piled it on more, with one-out singles by right fielder Tristan Besse (to right center), shortstop Marshall Kratter (infield single to third), then Dobrinich and Gatta both earning RBI singles to left field, scoring the first two guys. Later with two outs and the score 13-4, Hersher doubled to right center for another run, then Watters cleaned in two more with a liner up the middle to make it 16-4.

Watters' two RBI on his liner pushed him over 400 RBI for his career, landing him at 401. Keep in mind also that no other Gardener is at 200 career RBI yet, and only four others have more than 100. So it's kind of absurd.

Motherload pushed back for four runs in the bottom half, yet Dobrinich’s two putouts – one on a force to Kratter and the second on a liner – ended any threat. Dobrinich at second for the game caught two lineouts, made two groundout putouts, and caught a force from Kratter at second to participate in one-third (five of 15) of the Gardeners’ defensive outs. Kratter at shortstop had two groundout putouts and caught a liner. Huffman had his putout and Watters gloved a liner as well. Edde also caught a shot up the middle to end the third inning. Besse in right had three flyout putouts and Bou in right center had two.

That’s a total of ten infield outs and five flyouts to the right side of the outfield. The left side of the outfield (Ewbank and Hersher) were not allowed to have any fly balls all night, and the catchers (Gatta and Bou) were left hanging on getting any bunts hit to them or have any baserunners try and steal second base.

An unappreciated and overlooked arena also needs to be briefly touched upon, simply because we at USASSY like stats and impressive stuff and shit. Edde on the mound faced pressure throughout the game, yet he handled it expertly head on, leaving eight runners on base in five innings pitched:

1st inning: Runner on third left on base
2nd: Runners on first and second LOB
3rd: Runners on first and second LOB
4th: Runner on first LOB
5th: Runners on first and second LOB

That's a good number of runs that Edde disallowed with his two-out pitching.

A four-run bottom of the fourth by Motherload brought the score to 16-8, then the Gardeners’ bats went cold and they put up scoreless fifth and sixth innings. Motherload scored two in the fifth to bring it to 16-10, where the score ultimately stood when the lights started to flicker and darkness descended on everyone’s soul.

We don’t really know what else to say…the darkness made everything weird.

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Stat of the Week:

42-for-48………With two runners in scoring position (bases loaded, or runners on 2nd and 3rd), Dave Watters is batting 42-for-48 (.875 average). Looked at another way, with two runners in scoring position, Watters has gotten out only six times in 48 at-bats. He even has more home runs (nine) than outs (six).

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5/05/2017

Playing in the latter game of a home-and-home with the SF Seals, the Savage Gardeners planned on keeping the winning strategies and tactics learned from game one going strong Tuesday night. And amidst chants of “Club the Seals! Club the Seals! Club the Seals!” from the Gardeners’ rowdy fan base in the left field bleachers, on a warm evening at Steven Jackson Memorial Stadium the Gardeners rolled their momentum along like a bowling ball tumbling down a hill, besting the Seals for a second straight game, this time with a 20-13 victory.

At Stu Jackson Ballpark last week, the Gardeners had come from behind to beat the Seals in the bottom of the seventh, 17-16, on a walk-off sacrifice fly from third baseman David Huffman. Tuesday’s game didn’t see a walk-off because the Gardeners put the game out of reach after the fourth inning. Yet there were some eerie similarities in last week’s game (Game 1) against the Seals and this week’s game (Game 2). We at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) will list a few, for no reason whatsoever:

- Runs scored by the Gardeners, first two innings, Game 1 ......... Two, Three
- Runs scored by the Gardeners, first two innings, Game 2 ......... Two, Three

- Blowup inning (ten runs) by the Seals, Game 1 ......... 3rd Inning
- Blowup inning (nine runs) by the Seals, Game 2 ......... 3rd Inning

- Shutout innings by Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde, Game 1 ......... Four
- Shutout innings by Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde, Game 2 ......... Four

- Batting average for Matt Bou, Game 1 ......... 1.000
- Batting average for Matt Bou, Game 2 ......... 1.000

- Supermodels Bou had sex with after the game, Game 1 ......... 55
- Supermodels Bou had sex with after the game, Game 2 ......... 55

The game was a simple victory for the Gardeners. Edde (W, 5-1), the Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game, dialed in on the mound, hurlin’ and durlin’ like a reincarnated Christy Mathewson. Despite the nine-run third inning that the Seals put together with dinky bloop singles to short left field, the opponent only scored four runs total in the other six innings against Edde. Edde gave up a one-run first inning and the nine-run third inning, yet the second, fourth, fifth, and sixth innings were all shutout innings. The Seals scored a garbage three runs in the seventh when the game was already out of their reach.

Edde pitched to only three batters in the second inning – first batter Detlef Schrempf flying out to Dan Ewbank (five outfield flyout putouts, one assist) in left field, second batter Reggie Miller got on base, then shortstop Marshall Kratter made an easy 6-3 double play for a quick three-batter inning.

In the fourth inning the Seals put runners on the corners with one out, trying to piece together a rally in an attempt to keep their sanity. Yet a liner caught by the jumping Dave Watters at first base then a groundout force out to Kratter at short (with flip to Dane Dobrinich at second) ended the threat.

Edde stranded a runner on second base in the fifth inning, then also got out of runners at the corners in the sixth inning by producing an easy flyout to Ewbank to cap his shutout innings.

Thus, in the past two games, if you take out the two blowup innings (ten-run third inning in game one, nine-run third inning in game two), in the 12 other innings, Edde has given up a total of ten runs, or less than one run an inning. Eight of those 12 innings have been shutout innings. The 2017 Cy Young Award is pretty much in the bag. The closest competitor to Edde is Pedro Martinez, and he retired eight years ago.

Oh yeah, to add to his pitching, Edde also batted 5-for-5 for the game with more extra-base hits (two doubles, one triple) than singles (two). So that’s a batting 1.000 game while adding four shutout innings on the mound.

Heck, let’s go back a game (Week 5) batting-wise and Edde is 8-for-his-last-9 (.889).

Heck, let’s go back another game (Week 4) and Edde is 12-for-13 (.923).

Heck, let’s go back another game (Week 3) and Edde is 15-for-17 (.882).

In a nutshell Edde is finishing strong before becoming a father in a few weeks.

He also started it out strong Tuesday by doubling with one out in the first inning with Watters on first to put baserunners in an easy RBI position – second and third – for the cleanup hitter Ewbank. Ewbank – who led the Gardeners for the second straight game in defensive putouts (six last week, six this week), and with fiancée Garden Hoe Leah watching from the players’ wives and girlfriends section – easily doubled in the away team Gardeners’ first two runs.

The appearance of Garden Hoe Leah after a too-long absence of not seeing the Gardeners play proved a good luck charm. The team effortlessly played well and won under her watch. The Gardeners are now also 2-0 this season with Garden Hoes in attendance (they won 18-13 in Week 2 when Garden Hoes Margot [Edde] and Andrea [Kratter] were on hand).

The bottom of the first defensively saw Huffman at third base finally get his first ground ball hit to him by the Seals (after zero last week), where he easily made the first out on a force to Dobrinich at second. Ewbank in left relayed to him for a tag at third on the next play – a single to left – when baserunner from first base Clyde Drexler tried stretching for third. Drexler was easily gunned down by Ewbank for the 7-5 putout. A force groundout to Kratter at short ended it, rolling the Gardeners into inning two looking to add more musk into the air in addition to runs to the scoreboard. Which the Gardeners did, albeit waiting until the pressure was on with two outs. Left center fielder Ari Hersher, after a week off for rest, singled in a run, Watters singled in another, and Edde capped it with a double to score a third run.

With a 5-1 lead behind him, Edde pitched his three-batter second inning, then the Gardeners pounded Seals pitcher Terry Porter for four runs in the third. A leadoff single by Huffman then double to straight center by right fielder Tristan Besse started the inning off hot like Anna Kournikova in her tennis prime. And in that Enrique Iglesias music video. And still today, for that matter. With Huffman on third and Besse on second, the solution beamed clearly for Kratter up next: single them in. His liner to left center did the trick, then infield batterymate Dobrinich doubled behind him to move them to third and second, respectively.

Runners on second and third with no outs proved too easy for the right center fielder Bou. A single down the line in left for Bou’s second hit of the night cleaned in Kratter and Dobrinich and soon the Gardeners were up 9-1 before your mom could say “HeyHarry ol’buddy ol’pal.”

Nevertheless, the Seals dinked and dunked around nine runs in the bottom of the third to take a 10-9 lead after three. This utterly deflated the Gardeners, as they gave up from then on.

Nah just kidding, they said, “Fuck that shit” and came up even more determined in their at-bats in the fourth. Edde singled to start off the inning, Ewbank doubled behind him, then, with one out, Besse calmly singled them home with a hit to right center that gave the Gardeners the lead for good at 11-10. Yeah – didn’t see that coming huh? Besse with another hit with RISP? Never-ending story isn’t it. It really is phenomenal though. Besse is hitting .738 (62-for-84) with RISP and .505 (49-for-97) without RISP. With no runners on base, Besse is hitting .449 (22-for-49). We don’t point that lower number out to knock Besse. We only point it out to delineate the comparison between his major value-adding capabilities (high success rate, or pretty much guaranteed RBI) with runners in scoring position.

Kratter’s third of four singles for the night moved Besse to second, then Dobrinich blasted a triple to left center to score them and push the score to 13-10.

Dobrinich ended up with two doubles and a triple for the night.

Bou sacrifice-flied in Dobrinich to make it 14-10, and with two outs now and the number ten batter coming up, the inning seemed over.

BUT NO. UP STEPPED ALL-STAR CATCHER PHIL ZACKLER.

Breaking out of his mini slump, Zackler singled to left to keep the inning going and turn the lineup over to the top and Hersher. Who slapped an infield single to shortstop to keep the inning churning.

Two runners on, two outs for Watters? Simple solution – mash a homer over the left fielder’s head to clear the bases. Which Watters did with no doubt in his mind. Or anyone’s mind for that matter. And the Gardeners didn’t mind, as his knock pushed the score to 17-10. From 14-10 with the number ten batter coming to the plate with two outs to that batter's (Zackler) keeping the rally going to Hersher’s opposite field infield single to Watters’ homer – it all combined to take the wind out of the Seals’ sails, take the air out of the Seals’ tires, take the sparkle out of the Seals’ eyes, take the Viagra out of the Seals’ bloodstream. Whatever you want to call it, the game was forevermore changed. The Seals knew right then and there that they’d never beat their formidable opponent.

Edde made sure they understood that. He pitched a scoreless fourth inning.

He pitched a scoreless fifth inning.

He pitched a scoreless sixth inning.

The Seals scored three in the seventh, yet they were already down 20-10 at that time. After a scoreless at-bat in the fifth inning, the Gardeners had scored three runs in the sixth to get to that 20 runs mark. Bou had singled in Dobrinich after Dobrinich’s second double of the night. With two outs later in the inning a single by Hersher then back-to-back triples by Watters and Edde scored two more (Hersher and Watters) to make the Gardeners hit 20 runs.

We at USASSY also think these may have been the first back-to-back triples in Gardeners’ history. We can’t confirm this as we don’t have this fact easily accessible and would have to flip through every scorebook page to try and find another instance of back-to-back triples. Right now we don’t feel like doing that. So it might be the first instance, or it might not be. Which also shows that we at USASSY are not completely flawless like everyone thinks and we don’t have every single statistic at our fingertips like baseball-reference.com or FanGraphs or ESPN or STATS LLC or whoever is nerdy and keeps advanced stats. We at USASSY can do pretty much everything else with stat tracking (exit velocity, PITCHf/x data, defensive WAR, and spray charts, for example), yet finding instances of back-to-back triples is simply not our forte. Kind of like how acting (“Kazaam”) is not Shaq’s forte. Basketball is.

[Quick side note: Who’s leading the Gardeners in batting average this season? It’s Matt Bou, batting .800 (12-for-15).]

In all honesty though, we lied to you - we actually don’t have exit velocity. Maybe next season.

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Stat of the Week:

7………Straight hits apiece for Mike Edde and Matt Bou. Game on…

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4/26/2017

The Savage Gardeners’ matchup Tuesday night started out casually enough – two runs in the first inning and three in the second, leading to a simple 5-2 lead after their at-bats in the bottom of the second. Yet the unraveling inning that hid around the corner like a pedophile at an elementary school jumped out dick in hand in the top of the third when the Gardeners’ opponent SF Seals punched single after single after single across to score ten runs and take a 12-5 lead.

Crazily enough, the Seals scored all of their ten runs before making an out – or, more accurately, before the Gardeners made an out on defense.

Truthfully, the unwelcome third inning for the Gardeners at Stu Jackson Ballpark didn’t look or feel too bad, from either an observer’s eye or from the players’ perspectives.

“We didn’t do ourselves too much damage there,” shortstop Marshall Kratter quoted in-game in the dugout after he and his teammates got out of the inning, Kratter’s initially slowing the damage by making the first out with a force out grounder and flip to Dane Dobrinich at second base. “We just forgot about it and moved on. Wait, what happened last inning? I forgot already.”

And the forgetting helped, as the Gardeners inched their way back from down 12-5 to ultimately win 17-16 on a walk-off sacrifice fly from third baseman David Huffman that brought the house down and caused the fans to rush the field and tear down the goalposts.

Huffman – after leading fellow Gardeners Kyle Kretchmer and Matt Bou through their pregame mental preparation at Thee Parkside – in the field didn’t get a ground ball hit to him all night. His efforts were felt at the plate, however, as he batted 4-for-4 with the game-winning RBI as well on his sacrifice fly.

Huffman brought some insight to it after the game: “Coach [Watters] stared at me when I walked to the plate in the seventh, saying, ‘Stop being so selfish and getting on base with hits. Make a sacrifice for once.’ That’s when I knew I should take one for the team and not get a hit this time. And it worked. We won......and your mom goes to college.”

In addition, if one looks at Huffman’s season statistics, one will notice that under the “Batting Average” column, there is the number “one” followed by a period and three zeros. Which, if written out in numerical form, looks like this:

1.000

Which means, if one were to do the math, that Huffman is batting 1.000 for the season (8-for-8). He’s now raised his career average above .600 to .605, 46 points higher from where his career average was hanging out, on the side of the road thumbs out tongue out, as the season started (.559).

In the absence of mainstay leadoff batter Ari Hersher, Huffman took the reins nonchalantly and put himself on base four straight times before knocking in the game-winning run with the perfectly placed, perfectly planned sacrifice fly that scored Kratter from third and set the stadium afire with fireworks and bombs and shit.

His leadoff single in the first had gotten the hits going for the Gardeners for the night. Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde had moved him to second with a line drive single to right, then left fielder Dan Ewbank had singled him home with a rip to right center. With the first run scored, Kretchmer added another in the inning with a single to right to score Edde from third. After one inning (the Seals had scored two runs in the top half), the scored was knotted at 2-2.

Edde fucked up the Seals in the second inning with a beautiful three-up, three-down inning, goading a flyout to Pat Reilly in left center and grounders to his middle infielders Dobrinich at second and Kratter and shortstop, respectively, to end the quick inning.

Back in the dugout with their bats, the Gardeners pushed three runs across in the bottom half with a slew of one-out singles. Right fielder and lefty batter Tristan Besse outplayed the Seals’ shift by blooping a single to left, moved to second on Bou’s easy lined single down the left field line, then hustled across the plate from second on Kratter’s single to left.

That looked to be the winning run – Gardeners up 3-2 now – yet we know that the Seals had an insane ten-run inning later on, so we understand the Gardeners would have to score more to make up for it. Yet every run counted, and after Besse scored, catcher Trey McCalla singled to right to score Bou from second and move Kratter to third. Huffman then singled in Kratter to push the score to 5-2 after two.

The Seals went apeshit and scored their ten runs in the third inning, then turned it around and shut down the Gardeners in the next two innings. Bou (.750 season batting average) added one of his four hits of the night in there, yet he was left stranded on the bases and the Gardeners went runless in two innings.

After the ten-run disaster, the Gardeners strategized, wanting to stop the Seals’ hot bats, so they brought in their cooler to ice the dice down and slow the Seals’ roll. Their cooler – the catcher McCalla – then caught the fourth inning behind the plate and VOILA! – the Seals went three-up, three-down. Edde threw brilliant outside corner pitches to all three of the Seals’ batters in the inning, getting to two-strike counts on all three, and producing flyouts for all three outs – one to a running Bou in right center and two to Ewbank in left, Ewbank’s making a great over-the-shoulder catch for out number three.

At the time, Edde was only halfway through his shutdown innings: he pitched four shutout innings (the Seals’ scoring zero runs) for the night. Three of them were caught by the brilliant pitch-calling McCalla behind the plate. No surprise there – McCalla kept his career Catcher’s ERA (CERA) at 1.00, only allowing four runs in the sixth inning for a total of four innings caught and four runs given up.

The box score also understates Edde’s dominance. Despite the ten-run third inning, the Seals only scored in two other innings – two runs in the first, four runs in the sixth – with the four shutout innings peppered in there. The second and fourth were both 1-2-3 innings. The fifth inning Edde got out of a jam with runners at the corners; same thing in the seventh.

In addition, he goaded two comebacker outs in the game (seven overall this season now), clearly distancing himself from the other pitchers in the league at this stage for another Gold Glove Award. He also caught a blazing liner up the middle.

Ewbank in left field got his fair share of action, catching six flyouts, almost one-third of the Seals’ outs. He also kept up his torrid hitting at the plate, going 3-for-4 with two doubles and adding four RBI. He upped his average to .714 for the season while settling right above the .600 line for his career at .601.

Kretchmer put up one of his standard games at the plate: 3-for-4 with five RBI, a single, double, and – obviously – a home run. Over the fence of course too. It was his sixth homer this year and fourth over a fence (two at Jackson 1, two at Jackson 2). Against all odds he still has not crushed a parked car with one of his blasts. At this pace the current Las Vegas Over/Under line is at 1.5 crushed cars for the season. Most bets are coming in on the Over.

Up 5-2 then down 12-5 after the Seals’ ten-run outburst, the Gardeners didn’t panic like Tom Hanks did when he lost his volleyball Wilson. It was only the third inning for crying out loud. And despite their going o-fer in their at bats in the third and the fourth, they still kept their heads up. Edde was wheeling and dealing through the Seals with back-to-back shutout innings in the fourth and fifth, letting the Gardeners know the game was in hand.

The defense backed Edde up well in the fifth inning, with Dobrinich and Kratter almost turning a twisting, spinning, 4-6-3 double play. With a runner on first, Dobrinich had scooped a hopper up the middle, threw to Kratter running toward second, then Kratter, after touching second and with his momentum carrying him into right field, spun no-look and fired to Dave Watters at first. Batter Brad Daugherty barely beat the throw, yet the tone had been set hard like wet concrete drying in the hot Bombay sun: This game was in the Gardeners’ grasp now.

A single put runners at the corners with one out, yet Besse’s catch of a flyout in right intimidated the runner Daugherty on third base so much that he didn’t even consider testing Besse’s arm by tagging up.

Ewbank then caught an easy flyout outside the left field foul line to end the inning and turn it over to the Gardeners’ bats.

Starting the chipping away at the lead, Huffman led off the inning by hitting his third single of the night. He tagged to second base on Watters’ third deep, well-hit ball to left that got caught up in the wind. Edde’s infield single moved him to third, then Ewbank lasered a double to left to score him and push Edde to third. With runners on second and third, the slugger Kretchmer at the plate, and the Gardeners’ still able to use their one home run over the right field fence, Kretchmer took strategic advantage of the opportunity. No - he didn't blast a homer over the fence. Even better.

He launched a deep double to center just short of the fence, allowing Edde and Ewbank to score, keeping the pressure on the Seals with a runner on base (himself), and still allowing the Gardeners to hold the homer-over-the-fence trump card for later in the game.

The plan worked, for later with two outs Reilly doubled him in.

Wait – who?!?! Reilly?!?! You mean that Pat Reilly?!?! The one with the lefty swing, fourth highest Gardeners career slugging percentage, impeccable glove, and boost to the Gardeners’ hitting power?!?!

Yes that one. After playing overseas on teams in Orinda Korea and Walnut Creek Korea, Reilly played for the Gardeners Tuesday evening. Though the Seals had a bead on him defensively from the Korean scouting reports, he still contributed the key RBI above in his first game dipping his foot back in with the Gardeners.

Despite the rough three flyouts Tuesday, Reilly for his career is still batting .639 and still averaging over a single per at-bat, with a slugging percentage of 1.241.

Reilly’s RBI brought the Gardeners closer at 12-9. Besse followed with a single to start a new streak of hits with RISP, then Bou singled to center to plate Reilly and make it 12-10.

The Seals scored four quick runs in the top of the sixth to extend their lead, this time to 16-10. Yet a comebacker by Edde, a flyout to Reilly, then Edde’s snag of a liner up the middle stopped the rally dead in its tracks. With that momentum shift, the Gardeners turned back to their hot bats.

Down six with two inning at-bats left, in the bottom of the sixth the catcher McCalla (3-for-4) took the rally-starting into his own hands. He beat out a single to second base that proved to be the Aztec Game Changing Play of the Game. By his beating out the throw, the rally was officially on like Donkey Kong at a honkytonk. Which is kind of a weird image because it’s usually only white rednecks at honkytonks and not monkeys. Whatever.

And when the Gardeners start to rally like a bullet train speeding at your face, nothing can stop them, not even naked swimsuit supermodels throwing their bodies at them. The Gardeners just lock the fuck in on softball. Huffman’s fourth single of the night put runners on first and second for the slugger Watters, who was looking to avoid going hitless for only the fourth time in his 125 career games as a Gardener. On a two-strike pitch, Watters singled to right center to push McCalla across, avoid the goose egg, and let the rally keep building momentum.

Still with zero outs, down 16-11 now, Edde doubled to left to score Huffman, move Watters to third, and cut it to 16-12. Ewbank followed with a double as well, both Watters and Edde easily scoring to bring the deficit to two at 16-14.

Coming up in the fifth spot now was none other than Kretchmer.

Down two, runner on second, a home run over the fence in right field still in play.

Easy solution. Trump card played.

Kretchmer slammed a simple homer over the fence, tying the game at 16-16, and earning the Kelly Evans CNBC Hot Drive of the Game Award. It was actually a little too predictable – Kretchmer’s hitting a home run in the ideal situation – yet the Seals could do nothing to prevent it.

The Gardeners couldn’t score any more in the inning and soon it was a tie game at 16-apiece heading into the last inning.

Yet before the inning started, we at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) want to point out what happened after Kretchmer’s homer and leading up to the seventh inning.

With Kretchmer’s ball sitting somewhere on 17th Street or already in the back patio of Thee Parkside, and with the umpires’ requesting the ball come back into play, Edde – the Gardeners’ All-Star pitcher, who was on his way to a complete game – volunteered to chase it down. He jogged out of the stadium to retrieve it. Despite the pleas of the employees in the Gardeners’ nerdy sabermetrics department (“Uhhh…[pushing nerd glasses up onto nose and talking in dweeb voice]…according to our algorithms, it’s not mathematically favorable to have our starting pitcher running around the field to pick up a home run ball”), the nerds couldn’t stop Edde from getting a little exercise and selflessly retrieving Kretchmer’s ball. It seemed okay at the time – at least Edde didn’t take a dirt bike – yet way too quickly the inning ended, the Gardeners had to take the field for the top of the seventh, and Edde was still outside the stadium, returning from retrieving the ball. He had to race around the fence to get back to the field, hustle to the mound, throw no warm-up pitches, and immediately face the Seals’ lineup. Game tied, most important inning of the game, and the Gardeners’ most important player had to take the mound coming straight from a sprint and without warming his arm back up. Kind of like the following happening:

“Hey Brady, before we start this two-minute drill down five points, Coach Belichick may have left his keys in his car in the stadium parking lot. Can you go grab them, oh, and lock the door before you come back?”

Regardless, nothing fazed Edde. He immediately produced a comebacker for the first out. Dobrinich at second base stayed with a bobbled ball in the hole and fired to Watters at first in time for the second out, and the Gardeners were almost out of the inning.

Soon enough though, the Seals put runners on the corners when their number two batter Mark Price came to the plate with the meat of the lineup waiting in tow. And Price was looking for a walk, fucking pussy. He took the first pitch for a ball, then Edde snuck one in there right off the back of the plate to make the count 2-2. Another ball made it 3-2, then Price fouled one off down the left field line. The foul ball came back to Edde all wet, so he exchanged it with home plate umpire Ed Hochuli for a new ball, simply building up the suspense so much that USASSY’s writers almost peed their pants in anxiety. Full count, last inning, meat of the lineup coming up, and Edde’s rhythm was supposed to be all fucked up – starting the inning hustling in from behind the outfield fence, taking no warm-up pitches, then having to switch balls with a 3-2 count.

Yet it affected nothing in Edde’s manner. He threw a slider inside that Price lazily hit to Ewbank in left for an easy out, squelching the Seals for a final time.

With that tense situation out of the way, all the Gardeners had to do was score one run in the bottom half to win it. Bou led off with a single, then Kratter tried to at least advance him by chopping down on the ball and ensuring a groundball that could be bobbled, go for a hit, or at least move Bou along. The Seals got a force out at second, yet the Gardeners were still in a favorable situation with only one out and the speedster Kratter on first base.

McCalla then greatly upped the Gardeners’ odds of winning by slashing a sweet lefty single down the line in right, moving Kratter casually to third base.

This brought up the leadoff batter Huffman, who, as hinted as, was now only thinking sacrifice fly.........sacrifice fly.........sacrifice fly.........the whole time.

“Hey, I was 4-for-4 already, so I listened to what my coach [Watters] said, and thought why not be a little more selfless and sacrifice one for the team,” Huffman admitted as the media thronged around him after the game. “So it was easy.”

Huffman on the first pitch delivered his beautiful inside-out swing to drive a deep sacrifice fly to right center that too easily allowed Kratter to trot home with the winning run.

With a 4-1 record under the manager Watters, the Gardeners sit in the driver’s seat of the division and control their own destiny. With the way they looked Tuesday, despite the unraveling ten-run inning by their opponent, they look damn near unstoppable and essentially can do anything they put their minds to – like winning out every game to capture their first championship, for example, or becoming something cool when they grow up, like firemen or astronauts.

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Stat of the Week:

<10:1………Only six Gardeners in history take less than ten plate appearances between each home run. Four of them were in Tuesday’s lineup. Kyle Kretchmer (6.2 plate appearances per home run) leads the pack, with Dave Watters (7.2 PA/HR), Trey McCalla (7.3 PA/HR) and Pat Reilly (8.3 PA/HR) also crushing homers at solid paces.

[Stu Jackson (7.1 PA/HR) and Joey Faber (9.7 PA/HR) are the other two with PA/HR under ten.]

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4/13/2017

Averaging 1.33 home runs per game at the time, Kyle Kretchmer was due in the second inning of the Savage Gardeners’ Week 4 matchup against Ball So Hard University (BSHU). And with the ease of Kobayashi eating a hot dog, Kretchmer launched his fifth homer of the year – a three-run shot to deep right – to help propel the Gardeners to a 27-14 victory Tuesday night at KKU Field.

The three-run homer in the second was only the start of Kretchmer’s onslaught at the plate. After a sacrifice fly in the first inning and the homer in the second, Kretchmer tripled in the third, singled in the fifth, then doubled in the sixth. Each hit produced at least an RBI; he finished with seven RBI total on the night.

And, if you are following at home, if you take a closer look at each of Kretchmer’s hits, they add up to the Holy Grail of hitting: the cycle.

Kretchmer’s 4-for-5, (the umpire thought he stepped out of the batter’s box in the seventh.........whatever) seven-RBI night earned him only the fifth cycle in Gardeners’ history (the other four: Stu Jackson, Johnny Moran, Matt Mason, Casey Cole). Looking at it mathematically, if there have been 147 Gardeners games, multiplied by a standard ten Gardeners hitters per game, you have 1,470 player chances to hit for the cycle. Considering that there have only been five cycles out of the roughly 1,470 player box score lines in Gardeners’ history (1,557 to be exact), doing so is quite impressive.

The first baseman is now slugging only 1.889 for the season, just under averaging a double every at-bat.

Not to be overlooked, the batter in the cleanup spot right before Kretchmer had a game of his own as well. Left fielder Dan Ewbank almost hit for the cycle, knocking a double in the first, a single in the fifth (where he ended up on third base after an overthrow), and culminating with a one-out grand slam in the seventh inning. The grand slam was the 11th in Gardeners’ history - and Ewbank's first - coming only two games after the 10th in history, by Dave Watters in Week 2.

Ewbank added two sacrifice flies to his night, ending the 3-for-4 evening with a whopping nine RBI, tying the Gardeners’ single-game record. (Watters has done it twice; Kretchmer once, in the Gardeners’ Week 1 victory.)

We at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) liked this game so much, we’re simply going to highlight some stellar numbers that were posted:

- Kyle Kretchmer: 5th cycle in Gardeners’ history
- Dan Ewbank A: 11th grand slam in Gardeners’ history
- Dan Ewbank B: Nine RBI – Tied Gardeners’ single-game record [Watters (twice), Kretchmer]
- Mike Edde: Pitching – two strikeouts, CG (3-1), two shutout innings, 5 ER last five innings, 1 ER last three innings; Batting – Reached base all six times (3 1B, 2B, 2 BB), scored all six times
- Dave Watters (.699) is back to pushing his career average to .700
- Phil Zackler also came to the plate

The Gardeners rode BSHU pitcher Kendall Gill all game, drawing seven walks and hitting 25 singles along with six doubles, a triple, and three home runs. Right fielder Dan Gatta and Edde both drew two walks apiece. The Gardeners got on Gill from the top of the first inning onward, starting with Hersher’s leadoff single (because he always leads off a game getting on base), the third baseman Watters’ walk, then Edde’s RBI single to right, the most well-hit ball all game, an opposite field, lined, tailing single that easily scored Hersher and moved Watters to third.

[Pointless side note: USASSY this week found a data mistake in Hersher’s game leadoff numbers. Last week we reported his game leadoff OBP to be .815 when in actuality it was .810. After Tuesday he had raised it to .811. We regret this horrifying error because we know you were keeping track and were about to scream, “Hey last week you said it was .815, this week he got on base, and he went down to .811?!?! What the fuck is wrong with your math?!?!” Well we had a data entry mistake, it’s been fixed, and the USASSY employee who fucked up has been fired.]

Ewbank followed with an RBI double to center to score Watters, Edde’s sliding under a throw to third on the play. With runners on second and third, the first baseman Kretchmer easily sacrifice flied in Edde, then second baseman Dane Dobrinich singled home Ewbank for the Gardeners’ fourth run of the inning.

Dobrinich finished the night 4-for-5 (pushing his career average above .600) while adding a walk, two RBI, and three putouts at second base – two on grounders and also catching a jumping liner in the first. His scoop of a grounder in the second inning was a beauty as well, moving in the hole and firing to Kretchmer in first just in time to end the inning, and, ultimately, BSHU’s rallies for good. BSHU had scored four runs in the bottom of the first then five in the second, matching the Gardeners’ output each inning, making the score 9-9 after two.

Yet after the second inning, Edde had gone through BSHU’s lineup 1.5 times and felt that was enough to be locked in. Over the next five innings, Edde limited BSHU to five runs total. He threw in two shutout innings – in the fifth and sixth – with a one-run third inning and a one-run seventh inning. Somehow BSHU managed three runs in the fourth inning. Other than that, the defense and Edde held pat. Especially Edde. He totaled two strikeouts in the game – roughly equivalent to 20 strikeouts in an MLB game. It was Kerry Wood-esque. He added a comebacker out in the seventh inning for his fifth in four games. So that’s three easy outs where Edde didn’t let the opponent hit the ball past him. More accurately – one out where the ball didn’t get past him, and two outs where they didn’t even hit the ball in the first place.

He also hit three singles, a double, and walked twice, with his first-inning single to right mentioned above being one of the most perfectly swung and hit baseball plays in memory. His tireless work earned him the game ball from the Gardeners’ manager Watters.

On the subject of Watters, he got on base all six times as well – three singles, two doubles, and a walk. Standard shit. His play on defense, however, marked his real impact. With the All-Star catcher Zackler back in action, Watters was able to slot himself at third base and put fellow slugger Kretchmer at first base, producing a towering tandem of ex-college ballplayers (UCD, UNLV) at the corners. Add in speedy shortstop Marshall Kratter (USD) and the Gold Glove second baseman Dobrinich (SMC) and the Gardeners’ infield is a formidable leviathan of college experience fielders.

Watters was the linchpin Tuesday, stopping four grounders. In the third inning he made the first out on an easy grounder. The second out of the inning came a bit tougher – Watters dove to his left in the hole on a ball hit by batter Larry Johnson, got to his feet, then fired to Kretchmer in time for the out. And in the fifth a ball scooted out of his glove, yet despite thinking he didn’t have enough time, he still grabbed it back up, spun, and got batter Benoit Benjamin at first just in time again.

The diving play in the third earned him the FUBU Defensive Play of the Game, accompanied by a teal and gray FUBU jersey with his nickname on it (“Bling Bling MoneySkrillz Garcia”) and 70 different random logos plastered over the front and back of the jersey. Watters then went and got 12 tattoos.

Kratter at shortstop added four groundout putouts. In all, BSHU grounded out 11 times. Ewbank in left caught three flyouts and Hersher in left center caught four, including a clutch diving catch in the fourth that thwarted a huge BSHU rally. Add in Dobrinich’s catch and Edde’s two strikeouts and you’re at 21 outs. So we have three outs to Dobrinich at second base and three made by Edde pitching. That leaves 15 outs – all of which went to the left side of the field (SS, 3B, LF, or LC). That means that Tristan Besse in right center and Gatta in right field both didn’t get a single flyout hit to them. Pretty rare if you think about it. They just stood there on the right side of the field spittin' seeds, talkin' shop, and beatboxin' tunes off of each other.

Despite their lack of action in the outfield, the two still filled their action at the plate, combined getting on base nine of 11 times. Besse singled four times, Gatta twice; Gatta walked twice, Besse once. Everybody was mean to them though, because no one drove them in. Yes – in nine times getting on base, Besse and Gatta scored zero times. Selfish other Gardeners players.

And Besse’s singles weren’t any ordinary singles. Entering Tuesday’s game, Besse faced the ginormous pressure of keeping his streak of hits with runners in scoring position (RISP) intact. He’d had seven straight hits with RISP when he stepped to the plate in the second inning with runners on first and second and two outs nonetheless. Yet staring down the pressure and fate with the steely look of Tom Brady on a game-winning drive, Besse singled to push his streak to eight straight RISP hits.

The streak continued effortlessly in the fifth and sixth, where, with bases loaded both times, Besse singled in two runs each time. Nine straight hits with RISP. Ten straight hits with RISP. Then in the seventh with runners on first and second, he grounded out to second base to end the streak.

MOTHER FUCKER.

Yet in Belichick-esque style in the postgame press conference, when peppered by Tim Kurkjian how he felt about ending his streak, Besse had already put the out behind him and was looking forward toward starting a new streak next week, stating, “We’re on to Cincinnati.”

“But aren’t you disappointed you grounded out?”

“We’re on to Cincinnati.”

After Edde ended the bottom of the first defensively by striking out BSHU batter Shawn Kemp, the Gardeners in the second broke the 4-4 tie by putting five runs across. Catcher Trey McCalla singled, Watters doubled, and Edde walked to load the bases to allow Ewbank to hit McCalla in with a sacrifice fly to right center with one out. Watters and Edde tagged to third and second, respectively, on the play, putting themselves in better scoring position with the slugger Kretchmer coming up with two outs. It didn’t matter much though, because Kretchmer launched a three-run homer to right – his fifth home run this season – and 19th of his career, moving him into sole possession of third place on the Gardeners’ career home run leaderboard. Next up is retired Gardener Stu Jackson (22 HRs). No one is going to catch Watters (76 HRs), except possibly Zackler. If Watters never hit another homer, Zackler at his current pace would only need 3,190 plate appearances to pass Watters as the career home run leader. Where, at a rate of four plate appearances per game, would only take 798 games (about 80+ seasons) to reach.

The Gardeners added a fifth run in the second inning on Besse’s RISP single, scoring Dobrinich from second. Dobrinich and Kratter had both singled after Kretchmer’s homer.

BSHU scored their five runs in the bottom half to tie it back at 9-9, yet Kratter and Dobrinich up the middle controlled all the outs. Kratter made a groundout putout for the first out, flipped to Dobrinich at second for a force for the second out, then Dobrinich scooped a grounder for the third out. After that, the Gardeners took the game over for good.

Saying, “Fuck this tie game shit,” McCalla led off the third with a solo homer to right to put the Gardeners ahead 10-9.

Trivia question: Which Gardener hits the most home runs per plate appearance? AKA - Who takes the fewest plate appearances between each home run?

No, it’s not the career home run leader Watters (7.2 PA/HR, or one home run every 7.2 plate appearances). And no it’s not Kretchmer (6.3 PA/HR), despite his current torrid pace.

It’s McCalla.

He hits a home run every 6.25 plate appearances. Okay, yes, Kretchmer is pretty much there too (6.32 PA/HR, extending to two decimal places). Yet stats don’t lie – McCalla hits home runs at the best rate of any Gardener, past or present. How you like them apples. Go impress your friends now with your trivia knowledge.

After McCalla’s solo shot, Ewbank contributed another sacrifice fly and Kretchmer added the triple (with an RBI) to his collection towards the cycle. Watters and Edde both scored the runs. Fuck it – you could say that last sentence pretty much any time and you’d be correct: Watters and Edde scored a lot. They individually scored six runs apiece. They just scored all the time. You could take a nap on the bleachers and be woken up by cheering and it’d probably be Watters or Edde scoring. You could be flying overhead on an airplane, look down on the little ants playing softball on Moscone 1, and pretty much assume it was Watters or Edde crossing the plate. You couldn’t say the same about Besse and Gatta – nobody let them score. Fucking twisted that’s what it is.

With his team leading 12-9, Watters made two stops at third (one of them the FUBU play) and BSHU was held to one run to make it 12-10. The Gardeners posted a shutout at-bat in the fourth, then gave the lead up by allowing BSHU to score three runs and take a 13-12 lead, right after McCalla replaced Zackler at the catcher’s spot so Zackler could Buster Posey-like rest his knees for the grueling season. This giving up a lead brought on a reaming of McCalla by the manager Watters and it had its effect – McCalla got the hint and caught the fifth and sixth innings perfectly by allowing no runs. Zackler re-entered in the seventh and only allowed one garbage time run.

Feeling uncomfortable not having the lead, Watters in the dugout before the fifth inning launched into a quick motivational speech for the Gardeners that included phrases like “Try not to suck,” “Let’s get sick,” “That’s so fetch,” “I’ll never let go, Jack,” “You know what I see? I see pride. I see power. I see a badass mothah, who don’t take no crap of nobody,” and ending with, “It’s not your fault……………it’s not your fault……………it’s not your fault……………it’s not your fault……………it’s not your fault.”

Well that shit worked. Yet it took a second. Down 13-12 in the fifth with two outs and Watters on third and Edde on first, Kretchmer stepped up. And the Henry Rowengartner Game-Changing Play of the Game occurred.

No, it wasn’t a typical Kretchmer blast to the moon. It was a bouncer to BSHU first baseman LaPhonso Ellis. Yet instead of making the out and getting out of the inning, Ellis fumbled the grounder. With Kretchmer hustling Hunter Pence-style down the line, he beat Ellis to the bag to keep the inning alive. Watters scored on the play to tie it at 13-13, the inning kept going, and the Gardeners made their opponent pay for their shit defense.

Dobrinich up next singled to left to score Edde from second, putting the Gardeners in the lead at 14-13. Kratter followed with a single, loading the bases for Besse: the perfect person to be hitting with RISP. And as expected, Besse came through, singling to right to score Kretchmer and Dobrinich. Gatta added a two-out RBI single for another run, and instead of the Gardeners' ending the inning down 13-12 before Kretchmer’s hustle, they now had a 17-13 lead.

Edde took advantage of the swing in the Gardeners’ spirits to throw a quick strikeout to start the bottom half, Watters kept with his aforementioned bobble grounder for out number two, and a lazy flyout to Ewbank in left ended the brief 1-2-3 inning.

The Gardeners’ bats kept it going in the sixth as they put together EIGHT STRAIGHT one-out hits to plate six runs. A double to center by Hersher started the rally; Watters singled him home. Edde singled Watters to third, then Ewbank singled in Watters. On the play, Edde moved to second…then third…then home on an overthrow and Ewbank nicely found himself on third base after all was said and done.

Kretchmer then hit a double to right center to score Ewbank and complete the cycle – as mentioned, only the fifth in Gardeners’ history.

Dobrinich followed with an infield single, keeping Kretchmer on second, then Kratter singled to load the bases for, once again, Besse. And, once again, Besse hit a two-RBI single to score Kretchmer and Dobrinich once again, pushing the Gardeners’ lead to 23-13.

Edde then continued his dominance and pitched a four-batter bottom of the sixth.

The Gardeners’ at-bats in the seventh didn’t see much except for a couple base runners in the top of the order in Hersher, Watters, and Edde. While those three were hanging out on base, Ewbank (no big deal) decided to whop a grand slam. It was, as mentioned, Ewbank’s first career grand slam and the 11th in Gardeners’ history, in 222 total team bases loaded plate appearances (that makes it one grand slam every 20 team bases loaded plate appearances, for those keeping track at home).

Leading 27-13, the Gardeners let BSHU score one in their half yet Kratter closed it out with a groundout putout and the 27-14 victory entered the books.

Some players coaching third base had CRBI (Coaching RBI), yet we fell asleep and didn't really track it. Kratter had at least one...Zackler maybe...McCalla one or two in there...fuck...somebody keep track of this shit.

With the win, McCalla kept his winning ways going, posting a team-leading .833 win percentage in games he’s played (5-1 record). He’s also tied for first in career Catcher’s ERA (CERA), with a 1.00 CERA (3 Innings Caught, 3 Runs Allowed). Add his first place standing in home run rate (6.25 PA/HR) and his third place grip on career slugging (1.318) and OPS (1.918) and he’s sneakily becoming the Gardeners’ secret weapon. This coming from the guy batting eleventh in the order despite his leading the team in first inning batting average with an insane career 1.000 first inning batting average (1-for-1). Very sneaky indeed.

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Stat of the Week:

.811 ANGLO vs. .480 NOT-ANGLO…………The number .811 is Ari’s Nutty Game Leadoff On-base percentage (ANGLO). The number .480 is the NOT-Ari Nutty Game Leadoff On-base percentage (NOT-ANGLO).

In English please?

Ari Hersher’s on-base percentage (OBP) leading off a game is .811 – he gets on base 81% of the time leading off a game for the Gardeners (122 games leading off, 99 times safely reaching base). When someone not named Ari Hersher has led off a game for the Gardeners, they’ve sort of sucked – their combined team OBP is .480 (they’ve reached base safely less than half [48%] of the time – 12 times in 25 games).

The Gardeners are fucked if Hersher ever retires.

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4/06/2017

After three-and-a-half innings, the Savage Gardeners looked okay – they had rebounded from down 8-3 to tie the score at 8-8 versus the Flatliners Tuesday night at Stu Jackson Ballpark. They had just completed a five-run top of the fourth inning to put themselves back in contention for keeping their undefeated season intact.

Yet the Flatliners’ at-bats in the bottom of the fourth...............and the bottom of the fifth...............and the bottom of the sixth...............did way too much damage, as the Gardeners seemingly couldn’t get out of any of the innings nor stop any bleeding coming from the Flatliners’ bats. The enemy scored the following number of runs in the fourth, fifth, and sixth innings:

6…11…6…

That didn’t help. Seventeen runs given up in two innings; 23 in three innings. Add those to the eight scored in the first three frames and it easily adds up to the 31 runs the opponent scored in the Gardeners’ 31-13 defeat.

The ending football game-looking score wasn’t that ugly through the top of the fourth – the score was tied at 8-8. Yet pure self-destruction decimated the Gardeners’ defense, leaving them helpless from then on, especially in the fifth inning when the Flatliners whopped across 11 runs in a seemingly never-ending inning.

The 11 runs in the fifth inning was the most runs given up by the Gardeners since a Summer 2016 Week 7 matchup, against the Flatliners as well (that game ended predictably in a 21-4 Gardeners loss). That’s a streak of 86 innings not giving up that many runs in an inning. And, understandably, it was devastating for everyone all around the ballpark. Little boys in the stands cried mercilessly into their rally towels. Little girls in the stands cried mercilessly because playtime was over and they couldn’t play with their Barbie dolls anymore. Adult girls in the stands cried mercilessly because right fielder Dan Gatta was breaking their romantic hearts again.

The game essentially sucked after that, because it took all of the wind out of the Gardeners’ sails.

Until then, though, it wasn’t so bad. Left center fielder Ari Hersher had led off the game as usual by getting on base, a single to right, boosting his game leadoff average a monstrous two points to .778 from .776 and OBP one whole point to .815 from .814. Which means - with so many game leadoff bats in his career - he’d probably have to go 0-for-his-next-50 to get that OBP under .800. Not happening.

Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde’s well-placed opposite-field single to right moved Hersher to third, allowing him to score on left fielder Dan Ewbank’s sacrifice fly for the Gardeners’ first run.

A flyout to right center fielder Tristan Besse and a popup to third baseman David Huffman started the outs defensively for the Gardeners in the bottom of the first before the Flatliners put runner Hersey Hawkins on with a single. Next batter Jeff Hornacek then doubled to left center, scoring Hawkins, yet Hornacek somehow thought he could test Hersher’s arm on the relay in from the outfield. And in another instance of great pitcher play, Edde backed up the overthrow to shortstop, scooping the ball and easily placing a tag on Hornacek trying for third base.

With a stellar defensive play carrying momentum over to the Gardeners for their second inning at-bats, they capitalized with several one-out hits, starting with a smoothly hit line drive single to right center by Besse then a single to left by Huffman in his first at-bat this season. Second baseman Dane Dobrinich then doubled to left, Besse’s drawing a throw to home plate en route to his scoring. With runners on second and third, Gatta easily scored Huffman with a single to left, pushing the Gardeners’ lead to 3-1.

The Flatliners bounced back with four runs in the bottom half yet Edde ended the damage with a comebacker out for the third out, his fourth comebacker out in three games this season.

The Gardeners couldn’t score in the third then allowed the Flatliners to score three more to go down 8-3 through three innings.

The bats finally woke up in the top of the fourth. Right fielder Matt Bou – who had been cheated on a lucky stab of a grounder by Flatliners’ third baseman Vlade Divac in the second inning – got his revenge by tripling to center to lead off the inning. That put a runner in scoring position for Besse. And if you obviously recall last week’s Stat of the Week regarding Besse’s average with RISP, the conclusion was simple: put runners on base for him. Because, as expected, Besse produced, singling in Bou to boost his RISP average to .740 for his career. He’s 4-for-4 with RISP so far this season and has seven straight RISP hits dating back to last season.

Singles by Huffman and Gatta later put shortstop Marshall Kratter at the plate with one out and the bases loaded, a clear opportunity to do some damage in the rally. That proved easy enough for Kratter as he singled to left to score Besse and Huffman, Huffman’s beating the throw home by a good two Utah Ute steps. Hersher behind Kratter singled to right to score Gatta from second and Edde with two outs singled in Kratter to tie the game at 8-8 to conclude the Gardeners’ hits and runs for the inning.

The Flatliners opened it back up with a six-run bottom half to take a 14-8 lead, yet the Gardeners didn’t go through the inning without getting a gritty defensive play by Bou in right field. On batter James Worthy’s towering fly ball to right, Bou first slipped tracking the ball. He regained his footing………………then slipped again…………

Yet he regained his footing again, making a spectacular falling catch to help stem the flow of runs the Flatliners were putting across.

After the semi-miserable six-runs scored by their opponent in the fourth, the Gardeners kept in it by scoring two back in the fifth, one on a Huffman single and a second on a Gatta fielder’s choice, cutting the deficit to four at 14-10.

Huffman, playing in his first game this season, showed no rust by singling all four times at the plate. The pregame milk and Gatorade mixer he downed across the street at Thee Parkside may have contributed to his effortless output. In fact, the three Parkside pregame visitors Tuesday night – Huffman, Bou, and catcher Kyle Kretchmer – all coincidentally started their seasons off batting 1.000 in their first games playing. Kretchmer had his out-of-this-world 5-for-5, three-homer, 3.400 slugging game in his first game; Bou went 4-for-4 last week in his debut; Huffman was 4-for-4 this week. So the trio is onto something, even if it makes no sense whatsoever stating that pregame milk and Gatorade on Tuesday April 4th retroactively helped them hit well in the past. We think it does: Milk and Gatorade on April 4th helped Bou go 4-for-4 on March 28th and Kretchmer go 5-for-5 on March 14th. And we’ll stand by that assertion.

If you think this argument has flaws for some reason, well, fuck you, whatevs, it worked for Huffman.

Only down 14-10 going into the bottom of the fifth, the Gardeners couldn’t help it and completely collapsed. That’s all we can say. The Flatliners scored 11 runs in the inning to go up 25-10.

The only positive in the inning was Kratter’s 6-3 double play on a grounder that ended the onslaught.

The Gardeners saved face in the top of the sixth with Watters' homering to left center for a solo shot. And despite making three outs in the game, Watters still slugged 1.000 for the game. Which hypothetically means he averaged getting one base every at-bat.

With two outs, Ewbank selflessly passed up the chance to use the Gardeners’ sole homer over the right field fence, passing it along and deciding there would be a better opportunity for a teammate to do so. Ewbank singled, and with Kretchmer behind him, his plan worked. Kretchmer knocked a homer that had no doubt it was going over the fence the second it left the bat. It was Kretchmer’s third home run over a fence this season, and his fourth overall. And that’s in only 14 plate appearances mind you, meaning that he’s hit a home run once every 3.5 times he’s come to the plate. Or two home runs every seven plate appearances. Or 763 home runs every 2,760 plate appearances. Which means he'll break Barry Bonds' career home run record soon enough. With already 18 home runs to his name, he's on pace to pass Bonds 2,608 plate appearances from now, or in the year 2018, whichever comes first.

Getting three runs back in the sixth was a moral victory for the Gardeners, as the Flatliners simply kept up their good hitting by adding six more runs in their half to make it 31-13. The Gardeners couldn’t score in the seventh and left the field with their first and only loss they will have this season.

In their 21 outs, the Gardeners flew out to left field 1/3 of the time (seven times). Six flyouts interspersed among the other three outfield positions and a popup to shortstop adds seven more flyouts to their total. Thus, they flew out 14 times, or for 2/3 (67%) of their outs. We at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) have historically noticed that flyouts should generally account for less than 60% (12 outs or less, in a 21-out seven-inning game) of the team’s total outs for the team to win. Flyouts are easy outs for the defense. And looking at the Gardeners’ lineup, no outs should be easy for their opponent’s defense. They’re too good for that.

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Stat of the Week I:

12-22………The Gardeners’ record at Jackson 1, a .353 winning percentage. Their winning percentage is over .570 at each of the three other fields (Jackson 2, Moscone 1, Moscone 2).

Stat of the Week II:

.789…………The Gardeners’ poor record at Jackson 1 doesn’t seem to affect David Huffman. He’s batting .789 in his career there. It’s the best batting average at any one field for any qualifying Gardeners player, past or present.

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3/31/2017

Tuesday’s home matchup at KKU Field against Leo’s served exactly the recipe the Savage Gardeners needed – a solid slate of consistent hits throughout the game. In the 18-13 victory that pushed the Dave Watters-led Gardeners to 2-0 in the early trenches of the 162-game season, at least six batters came to the plate every inning for the Gardeners; because of this, they scored in every inning.

Their runs by inning are shown below:

3, 2, 4, 3, 1, 5

Compare that to the opponent Leo’s runs per inning:

0, 1, 1, 0, 2, 3, 6

This comparison helps paint a picture of a solid Gardeners victory punctuated by quality defense, consistent hitting as mentioned, and Kate Upton attempting to run onto the field to sex All-Star catcher Phil Zackler. Much to her dismay, Zackler denied her request with the words “I don’t need your garbage body all over me.”

Backing up Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde in the field was a Gardeners defense spearheaded by right fielder Dan Gatta, who made four flyout putouts in right. Watters at third base also had four putouts, all on grounders. Add in left center fielder Ari Hersher’s two putouts in left center and past and current KKU residents contributed to 10 of the 21 Gardeners’ defensive outs.

Tristan Besse in right center and Dan Ewbank in left added three and two putouts, respectively. Edde also contributed to his pitching cause with two comebacker outs.

Along with his glove, Edde had a stellar game on the mound with Garden Hoe wife Margot watching from the stands, her first foray in the bleachers watching her hubby and the Gardeners sans a glass of red wine in her hand. Joining her in the players’ wives and girlfriends section in the front rows was shortstop Marshall Kratter’s lady Andrea on hand to watch her man make two force plays on grounders at short while adding a sliding triple and two RBI to his night.

Edde locked down Leo’s with a mix of fastballs and curveballs expertly called by the catcher Zackler all evening, pitching two shutout innings and only giving up four runs through the first five innings and seven runs through six. Leo’s in garbage time put six runs up in the seventh and final inning, yet the game was already out of hand by then with the Gardeners up 18-7 at the time.

Those 18 runs came easily enough for the Gardeners throughout the game. After Edde pitched a shutout four-batter top of the first inning, the Gardeners and Hersher attacked the bats from the get-go with Hersher’s leading off the hitting with a two-strike single to center. He had just barely missed doubling down the left field line on the pitch before, a ball called foul on a 2-2 count fastball. Thanks to the scouting reports, Leo’s defense had shifted each player to the right side of second base, putting all four infielders between first and second base while stacking three outfielders in a straight column in right field and one in right center. Hersher tried to make Leo’s pay for the heavy defensive shift by pulling the ball, yet the ball apparently landed just outside the left field foul line, negating his potential double. He still turned around and singled, as mentioned, to raise his career game leadoff average to .776 and OBP to .814.

Watters behind him in the second spot then did what he does best on the softball field – produce RBI – sending a double to left that scored the speedy take-that-William-Hill-I’ll-crush-your-in-game-betting Hersher all the way from first. This was the first of Watters’ game-leading seven RBI of the night. Watters finished the game at 390 career RBI as a Gardener, just barely in front of the second place Gardener, who is only 212 RBI behind with 178.

Watters ended the game sitting at exactly 500 at-bats in his career. In those 500 at-bats, 350 (70%) have been hits, and 75 (15%) have been homers. Simply some nice round numbers to look at.

Watters’ seven-RBI night also earned him the Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game Award, as all four of his hits – one single, two doubles, and a grand slam – produced RBI.

[Aside: We at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) have just changed to writing “RBI” instead of “RBIs” as we used to do in the past because apparently “RBI” is grammatically correct. It’s a bit of cognitive dissonance that is taking time to get used to – writing plural runs batted in as “RBI” simply feels weird. If anyone disagrees and thinks “RBIs” should be correct we’re all for hearing it.]

Watters contributed the tenth grand slam in Gardeners history – and the fourth of his illustrious career – with a no-out blast in the sixth inning with the Gardeners “only” leading 13-7 at that point in the game. The hit proved huge at the time – extending the lead to ten runs from six runs with Leo’s only having one more chance at the plate – while also earning it the Kelly Evans CNBC Hot Drive of the Game Award.

[Because you were so curious, the other Gardeners with grand slams are Stu Jackson (two), J.J. Warren, Johnny Moran, Kyle Kretchmer, and – yes, you guessed it correctly – Phil Zackler.]

Ewbank added an RBI single and Kratter added a sacrifice fly in the first inning to put the Gardeners up 3-0 after Watters’ RBI double. Ewbank also led the Gardeners by scoring four runs to go with his four hits. This season he is already batting 8-for-10 and has scored all eight times he’s reached base.

Up 3-0 after one, the Gardeners ceded one run in the second yet Edde ended it on a comebacker from batter Blue Edwards for the third out.

The Gardeners added two runs in the second inning with a one-out walk by Gatta then a single by second baseman Matt Bou with an overthrow that put them on third and second, respectively. Bou’s “double” is now being marked as a single because USASSY is being stricter with stats this year by recording a hit like Bou's as a single (versus a double in the past) even though he ended up on second base because of the overthrow. Nothing against Bou – it’s simply a league-wide new rule now in effect to more accurately record stats, like other new confusing rules in effect, like no leaping over the line of scrimmage for field goals, no choreographed touchdown dances, and allowing females to get driver's licenses.

With runners on second and third, Hersher sacrifice-flied in Gatta then Watters doubled in Bou to push it to 5-1.

Leo’s had a leadoff triple by Brad Lohaus and a walk by Derek Harper to put runners on the corners to start the top of the third. Gatta in right almost nailed Harper tagging to second on a sacrifice fly by next batter Mike Iuzzolino – where Lohaus scored – yet that was it for Leo’s runs in the inning despite their threatening for more. An infield single put runners on first and second, then Leo’s batter Rony Seikaly grounded to Bou at second. Bou spun and tossed to Kratter covering second for the force play, then Kratter threw to Kretchmer at first. Seikaly was called safe even though the throw probably beat Seikaly to the bag, yet because the replay cameras were not functioning at the time because they weren't GoPro sponsored and approved by the GoPro legal team, Watters as manager could not challenge the call by throwing the red flag. No matter though, because the next play validated the countless hours of Spring Training PFP the Gardeners went through early this year in the hot spring Arizona sun.

Now with two outs and runners on first and third, batter Glen Rice tried to slice a grounder through the hole between first and second. Yet Kretchmer’s UNLV glove was there in the right spot – as was Edde when Kretchmer looked and threw towards first base, Edde’s hustling over to cover the bag and catch Kretchmer’s throw for the 3-1 putout to end the inning.

With the momentum on their side after Edde’s wife Margot and the fans went nuts after this play by the Garden Hoe's husband, the Gardeners took the opportunity to hit five straight singles with one out (scoring three runs), then have Watters add a two out sixth single of the inning for a fourth run. Kratter, Besse, Zackler, Gatta, and Bou hit the five back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back one-out singles; Zackler, Gatta, and Bou all earned RBI.

Bou, playing in his first game this season, came out of the box strong with four hits for the night. He’s on pace to bat 1.000 for the year.

After a shutout fourth defensively, the Gardeners were led by Ewbank’s leadoff single in their half followed by Kratter’s sliding RBI triple to center. Besse chopped a single to center to score Kratter, then later with two outs, Bou singled in Besse.

With a 12-2 lead, the Gardeners played nice and let Leo’s score two runs in the fifth yet got one back on another Besse RBI single to make it 13-4 after five. Leo’s put up three in the top of the sixth to cut it to 13-7 – which was enough of a cushion for Edde to finish the complete game in the seventh – yet offensively they wanted to give him an even larger cushion while also working on their early season swings. A leadoff single by Gatta put him on first. Bou singled down the left field line to push Gatta to second. Hersher then walked to load the bases for – you’re fucked now Leo’s – Watters. Where, as touched upon above, Watters crushed a grand slam, this one a laser deep down the left field line that pushed the Gardeners up ten at 17-7.

Because the Gardeners we still celebrating Watters’ grand slam, no one bothered to coach third base when Ewbank hit a shot to center two batters later. This left Ewbank rounding second and running towards third with no coaching or direction on where his hit ball was. Should he round third and score? Stop at third standing up? Slide immaculately with perfect form like Kratter does? Maybe it was Margot or Andrea in the bleachers who held their arms up in a sign for him to stop at third. Maybe it was Watters’ yelling, “Stop!” from the first base-side dugout. Maybe it was Ewbank’s baseball intuition. Whatever the case, Ewbank wisely stopped at third as the ball was being relayed into the infield. It easily worked and was the right move, as Kretchmer then sacrifice-flied him in to make it 18-7.

Yet Kretchmer’s sacrifice fly was no ordinary sacrifice fly. Leo’s right fielder Danny Manning started Kretchmer’s at-bat playing on the outfield edge of the Moscone 2 infield. He then caught the ball somewhere between Moscone 2’s pitching mound and home plate, still drifting backward as he caught it. Kretchmer’s shot easily would have cleared the fences at Jackson 2...............twice.

At Moscone 1 (KKU Field), however, it ended up as a 412-foot sacrifice fly.

In the fourth inning with Ewbank on first base, Kretchmer had almost added another sacrifice fly with a deep shot to right. Yes – Ewbank almost scored FROM FIRST BASE on a sacrifice fly, Kretchmer’s ball was hit so deep. With someone actually coaching third base that inning, Ewbank easily ended up on third and then casually scored on Kratter’s aforementioned triple.

Up 18-7, Leo’s kind of rallied in the seventh yet it was more like a desperation heave at the buzzer. They scored six to cut it to 18-13, yet that was it, and the Gardeners easily loped off the sunny field victorious for the second game in a row. If they keep up this whole winning consecutive games in a row thingy for eight more games (six regular season games plus two playoff games), they’ll finally reach their life’s ultimate purpose and be SF Softball champions, where they can then go party at the manager Watters’ house in that little fenced-in dog-playing area right outside the cottage. Or maybe they’ll celebrate at Asia SF. Or maybe at the Top of the Mark. Or at the Lookout on Market Street. Or in some shady alley in the Tenderloin. Or at Roam on Union. Or Perry's. Or at the Bus Stop (the actual bus stop on Laguna and Chestnut by the field, not the bar). Who the fuck knows where they’ll celebrate. It’ll pretty much be Armageddon when the Gardeners win the championship. And you don’t wanna miss a thing.

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Stat of the Week:

.737 vs. .506………The difference in career batting average for Tristan Besse with runners-in-scoring-position (.737) vs. without (.506). The 231-point difference is the largest on the team. As expected, he was 2-for-2 with RISP on Tuesday. In essence – he’s clutch. Put runners on base for Besse.

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3/18/2017

Heading into the Savage Gardeners’ 2017 season-opening game against Motherload at Steven Jackson Memorial Stadium, Kyle Kretchmer’s stats at the field otherwise known as Jackson 2 were decent enough – 9-for-14 with one home run and five RBI total in those 14 at-bats. These numbers would be very solid for any ballplayer – definite All-Star pace numbers – yet for the slugger Kretchmer, in his career at Jackson 2 he hadn’t fully realized his potential. The lone home run hadn’t even been a fence-clearing home run, a bit of a shocker considering that the porch is short in right field and each team can hit unlimited homers over it.

Well, Tuesday’s game put all his past numbers there to shame – Kretchmer hit two fence-clearing homers and a third as an inside-the-parker. He also decided to add a triple and a double as well, scoring all five times and producing nine of the Gardeners’ 23 total RBI in the 23-21 victory.

The third home run – his second over the fence – clearly earned the Kelly Evans CNBC Hot Drive of the Game Award, coming with two outs in the sixth inning with the game tied at 20-20. The three-run shot put the Gardeners over the top of their opponent, giving them a three-run cushion heading into the top of the seventh, where Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde only allowed one run to Motherload in the inning to close out the complete game. Edde now leads the league in wins with one.

Kretchmer also gave the Gardeners their only other lead in the game in the first inning, when he hit a three-run shot to right center to put the team up 5-4 at the time. The Gardeners trailed in every other at-bat for any player.

Obviously, the catcher Kretchmer’s play earned him the Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game Award – 5-for-5 with a 3.400 game slugging percentage would do that. Which means he averaged over a triple every at-bat. Accounting for 39% (9 of 23) of the Gardeners’ RBI doesn’t hurt either.

In no small feat either, this was the greatest batting performance ever by a Gardener in a game. Kretchmer set a single-game record for slugging (3.400) and OPS (4.400) while becoming the fourth Gardener ever to hit three home runs in a game (Dave Watters twice, Stu Jackson once). His nine RBI also tied him with Watters (twice) for most RBI in a game.

So no small feat. The greatest hitting performance ever in a Gardeners game. Out of 1,512 box score lines in Gardeners history, his is number one.

Playing under new management in Dave Watters and with a team store with myriad Savage Gardeners merchandise to account for their growing popularity in the United States and internationally, the Gardeners entered the 2017 calendar year with a fresh start. They also added a fresh face in right center fielder Trey McCalla – a career .769 hitter up to that point in four previous stints with the Gardeners intermittently in 2011-2013.

McCalla added his part of the game by making three putouts look easy in right center. Second baseman Dane Dobrinich led the team with five putouts – two on groundouts and three on flyouts. Infield batterymate shortstop Marshall Kratter added three putouts as well – all coming in the fifth inning – the first on a groundout and two and three coming on a 6-3 double play that ended the inning.

With Edde on the mound, Kretchmer behind the plate, and a stout defense in the field, the Gardeners looked better than their preseason Las Vegas +250 odds to win the championship this season. Yet the top of the first defensively didn’t help those odds, as Motherload came out of the gate veryquicklylikeafuckrabbit and put up four runs immediately. The Gardeners’ defense soon reversed course and shut it down and got three quick outs to turn it over to their bats to start their 2017 damage and quest for championship immortality and hella bling championship rings.

And the bats started off hot in the Gardeners’ bottom of the first, with leadoff batter left center fielder Ari Hersher using his 27-ounce bat to full advantage by breaking it in with a walk. Whatever – he can do whatever the hell he wants. He’s led off a game for the Gardeners 117 times in his career and has a .812 on-base percentage (OBP) doing so. Which means he leads off a Gardeners’ game by getting on base over 80% of the time, or four out of every five games. Which contributes to all that the Gardeners need – runners on base. And then you add the first baseman Watters’ batting behind Hersher and soon all shit breaks loose like a three-year old on cocaine in a fancy China shop.

This wasn’t Watters’ first time batting in the number-two spot – he’s 3-for-5 in his career batting there (most at-bats have come in the three-hole, where he’s 314-for-447 [.702]) – so it was no surprise when he blasted a deep two-run homer to left to put the Gardeners’ first two runs on the board. Singles by Edde and left fielder Dan Ewbank then put two on for Kretchmer in the fifth spot, where he casually hit the first of this three home runs.

His three-run homer put the Gardeners up 5-4, yet this was the last time they had a lead until his three-run shot in the sixth that made it 23-20.

Frustratingly for the Gardeners, Motherload stayed consistent at the plate in the first half of the game, scoring four, five, five, and six runs, respectively, in innings one through four. This consistency gave them a 20-7 lead heading into the bottom of the fourth. In the interim, the Gardeners only scored two runs since the first inning, on a – can you guess? – two-run homer over the tall fence in right center by Kretchmer in the third inning. Motherload had done their damage though, putting runs across any way they could, scoring two on sacrifice flies to Tristan Besse in right field, one to Ewbank in left, and a smattering of consistent hits that attempted to deflate the Gardeners and their naked supermodel fans. However, top of the fourth putouts by Dan Gatta at third base – one on a grounder and another on a sizzling liner – helped turn the tide for the Gardeners and put confidence back in their struts.

In the fourth inning, down by 13 at 20-7, the Gardeners felt a bit like the Patriots in the last Super Bowl – down, yet not out, especially with Tom Brady leading the charge with Gisele’s watching and snapping selfies from the press box. Or, in the Gardeners’ case, Gisele’s watching from the fourth step on the cold dirty bleachers at the softball field, next to a discarded napkin and an overworn black fleece left over from the prior softball game. Not as nice as an NFL stadium’s press box, yet at least it was closer to the action. She was also seen making out like a seventh grader with one of USA Softball Statistics Yearly’s (USASSY) employees behind the storage shed.

Thus, the Patriots, er, Gardeners, started gradually coming back like Third Eye Blind’s career. With one out, Hersher, Watters, and Edde all singled (Edde’s single scoring Hersher), putting two on for Ewbank. Ewbank next crushed a three-run homer to left center to make the score 20-11 and give the Gardeners’ bats some life like they had in their five-run first inning.

Kretchmer’s double then two-out RBI single by Dobrinich added the fifth run of the inning.

With new life and only down eight at 20-12, the Gardeners, their defense, and especially Edde on the mound then shut down Motherload in a very rarely seen streak of outs. Three batters came to the plate for Motherload in the fifth inning. The first grounded to Kratter at short, the second singled, then the third hit into Kratter’s 6-3 double play.

The sixth inning saw the same – three batters – yet better: a 1-2-3 inning with flyouts to Hersher in left center, Dobrinich at second, and McCalla in right center.

Even the seventh inning carried the momentum, with the first two Motherload batters’ grounding out to Dobrinich then to Edde before someone finally got a hit. Thus, Edde and the defense got EIGHT STRAIGHT OUTS in innings five through seven, a pretty remarkable turnaround after the 20 runs scored in the first four innings.

While the defense was shutting down Motherload’s bats, the offense was turning up the volume on their own, like you do to the car radio when Kelly Clarkson's "Since You've Been Gone" comes on. The bottom of the fifth inning for the Gardeners proved crucial as they carried the momentum from the five-run fourth into their at-bats in the fifth. A leadoff single by Gatta followed by one by McCalla allowed Hersher to triple them home with a liner to right. A Watters RBI single cut the lead to 20-15, yet the Gardeners then put up two outs and looked done for the inning.

Unfortunately for Motherload though, Kretchmer was at the plate. And he once again instigated a game-changing play, tripling to right center to score Edde from first after Edde had reached base on a fielder’s choice. Only down four at 20-16, Kratter got on the hitting scoreboard by singling in Kretchmer. Dobrinich doubled to second – aided by Kratter’s speed in taking an extra base and sliding into third safely – putting runners on second and third with two outs for the right fielder Besse. The Gardeners were only down three (20-17) at this time, yet a hit here from Besse would prove clutch, as a three-run deficit (or more, after Motherload’s at-bats) in the sixth and seventh inning would be tougher obstacles to surmount.

Yet the odds were in the Gardeners’ favor as Besse stepped to the plate with his career average with RISP and two outs standing at .697 (.331 MLB equivalent). Besse decided that wasn’t good enough and decided to put that number over .700 (to .706) by delivering the Hightower Strip Sack Clutch Play of the Game I with a two-RBI double to center, cutting Motherload’s lead to 20-19.

Now only down one, the Gardeners grasped the game firmly in their hands like you do to the N64 controller when playing MarioKart, shut down Motherload 1-2-3 in the sixth, then tied it and took the lead in the bottom half. A one-out single by Hersher then two-out walk by Edde put runners on first and second for Ewbank to tie the game at 20-20 with the Hightower Strip Sack Clutch Play of the Game II by scoring Hersher with a single to center. Edde moved to third on the play, yet he could’ve stayed at second - it wouldn’t have mattered - because Kretchmer up next casually hit his Drive of the Game over the right center fence to allow Edde, Ewbank, and himself to jog home and give the Gardeners their 23-20 lead.

Ewbank finished 4-for-5 for the night; the Gardeners’ one-through-five hitters (Hersher, Watters, Edde, Ewbank, and Kretchmer) combined to hit 18-for-23 (.783) while adding two walks for a game OBP of .800 among the five of them.

As mentioned, the Gardeners kept up their hot defense by getting the first two outs in the top of the seventh, yet Motherload didn’t give up with the Gardeners’ leading 23-20. Motherload scored a run to make it 23-21, then loaded the bases for lefty batter Wayman Tisdale. Bases loaded, tying run on second, lefty batter – a clear “Oh shit” moment. Tisdale tried to turn on an Edde fastball, yet he screamed it right at Watters at first, who, fittingly as the new manager, gloved it for the final out in his first game as manager. He now is the career leader in manager win percentage at 1.000.

Thus, despite the scares of being down 4-0 (1st inning), 9-5 (2nd), 14-5 (3rd), and 20-7 (4th), the Gardeners proved they can come back at any time. Which they did with precision on Tuesday, cementing the game as one of their top ten games played according to a completely subjective opinion by a USASSY staff member who simply said, “You know what, that game was a good comeback. Fuck it, it’s a top ten game in Gardeners history” with no facts or data to back it up like a middle-schooler who forgot to add a citations page to his essay on the Mayan civilization for his World History class. Critics may say an early season game out of a long 162-game season may not count, yet, to the Gardeners, every game counts. Players are having babies (Edde), already had babies (Hersher), possibly planning on it (Watters), getting married (Ewbank), or already got married (Besse, McCalla), leaving the future Gardeners’ season rosters uncertain with family obligations and shit. Thus, they look to seize each day and each game – “carpe diem” as they say, which we believe means “Fuck you opponent, we're better than you.”

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Stat of the Week:

4-1 (.800)………The addition of outfielder Trey McCalla as a permanent player seems a valuable pickup for the Gardeners. The Gardeners are 4-1 (.800) in his career with the team.

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11/18/2016

No ifs about it – the playoffs own the Savage Gardeners.

Once again – for the 13th time in their 15 seasons – the Savage Gardeners lost in the playoffs before even sniffing a whiff of the championship game. Yes, in every season but two, the Gardeners have reached the playoffs yet failed to make it past the semifinals. Or in Tuesday’s case, the play-in to the semifinals, as the Gardeners as the #4 seed were forced to beat their opponent and #1 seed Motherload twice to reach the championship game.

Despite their high expectations, the Gardeners couldn’t even make it past one game as they lost 21-12 at KKU Field to end their season and send them into the winter with each player questioning his existence and place in life.

None of this was more evident than in All-Star catcher Phil Zackler, who deferred playing softball for the last two months to help run Hampton Dellinger’s election campaign. Thanks to Zackler’s canvassing, Dellinger won in a landslide, 383,764 votes to zero. Yet after Zackler’s return and at-bat in the sixth – we’ll leave it to you to surmise what it was and where it was hit – Zackler found himself after the game downing beers solo at Jake’s Steaks and pouring his heart out to the bartender.

“I just…” Zackler sighed as he chugged his seventh pitcher of Guinness, “...I just want to win one championship with the Gardeners. I mean, we’ve been playing for what, twenty years? And never even made it to the championship game? It’s embarrassing frankly. We’ve got ten to 13 incredible ballplayers hustling each week for the last seven years, and we can’t even win a freaking playoff game. I really don’t know what we’re all doing with our lives. I guess jobs and charities and wives and girlfriends and prostitutes and male prostitutes then back to female prostitutes then tranny prostitutes then midget prostitutes then animal prostitutes all get in the way of focusing on softball, yet I think our priorities are backwards. We were put on this earth to play softball; everything else is trivial and meaningless.”

Playing to the trivial tune, most of what the Gardeners did at the plate Tuesday evening made trivial difference in the ballgame. Save for an eight-run fourth inning, the Gardeners scored four runs in the other six innings (an average of 0.75 runs each inning), dooming themselves to defeat.

Four runs in six innings would be great in the pros. Yet this is San Francisco slow-pitch softball, a higher echelon division than MLB where about 16 runs is average for a team for a game, a little over two runs per inning.

Whatever the case, the Gardeners and their entire organization are going to do major soul-searching over the offseason with plans of a culture change, potential upheaval, manager firing, and a rebranding.

As the rebranding process started immediately after Tuesday’s loss, the Gardeners’ organization first looked to find corporate sponsors for their future seasons – a corporation, business, or individual to sponsor their team, give them free uniforms and other cool shit like shoes, protein bars, and private planes, and subsequently change the team name in an effort to turn the organization around.

They got plenty of bites, with the top corporate sponsor bidders listed below:

Axe Body Spray
Calvin Klein Men’s Underwear Line
Crystal Bay Casino
Asia SF
Lululemon

Per a players vote, the last option would clearly be the most favorable, as the Gardeners would get plenty of free Lululemon clothes, cause that shit is comfortable as fuck. And yes, they do have men’s clothes, if you were wondering, and it’s not tight-legged yoga pants. It’s comfortable-ass shit, no pun intended.

The uniforms if Calvin Klein wins the sponsorship would be a bit racy…and probably make it cold for nighttime games. And the problem with Axe becoming the new sponsor would be the constant halts in action throughout each game as more and more females desirously attacked the Gardeners in the field because of their body spray. Crystal Bay may bring conflicts of interest (players or managers betting on their own team, or blowing the organization’s money at the three-card poker table), and Asia SF is weird enough in its own right.

Expanding their search past large conglomerates, the Gardeners also looked closer to home. Fighting the corporate sponsors would be the local business category. The only ones that stepped up to sponsor the degenerate Gardeners offer an enticing list as well, with the potential team names listed below:

Condors
Hustlers
Gold Clubbers
Spearmint Rhinoceroses

These options are clearly getting the most likes on the Gardeners’ social media page.

Despite all of this offseason work to do with the rebranding and these classy businesses vying for a Gardeners’ sponsorship, the Gardeners still had a playoff game to play Tuesday. They entered the game optimistic enough; unfortunately, the bats and gloves didn’t back up the positive vibes, as the Gardeners didn’t score until the top of the third inning, when third baseman David Huffman said, “Fuck this,” spit out half his chew towards the pitcher, then launched a solo leadoff home run to left to put the Gardeners on the board.

Yet Motherload had come to play. They scored six runs in the first and four in the second to take a 10-0 lead before Huffman’s homer. They also essentially shut down the Gardeners in the first two innings, only giving up a single to left fielder Dan Ewbank. The drought continued through the third after Huffman’s shot, as the Gardeners were only able to produce a single by catcher Kyle Kretchmer in the rest of the frame.

Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde had snagged two comebackers – one in the first and another in the second – to limit Motherload’s hits, yet they simply kept hitting the ball where the Gardeners ain’t. The Gardeners’ outfield kept the ball in front of them all night, with right center fielder Tristan Besse and right fielder Dan Gatta getting their fair share of balls hit to them. Besse had three catches and Gatta had two running grabs on the balls that flew in their range. Yet Motherload kept getting line drive hits into the short outfield all around – nothing the Gardeners could do prevent. Motherload kept hitting and added two more runs in the bottom of the third to take a 12-1 lead after three.

Down by 11, the Gardeners received a motivational speech from no one, including their manager, yet finally found some life in their bats, stationing to station themselves to put together a rally for once. With one out Edde started the momentum with a triple to right center. Then the Gardeners put forth four singles in a row to start heating up like Tom Gugliotta on the Washington Bullets in “NBA Jam.” First baseman Dave Watters singled in Edde, left center fielder Pat Reilly singled Watters to second, Ewbank singled in Watters, then second baseman Dane Dobrinich capped the four straight singles with one to left to score Reilly.

Now shit was going somewhere, and the Gardeners were doing it with simplicity - single after single.

Besse up next didn’t follow with a single though, breaking the streak. He laced a double instead, this one to right center to score Ewbank, move Dobrinich to third, and cut the score to 12-5. Huffman following then did fine with runners on base – different from his solo shot the inning before – by doubling to center to score Dobrinich and Besse and make it 12-7. The slugger Kretchmer then crushed a blast way over the right fielder’s head for an easy two-run home run, his fourth of the season, and 14th all time as a Gardener, putting him in a tie for fifth on the career home run leaderboard. What’s remarkable is that this is in only 22 games played. Every other Gardener in the top five has at least 38 games under his belt.

Kretchmer (3-for-3 with a homer, triple, single, and four RBIs), and Huffman (2-for-3, homer, double, three RBIs) provided a fair share of the Gardeners' pop for the evening.

Gatta and outfielder Matt Bou also added singles in the fourth inning.

With this eight-run onslaught, the Gardeners were back to Gardeners softball – loose, confident, and arousing every Marina girl within a one-mile radius. With a little more pep in their step, they took to the field defensively in the bottom of the fourth looking to slow Motherload’s hitting.

Yet the enemy kept plugging away, pushing three runs across to extend the lead to 15-9 despite three flyouts, one to left center fielder Ari Hersher, one to Ewbank, and one to Besse. The deficit was still close enough to surmount for the Gardeners however. However (yes, that’s back-to-back “however,” whatever that means), the Gardeners fell flat on grabbing their hitting momentum by the balls and saying “We’re not losing no matter what.” They scored no runs in the fifth, then allowed Motherload to score six more to essentially wipe out the eight-run comeback they had produced just 15 minutes before. Down 21-9 and with six outs left, they slapped three more runs across – singles by Dobrinich and Besse led to a two-out, two-RBI triple for Kretchmer then a hard-hit RBI single for Gatta. That cut it to 21-12 and the Gardeners finally got the shutout defensive inning they wanted all night, with Edde and the defense allowing no runs in the bottom half of the sixth. Huffman had an unassisted putout (to a much closer third base, not second, like last week), Watters at first caught an infield-fly popup, and Besse closed it out with a catch of a shot to the moon vertically, one that would’ve easily hit the roof at the Rays’ Tropicana Field, probably the most unique, beautiful, and most-attended stadium in all of MLB.

Yet after the shutout inning, the Gardeners couldn’t score in the seventh and walked off the field wondering if they’ll ever hoist the championship Chris Sabo Trophy, which looks like the Lombardi Trophy yet has a softball in place of a football, obviously.

The highlight defensively for the Gardeners came in the third inning when, with runners on first and second, batter Merton Hanks hit a single to Ewbank in left. Ewbank fired home, yet runner on second Eric Davis was already too close to scoring. That’s where the pitcher Edde, in one of his fundamental backing-up-every-throw plays, cut off the relay, then saw base runner from first Tim McDonald caught between second and third base. Edde chased McDonald back, tossed to Dobrinich at second, who then kept the pickle going by chasing McDonald towards third, then tossing to Huffman for the tag.

Edde also backed up an overthrow to third base to save a run earlier in the game.

What the Gardeners’ organization is not changing is Edde’s defensive tactics. Little things like backing up throws prove monumental in saving runs and keeping base runners on their toes. Little things like this add to victories. A couple more little things on defense and some adjustments on offense and the Gardeners will be a much tighter team come next season.

Also, apparently the writers at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) like the term “little things.” Fucking weirdos.

Watters reached fifth on the all-time Gardeners' single-season leaderboard for batting average (.795), while Edde (.735) and Besse (.730) also both hit over the .700 mark. Ewbank (.650) and Dobrinich (.647) hit solidly throughout the season as well. Ewbank finished second on the team in RBIs (21) and third in hits (26). Dobrinich finished the season with his career average sitting right at a cool .600.

Next season the Gardeners may look completely different once the culture change occurs. New attitudes, harder offseason workout regimens, more time in the batting cages, and possibly a new name are all plans of action for the organization this winter.

After Tuesday’s game and utilizing another avenue for the rebranding, the local Gardeners’ radio station 95.7 FM – since they need to fill the time during the A’s offseason even though no one listens to them (except Gardeners Watters and Marshall Kratter) – held a massive fan voting asking for suggestions for the new Gardeners’ name for the rebranding. Thousands upon thousands of callers called in. Thousands more suggestions came via regular mail. For your pleasure we’ll list the most voted-for names below:

Underachievers
One and Dones
UNLV Torero Aggie Gael Wildcat Husky ex-Ballplayers
Sacramento King Baby Crawlers
Salamandastron
Jacksonville Jaguars
Mean Girls
Kevin McAllisters
Pumpkin Spice Lattes
Carney Lansford
Old School
Carpenters
Masons
Tillners
Zackler Macklers
Donner Party
Bodies by Gatta
You Guys Make Me Totally Horny (multiple votes from crazed female fans)
R.I.P. Bushman
and
Homeless People Who Poop on the Bus

If anyone has any more suggestions, feel free to pipe in.

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Stat of the Week:

.364 vs. .603………The Savage Gardeners’ winning percentage in the playoffs (.364, 8-14 record), versus the regular season (.603, 73-48).

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Fall 2016 Season Stats – New Entries to the Gardeners’ Single-Season Top Ten Leaderboard (Through 15 Total Gardeners Seasons):

Average (AVG)
5th in Gardeners’ history – Dave Watters (.795)

On-Base Percentage (OBP)
10th – Dave Watters (.756)

Runs
1st (tie) – Mike Edde (24)

RBI
7th – Dave Watters (29)

Hits
1st – Dave Watters (31)
9th (tie) – Tristan Besse (27)

Singles
4th – Mike Edde (22)
8th (tie) – Dan Ewbank (19) and Dave Watters (19)
10th (tie) – Ari Hersher (18) and Tristan Besse (18)

Doubles
4th (tie) – Dave Watters (8) and Tristan Besse (8)

Triples
4th (tie) – Dan Ewbank (3) and Mike Edde (3)

Sacrifice Flies
2nd (tie) – David Huffman (3)

Runs Per Plate Appearance
3rd – Mike Edde (.67 – He ultimately scored 67%, or two of every three times he came to the plate)

Runs Created Per Plate Appearance
8th – Dave Watters (1.12 – He ultimately accounted for 1.12 runs each time he came to the plate: Runs Scored + RBIs per Plate Appearance)

USASSY has way too much time on its hands.

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11/10/2016

Facing a night-night doubleheader Tuesday evening at KKU Field, the Savage Gardeners understood the weight and ramifications of their situation as well as the disappointment they would feel if they fell short of winning either game. With a 3-3 record, just one win in either game guaranteed a spot in the vaunted Attracting the Ladies Division of Softball (ALDS) Playoffs. A victory in the first game against Leo’s would have very likely guaranteed them the #2 seed and a shot at the #1 seed. Yet after a debacle of a 26-8 loss, all that shit was thrown out the window. They then had to defeat the SF Seals in the second game to claim their ALDS spot.

Which they did with an absolute clubbing of the seals. They then left Fisherman’s Wharf and slaughtered the Seals 26-8 on the softball diamond, reversing the score from game one.

The two games couldn’t have been more opposite – the loss featured multiple fielding errors and pretty much a lack of any sort of rally in any inning. The second game win was pure quality Gardeners softball – timely hitting, major rallies, impeccable defense, and topless dancers doing tequila body shots after each Gardeners run (needless to say, the dancers were absolutely hammered after having to do 26 shots, one for each run). It worked out though, because all of the single Gardeners’ players took down two girls apiece then took them out to a seafood dinner and never called them back.

With the win in the nightcap, the Gardeners sneaked into the playoffs with a 4-4 record. Luckily, each team in the division this season has been beating each other up so the race for the cup is wide open, kind of like any wide receiver playing against Cal’s defense. Where – if you were a smart man – you’d place a bet on the over for any Cal game and be assured of a victory. Or maybe even put a four-team parlay down and watch OSU-Nebraska (62-3) hit the over, Alabama-LSU (10-0) hit the under, your favorite team Tulsa help hit the under against East Carolina (45-24), then watch Cal hit the over against Washington (66-27) while you’re crushing the $5 blackjack table at the Lakeside Inn in South Lake Tahoe and getting cocktails refilled constantly by the cocktail waitress because there’s 30 people total in the entire casino on a Saturday night.

Obviously, no Gardeners player would ever do that and none of that would ever happen unless you were the Most Interesting Man in the World.

Against Leo’s to start Tuesday’s matchups, the Gardeners were all out of sorts from the get-go. Traffic affected a couple players’ commutes to the game mainly because citizens were trying to get to the polls to vote, and since the ballots were each ten pages long with so many motherfuckin propositions, each voter was taking about half an hour to fill out his or her ballot. Add in the fact that the average American is a stupid idiot who does no research and there’s a clear recipe for ignorance, disaster, and, hence, traffic that caused a couple Gardeners players to rush to the game right before or at first pitch.

The home team Gardeners held Leo’s to a scoreless first inning on the legs of two catches by Tristan Besse in right center yet couldn’t pull the trigger in their half, putting up no runs as well. Leo’s scored one in the second, the Gardeners countered back with a two-RBI double by catcher Matt Bou, yet that was their offensive firepower for the first few innings. The Gardeners scored a run in the fourth on right fielder Dan Gatta’s RBI double to score Besse, yet heading into the bottom of the fifth they were looking at a monstrous 22-3 deficit.

Yes, Leo’s turned the jets on in innings three through five, scoring four, ten, and seven runs, respectively, to take a commanding lead through their at-bats in the fifth. The deflated Gardeners couldn’t do much to come back. They launched a quiet four-run rally in the bottom of the fifth on a leadoff solo shot by left center fielder Pat Reilly then a couple of singles, doubles, and a fielder’s choice among the next five batters, yet that was it for their offense. Left fielder Dan Ewbank had an RBI single in the seventh for another Gardeners run, yet other than that, the Gardeners’ bats were quite lackluster. They hit below .500 (16-for-34, .471) for the game, and entered the second game of the doubleheader on not too hot a streak and questioning their direction and purpose in life.

A new game meant a fresh start however. Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde – rested for the first game to allow him to go the distance in game two– easily got into his groove from the start of the nightcap. The game one rest also allowed him to work a couple hours more at his side job before showing up to the ballpark for game two.

Despite the four-run top of the first by the Seals, Edde had his stud infield defense behind him and locked into their comfortable positions. The infield truly is glorious to look at: Kyle Kretchmer at first base, David Huffman at third, and the Gold Glove middle infield duo of Marshall Kratter at shortstop and Dane Dobrinich at second base.

The infield got to work early, with Huffman snagging two grounders for force plays at second base – a throw to Dobrinich covering for one and an unassisted run-to-the-bag putout for another. Yes, that means that Huffman, playing third base, ran over to second base to get a putout. Granted, it was a ball hit in the hole that allowed Huffman’s momentum to carry him over to second, yet, regardless, it was the first unassisted putout at second base by a third baseman in baseball and softball history.

And speaking of history, that word easily defined the opponent Seals after their at-bats in the top of the first – they were history. Reilly batting cleanup started off the damage with a one-out, two-run double to put the Gardeners on the scoreboard. Ewbank behind him singled him in for the first of his four hits in the game, then Besse and Huffman followed later with two-out singles. Ewbank scored on Huffman’s single, which put him on first and Besse on third for the slugger Kretchmer.

Kretchmer wasn’t going to care what Seals pitcher Dana Stubblefield planned to throw him in his at-bat – he was going to crush the ball to the moon no matter what. Which he did as calmly as if he were ordering a cup of coffee at a diner, blasting a three-run home run to right center to break the 4-4 tie and give the Gardeners the lead for good at 7-4.

Kratter’s prowess at short led to two putouts for him in the second despite the Seals’ scoring two runs to cut it to 7-6. That was enough for the Gardeners though – time to start blowing the game open, like any 49ers opponent once they receive the opening kickoff. The bottom of the inning saw a leadoff walk by Gatta and singles by Bou and left center fielder Ari Hersher load the bases for Edde, who added to his pitching cause with a sacrifice fly to right to score Gatta easily from third. That brought up Watters with two runners on. Which he wanted to get rid of, so he smashed a three-run homer to left to wipe the bases clean and make the score 11-6. Besse added a double – his second of four hits in the game – to score Ewbank later in the inning, leading to a 12-6 Gardeners lead after two.

The Gardeners then made a defensive adjustment and trotted out Bou from the behind the plate to play right center, with Kretchmer selflessly moving to the catcher’s spot. The moved worked – Kretchmer caught three straight shutout innings from Edde, the Seals eked one run across in the sixth then only one more in the seventh as Kretchmer closed out the game and the victory for Edde. Kretchmer essentially had the greatest catching streak in Gardeners’ recent history – five innings caught, three shutout innings, a total of two runs scored.

In a word – remarkable.

The shutdown pitching by Edde, catching by Kretchmer, and obviously the entire defense behind Edde was locked in place like a mannequin challenge from inning three onward. Dobrinich and Kratter worked their magic effortlessly in the third and fourth inning, turning two double plays, with Watters at first catching the end of Kratter’s throws for the second out of each turn. Kratter added three more putouts throughout the game, ending the seventh with two easy plays – one shifted against a lefty on a play up the middle and another on an easy grounder to end the game. Huffman added two more groundout putouts. Combined, the stellar infield of Huffman, Kratter, and Dobrinich accounted for 13 infield putouts. Watters at first added an unassisted putout for 14 total outs (two-thirds) made by the Gold Glove infield.

Ewbank in left and Besse in right center had two flyout putouts. Reilly in left then left center added three, and Bou made two great plays for running catches late in the game, one in the sixth and the other in the seventh.

With the defense tuned in, it was simply cake eating time for the offense: mash the ball around, pad the stats, and sex the supermodels. With a 12-6 lead heading into the bottom of the fourth, the heart of the lineup did some major damage, starting with a leadoff single by Edde. Watters’ second of three doubles in the game moved Edde to third and Reilly singled him in. Ewbank doubled in Watters, Dobrinich singled in Reilly, and Besse singled in Ewbank, putting two runners on for Kretchmer to crush a high inside pitch to the opposite infield in right for his second three-run homer of the game. The first pitch against Kretchmer by Stubblefield was a low, short, ball one, leading Kretchmer to see that he wasn’t going to get any pitches over the plate in his at-bat. Yet that didn’t matter to him, shown in his crushing the high inside pitch 43 miles into the right field bleachers.

After the seven-run fourth extended the Gardeners’ lead to 19-6, the defense shut it down in the fifth, gave up one in the sixth, then rallied for seven more in the bottom half. Watters’ double led to a one-out RBI triple to center by Ewbank, who then coasted in easily on Dobrinich’s single behind him. Besse’s double put runners on second and third for Huffman to launch a deep sacrifice fly to right center that allowed Ewbank to score, giving Huffman an RBI.

Huffman then earned another RBI when Besse came hustling across the plate all the way from second. With the score now 23-7, the Gardeners had the game easily in hand, yet the bottom of the lineup wanted to get their two-out hacks in for some practice. Kretchmer’s double, Kratter’s RBI single, Gatta’s single, then Bou’s two-RBI double added three more for the Gardeners, pushing their run total to 26 for the evening. Sitting comfortably with a 26-7 lead, Edde limited the Seals to one run in the top of the seventh and the Gardeners were soon headed to the playoffs right as the locker room attendants were finishing sealing off the locker room with plastic for the champagne-popping going-to-the-playoffs celebration.

Besse (.735 season average) finished the doubleheader batting 6-for-8, as did Dobrinich (.645). Ewbank (.667) in game two scored all four times on top of his two singles, double, and triple. Watters' three doubles and a home run made it easy for him to score four times as well. His season average of .829 currently sits at second place all-time in Gardeners' single-season history; only his 2014 spring season average of .848 tops it.

Edde (.767) sits tied for eighth all-time.

With a team this deep and a defense this tight, the Gardeners represent the most formidable team in the four-team playoffs. Like we at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) noted last week, if the Cubs can win the championship after such a long drought (108 years), the Gardeners can do the same (15 seasons, or 105 seasons in dog years).

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Stat of the Week:

15………The Bash Brothers are at it again. Pat Reilly and Dave Watters have been in the lineup together for 15 regular season games. In EVERY SINGLE GAME, at least one of them has hit a home run. Reilly hit one in the first game Tuesday and Watters hit one in the second.

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11/04/2016

The Savage Gardeners’ second matchup against divisional rival Motherload ended in a way the Gardeners hadn’t experienced recently – defeat. The Tuesday night 16-15 loss at Steven Jackson Memorial Stadium slipped out of their hands in the fifth inning when Motherload erupted for eight runs and a 14-9 lead.

The defense and Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde had held the opponent relatively in check in the first four innings – and the sixth as well – yet the fifth inning proved to be their Achilles heel. With the Gardeners’ holding a 9-6 lead, the home team enemy soon jumped to a 14-9 lead over the Gardeners with the eight-run outburst. Your studly heroes climbed back in the top half of the sixth and seventh inning, yet ultimately fell one run short in the loss.

In the Gardeners’ last three games – all victories – they hadn’t given up more than four runs in any inning. Technically they did, when they gave up ten runs in the first inning of their week three matchup versus Motherload (which they came back from and won 27-21), yet in the 20 innings after that, defensively they hadn’t allowed more than four runs cross the plate in any inning. Add the first four innings of Tuesday’s matchup and the Gardeners went 24 straight innings without ceding more than four runs in an inning. That consistency had led to three wins.

The consistency can also be attributed to the lockdown defense this season’s team brings to the field. The middle infield duo of shortstop Marshall Kratter and second baseman Dane Dobrinich have played phenomenally with both players having way above-average defensive statistics of UZR Range Factor RZR Defensive Runs Saved at 18.738 pi-squared each, whatever that means. Add in the corner defense of Kyle Kretchmer, Dave Watters, and David Huffman at the first and third base positions and this infield is fucking locked down. They essentially would've mimicked the Chicago Cubs as they would’ve had starters at all four infield positions at the All-Star Game, which, similar to the Pro Bowl, will be played after the season in Hawaii. So that's something to look forward too.

You also throw in Edde’s pitching and now shit is going bananas, our minds are so blown open we can’t even fathom how unreal this team is defensively.

Edde also threw his second strikeout this season – a strike-three looking curveball to batter Harris Barton – and is slowing climbing on Nolan Ryan on the career strikeout leaderboard charts. He also added to his Greg Maddux-like Gold Glove ability with three comebacker putouts as well as catching a liner – all plays that are wasted outs for the offense yet key lockdown outs for the Gardeners. Through the first two innings Tuesday, he faced nine total batters – two hits, a walk, and six outs.

While we’re on the topic of Edde, we at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) can’t avoid the other side of Edde’s playing: his batting. As we noted last week, Edde had gotten on base 14 straight times (12 hits, two walks) without an out before a groundout in his final at-bat last game. Which only meant it was a prime opportunity to start a new streak.

Done.

He batted 5-for-5 against Motherload with five singles.* Thus, he has gotten on base in 19 of his last 20 plate appearances, and insane OBP of .950. He keeps it simple and doesn’t try too much, and thus he has success. He gets on base, plain and simple. Which is all that is needed at the plate.

His 5-for-5 effort also raised his season average to .815.

*[Side Note: We at USASSY determined to adjust downward and now count infield hits with overthrows to first base (with the runner moving to second) as singles instead of doubles. Thus, two of Edde’s hits that would’ve previously been recorded as doubles are now singles. Regardless, he got on base both times, which is all that matters. So people's slugging percentages won't be as high as they would be if these singles were scored as doubles like in the past, big whoop. It's not like anyone besides USASSY looks at or nerds out on stats anyway.]

Not to be outdone with a high batting average in the game, the first baseman Watters also batted 1.000 (4-for-4) for the night with a two-run homer, two-run double, two singles, and a sacrifice fly, ending with six RBIs for the game. With the effort, Watters raised his career batting average over the .700 line at a comfortable .701. He’s only hitting .889 (24-for-27) this season.

Which is three total outs. This season.

Watters has been hitting at such a torrid pace that we could fill an encyclopedia with his extraordinary numbers, so we’re only going to play just the tip and mention a few:

- Dating back to last season, he’s 31-for-his-last-34 (.912). He ended last season with a seven at-bat hitting streak.
- A Gardeners’ record 20 straight hits – seven to close out the summer season, 13 to start this season.
- Batting average above .700 in his last 180 plate appearances (approximately four seasons).
- Batting average above .800 in his last 55 plate appearances.
- Batting average above .900 in his last 11 plate appearances.
- Batting average of 1.000 in his last eight plate appearances.

Gardeners’ opponents are slowly taking note and we wouldn’t be surprised to see them start intentionally walking Watters, receiving similar treatment that Barry Bonds did in his heyday. A bases-loaded intentional walk with Watters at the plate even doesn’t seem out of the question now.

Right fielder Tristan Besse is also hitting well at the plate this season with a .731 average. Perennial average and OBP dominator left center fielder Ari Hersher is at .680 this season with a .704 OBP.

And even Huffman is finding his swing at the stadium that has had his name in the past. After going 0-for-his-last-7 at Steven Jackson Memorial Stadium, Huffman ripped off a 4-for-4 night with a triple, three singles, and two RBIs. Adjusting back to a season away from the Gardeners, Huffman raised his season average to the psychologically important .500 line, which belies his career .593 average.

Also adding pop at the plate was left fielder Dan Ewbank, who went 4-for-5 with a triple, double, and two singles. His extra-base hits both came at clutch times – his two-RBI triple in the sixth cutting the Gardeners’ deficit to 14-11 and his two-out RBI double in the seventh bringing the Gardeners within one at 16-15. He raised his season average to .643 in the process.

USASSY states all of these averages because they are all above average, no pun intended. In general, in slow-pitch softball, a player should bat for their career .500 or better at a minimum (on base half the time, duh). In the Gardeners’ division, a .500 average is like .238 in the major leagues.

As a disclaimer, these are only USASSY’s subjective opinions, yet they pretty much ring true. This is also because USASSY has been in existence for seven years and has nothing else to do but look at softball numbers all day, so all our employees get a general sense of what numbers are average, good, and phenomenal.

Anyhow, the Gardeners lost on Tuesday, yet they shouldn’t have. They took a 1-1 score into the second inning (a Watters RBI single to score Edde put the Gardeners on the board in the first), then scored two more in the top of the second to go up 3-1. Right center fielder/catcher Matt Bou sacrifice flied in Besse with one out and the other half of the catcher/right center fielder duo of Brett Hirsch singled in Kratter with two outs.

Edde pitched to four batters in the bottom of the second for an easy inning, Huffman at third making the second of his three groundout putouts for the night and Dobrinich at second and Bou in right center making catches for the other outs.

With a 3-1 lead, Edde singled to lead off the third, then raced all the way home on Watters’ mash of a home run to left center that made it 5-1. Huffman’s two-out RBI triple later added a third run.

Motherload crept back with four runs to cut it to 6-5 after three, yet the Gardeners kept putting together consistent run-scoring innings to keep their lead. In the top of the fourth and all with two outs, Hersher singled, Edde singled him to third, then Watters doubled them both in. Ewbank’s single to center scored Watters to push the Gardeners’ lead to four at 9-5. The enemy scored one back in the fourth yet a two-out catch by Hirsch in right center ended the rally with a runner on second.

Then the Gardeners put runners on second and third with one out in the top of the fifth, yet failed to score. This swapped the momentum completely to Motherload’s side. They took advantage of the situation – like the Gardeners’ manager takes advantage of a passed out drunk girl at the bar – and swamped across eight runs in their half to take a 14-9 advantage through five innings. Motherload scored four runs to take a 10-9 lead before Edde’s strikeout of Barton to make it two outs threatened to quell the rally. Yet Motherload scored four more runs with two outs to push their lead to five.

With one out in the sixth inning, and now down to their last five outs, the Gardeners attempted to make the most of them with key base hits. Singles by Edde and Watters put runners at the corners for Ewbank. Who then crushed a blast to left center for a triple and two easy RBIs. Huffman and Kratter later added two-out RBIs to cut it to 14-13. Motherload scored two in the bottom half to make it 16-13, yet the Gardeners didn’t give up in their final at-bats. One-out singles by Hersher and Edde allowed Watters to sacrifice fly in Hersher then Ewbank followed to double in Edde to make it 16-15. Yet that was as close as they could get, and the game ended one run short of a tie, which seems to be a popular theme in the NFL these days.

The Gardeners at the plate kept it almost even with ten outfield flyouts and eight groundouts. Motherload only flew out to the outfield five times while hitting into eight groundouts as well – three to Huffman and three to Edde, with Kratter and Dobrinich adding one apiece. Dobrinich also caught three popups, to, once again lead the team or share the lead in Gardeners’ defensive putouts for the fourth straight game. It’s no surprise though – the former St. Mary’s Gael ballplayer is cleaning up everything in sight.

The only things the Gardeners have left to clean up though is the loss column and stop losing games they should win. With a season-ending doubleheader coming up next week, the Gardeners plan to win both, take their momentum into the playoffs, and win their first championship in their last 15 seasons. And if seasons are listed in dog years, 15 seasons equates to 105 years without a championship. The Cubs were right there too at 108 years. Coincidence?

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Stat of the Week:

75%.........With Runners In Scoring Position (RISP), Dave Watters has an RBI 75% of the time. The team average is 66%.

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10/21/2016

The local San Francisco heroes Savage Gardeners are hitting their stride at the right time and in the right way. Tuesday’s 23-10 victory over archival The Legends proved it. After an inauspicious 0-2 start, the Gardeners have rolled off three straight wins to find themselves in a tie for first place in the vaunted CC Division.

“We done good. Car handle real good,” third baseman Dave Watters in his Wonder Bread baseball cap whispered into an ESPN reporter’s microphone in the locker room after the game. “Car. Handled real good.........I’m not sure what to do with my hands.”

What the Gardeners did with their hands – or, more accurately, the leather mitts on their hands – was remarkable. They had essentially no errors all night at KKU Field. They turned two double plays. Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde used his non-gloved arm – thus, his pitching arm – to toss his first strikeout of the season, a swinging curveball to batter Gary Plummer in the second inning. And the Gardeners didn’t even have to use their hands or gloves defensively with two outs in the sixth inning when baserunner Harry Boatswain coming from second decided to run straight into the batted ball headed up the middle, resulting in an out.

All of these defensive accomplishments shouldn’t go without notice and support the fact that the Gardeners are playing prime quality softball that is surely getting Marina girls all hot and bothered and shit. Playing error-free softball is huge – each error contributes to extra base runners and extra runs – two of the three facets of winning softball (#3 is momentum). As for double plays – the Gardeners have turned a whopping seven so far this season. It essentially points to the re-addition of shortstop Marshall Kratter as the cause for the uppage in double plays. Kratter gets the ball out of his hands and over to first faster than you can say, “Whiskey in a cornfield.” And the Gardeners have found the answer to the other middle infield spot with Dane Dobrinich playing at an insanely high level defensively. He’s already locked in a Gold Glove for the season at the position and seems to vacuum in every ball hit his way. And at the plate he’s hitting at a torrid pace with a .722 season batting average while hitting at above a .700 clip in his last 37 plate appearances. He also accurately pointed out postgame that throwing a strikeout in softball is like throwing 14 strikeouts in an MLB game. So Edde essentially threw a 14-strikeout complete game for the win.

Dobrinich started a 4-6-3 double play in the third inning, Kratter and Kyle Kretchmer at first base being the tail end of the trio. And with one out and a runner on third in the fifth, Edde snatched a comebacker, checked the runner Toi Cook at third, then flipped to Watters playing first. Watters made the putout, then fired to third baseman Matt Bou after Cook was deciding between running home or returning to third. Bou ran him down the line like he’s done successfully in the past and the Gardeners had easily completed their second double play of the night. Last time Bou chased a runner down the third base line he ended up making a diving tag and getting his uniform dirty. Thanks to offseason workouts that improved his 40-yard dash speed from 4.49 to 4.38, this time he didn’t have to dive and easily was able to put the tag on Cook.

Bou's play to close out the fifth inning was a huge momentum stopper for the Legends and a huge momentum booster for the Gardeners: in the top of the sixth the Gardeners turned it on for a seven-run inning and 22-10 lead.

Yet maybe that sixth inning outburst wasn’t really needed, as the Gardeners controlled the game from the onset; left center fielder Ari Hersher set the tone from the start by hustling to second for a double to lead off the game. After that, the Legends knew they were toast. Which was quite different from the last four matchups between the two teams – the Legends had won the last four outings and seemed to have the Gardeners’ number. Not Tuesday though, and not in the first inning. Nor any inning for that matter.

After Hersher’s leadoff double, Edde singled him to third, Edde’s tenth straight plate appearance getting on base (a 1.000 OBP for those doing the math at home). Watters then brought his at-the-time .889 season average to the plate and doubled to left to score Hersher. Score now 1-0, Gardeners. They never looked back. Except when Kirsten Dunst, Eliza Dushku, and Gabrielle Union brought it on and did a cheerleading routine behind home plate to try to get the Gardeners’ attention.

No luck – the Gardeners were too focused in on softball to care about any girls in skimpy dresses cheering and twirling in the air. And seeing the female combo of Dunst, Dushku, and Union working together was quite impressive. Apparently the civil rights movement is making progress. [Side note: Dushku postgame was seen by the paparazzi going home with right center fielder David Huffman.]

And maybe it was Huffman’s honorable giving himself up with a sacrifice fly after Watters’ double that sealed the deal with Dushku. Edde scored from third on the play, and later with two outs right fielder Tristan Besse singled home Watters to put the Gardeners up by a Josh Brown field goal, 3-0.

The Legends then came to the plate hungry.

Edde was hungrier on the mound though and pitched a shutout inning.

Kratter at shortstop caught a liner for the first out, Dobrinich caught a liner for the second, and Huffman closed it out with a running catch in right center.

Singles by Kratter and left fielder Dan Ewbank in the second inning put runners at the corners with two outs for Edde. And since Edde’s got a hot bat, he easily singled in Kratter for his eleventh straight plate appearance getting on base (1.000 OBP for those doing the math at home). His hitting streak extended to seven straight hits on the single (before those seven hits were two walks, and two singles before that – hence 11 straight getting on-base appearances).

The Legends scored two in the bottom half to cut it to 4-2, yet Edde got his strikeout in the inning while Kratter and Dobrinich each added groundout putouts.

Up two safeties to one, the Gardeners added two more safeties (four straight safeties, a record), with a one-out rally in the third. Dobrinich’s double and Besse’s single put themselves on third and first, respectively, for Kretchmer to single in Dobrinich. Kratter then swooped a triple to left center to score Besse and Kretchmer; he easily trotted home on Bou’s sacrifice fly following his triple.

Lifetime left center fielder Hersher then went behind the dish to catch Edde in the bottom of the third. And he called a good inning – the Legends scored only one run and the deadly trio of Dobrinich to Kratter to Kretchmer turned their aforementioned double play. One day Tinkers to Evers to Chance will be supplanted by Dobrinich to Kratter to Kretchmer in America's lexicon. Simply needs time to spread throughout society and hit trending status.

Hersher loved catching so much that he caught the sixth and seventh innings as well – a one-run sixth and shutout seventh inning. In his career (since USA Softball Statistics Yearly [USASSY] started stupidly keeping catcher stats), Hersher has caught four innings and the opponent has scored four total runs for a Catcher’s ERA (CERA) of 1.00, tops on the team. Among qualified players (minimum 10 innings caught) fellow Seyfarthian Matt Mason sits atop the team leaderboard with a CERA of 1.40 (20 innings, 28 runs). So maybe there’s something to being a lawyer and calling good games behind the plate. We’d ask Mason for his secret yet he’s unreachable in the middle of India or Indonesia or some distant country growing beards and doing peace shit or something.

[Side note: How badass is the “Game of Thrones”-esque name of Seyfarthian. Aryeh Hersher, Esquire of the Seyfarthian House, Lord of the Knights of the Leadoff.]

[Side note II: Writer nerd alert.]

Leading 8-3 after three innings, the Gardeners kept piling on runs and upping their averages. Lord Hersher displayed his Leadoff coat of arms and honorably represented his clan by singling to lead off the fourth. Edde followed by cranking an 0-2 pitch to right center for his eighth straight hit and twelfth straight plate appearance getting on base (1.000 OBP for those doing the math at home). Watters – whose season average at the time had dropped to a shitty .850 after a second inning flyout – added his second of three RBI singles for the evening (the other hit was an RBI double). Huffman’s fielder’s choice scored Edde from third, then Dobrinich tripled for the Gardeners’ third run of the inning with Huffman’s easily coasting across home plate. Besse’s double to right scored Dobrinich; he then scored from second on Kretchmer’s deep sacrifice fly to right center that put the Gardeners up 13-3.

Oh, and Besse? We forgot to mention – his double was his tenth straight hit. He added a single and another double later to push his hitting streak to twelve, where it currently stands.

The Legends scored four in the fourth to bring it to 13-7. The Gardeners turned around and scored two back in the fifth – one on a Watters single and the other on a Huffman single, both with two outs. Hersher and Edde had both singled earlier – also with two outs – to score the two runs. And that brought Edde’s streak to 13 straight plate appearances getting on base (1.000 OBP for those doing the math at home).

The enemy scored the two back in their half, yet the Edde-to-Watters-to-Bou double play mentioned above cut that shit short. And up 15-9, the Gardeners decided it was time to add insurance runs in the sixth............seven runs to be more specific. Kretchmer’s triple scored Besse (who led off the inning with a single for his eleventh straight hit), Kratter singled in Kretchmer, Bou singled, then with one out Hersher singled in Kratter from third.

This brought up the pitcher’s spot in the Gardeners’ batting order. Yet this wasn’t the time to pull a double switch and go to the bullpen.

Bumgarner Edde was going to hit.

Because he’s gotten on base in his last 13 plate appearances.

Make it 14 after his triple that scored Hersher. That’s a 1.000 OBP for those doing the math at home.

[As a sad note, to end this remarkable run, Edde barely got out on a grounder in the seventh, snapping his streak. Gives him an opportunity to start a new one now.]

Watters singled Edde in to make it 21-9, then later Besse with two outs doubled in Watters to extend his hitting streak to 12 straight hits.

Ewbank added an RBI single in the seventh to produce the Gardeners’ 23rd run.

Hersher called pitches behind the plate for innings six and seven, culminating in the shutout seventh inning that sent the Gardeners home victorious with the 23-10 win.

Each Gardener had an RBI in the game. Edde, Huffman, Besse, Kretchmer, and Kratter each had three; Watters had four.

“We just handled the game real good,” Watters added postgame as he kept grabbing the ESPN reporter’s microphone. “It felt like I was on a spaceship.”

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Stat of the Week:

.841 (37-for-44)………Combined on-base percentage (OBP) of Mike Edde (14-for-16), Dane Dobrinich (11-for-14), and Tristan Besse (12-for-14) in the Gardeners’ last three games, all wins.

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10/10/2016

With the USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) staff out this week, USASSY this week tests out its Automated Robot Writer (ARW). ARW essentially has a Mad Libs format and fills in the blanks with names and statistics from the game. Also, if you’ve ever played fantasy football on Yahoo!, this is similar to the recap you get when your team loses.

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The Savage Gardeners beat the [insert adjective] poopyfaced Leo’s Tuesday night at Lance Harbor Moscone Field by a score of 15-12. The game lasted [insert length of game] eight innings.

[Insert famous stud] Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde got the win on the mound. He also hit 4-for-4 at the plate and added a walk.

The score was tied 10-10 after the seven innings and then went into the extra innings. In the top of the eighth inning, Dane Dobrinich of the second base started a one-out rally with a double. Matt Bou singled him to the third base. Ari Hersher of the left center field then [insert stats here] threw seven touchdowns and kicked three field goals to finish with a passer rating of 120.4 and load the bases for Mike Edde.

After Ari Hersher of the left center field [insert same stats from previous sentence here] threw seven touchdowns and kicked three field goals to finish with a passer rating of 120.4 and load the bases for Mike Edde, Mike Edde scored the go-ahead RBI with a walk. Dane Dobrinich standing on the third base, not to be confused with the defensive side where he was located at the second base, scored the run on Mike Edde’s walk by crossing the home plate. This put the [insert adjective] sexy Gardeners ahead, ultimately for good, at 11-10.

David Watters then hit a home run and the team scored four runs on the play. According to the dictionary, this is what is called a grand slam in baseball. The [insert adjective] broad-chested Gardeners now had a five-run lead, looking to shut down the [insert adjective] stupid stupid stupid Leo’s team in the bottom half.

Winning 15-10, the Gardeners gave up two runs in the bottom of the eighth that cut it to 15-12. The Leo’s got base runners on the bases and the tying run was at the plate when the Gardeners shut it down and closed out the victory. Immediately afterward, [insert attractive female celebrity] Jessica Alba had sex with [insert attractive male Gardener] Phil Zackler.

Mike Edde, Tristan Besse, and Dane Dobrinich all batted 4-for-4 for the night. They are all batting over .700 for the season. To add more stats to jinx them, Mike Edde has gotten on base his last nine plate appearances (six hits, three walks). Similar OBP. for Dane Dobrinich (nine straight hits), while Besse is at seven straight hits.

The Gardeners finally scored runs in the first inning, having scored six runs combined in the 12 first innings of their last 12 games.

That sentence had a lot of numbers and takes a second to understand. So, what actually does that sentence mean ARW? It means that in their past 12 games, the Gardeners had scored a combined total of six runs in the first inning. It also means that scoring early is a weakness the Gardeners must recognize and improve upon if they want to celebrate more victories and go to Chuck E. Cheese’s afterward for [insert junk food] pizza, [insert dessert] ice cream sundaes, and [insert other Chuck E. Cheese activity] grow a gross mustache and creep on little children in the ball pit.

In Tuesday’s first inning, left fielder Dan Ewbank doubled in Mike Edde and David Huffman doubled in David Watters and Dan Ewbank. A two-out RBI single by right fielder Tristan Besse scored David Huffman for the fourth run of the starting inning.

The team scored [insert shitty number here] zero runs in the second inning and entered the third inning losing, 6-4. Mike Edde’s leadoff triple to right field and David Watters’ double to left field scored Mike Edde, and David Huffman’s sacrifice fly scored David Watters to tie the score at 6-6.

A two-run third and one-run fourth put the Leo’s ahead of the Gardeners 9-6 going into the fifth, where the Gardeners tied it back up like a [insert noun] hamster in a [insert noun] penis pump. Mike Edde’s leadoff single-bag hit and David Watters’ single-bag hit put base runners at the corner bags for Dan Ewbank to add an RBI with a sacrifice fly that scored Mike Edde. Three straight singles by David Huffman, Kyle Kretchmer, and Tristan Besse scored two runs to tie it at 9-9. The [insert adjective] neon pink enemy Leo’s, who are [insert derogatory name] whores and like to put big black swinging [insert plural noun] tabletops in their mouths, added another run in the bottom half of the fifth inning to take a 10-9 lead yet Mike Edde’s RBI single in the top of the sixth inning evened it again at ten-apiece. Mike Edde then shut down Leo’s bats with no-run sixth and seventh innings, leading into the eighth inning and his producing the go-ahead run followed by David Watters’ heroics. David Watters was then given the key to the city of [insert Iraq city that will probably get blown up] Fallujah by mayor [insert famous person] Miley Cyrus.

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Stat of the Week:

.800………David Watters’ batting average in his last 40 at-bats (32-for-40). Also Dane Dobrinich’s batting average in his last 25 at-bats (20-for-25).

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9/28/2016

Tuesday’s Week Three game at Steven Jackson Memorial Field for the Savage Gardeners looked to be a repeat of their performance in their last 12 games (one win, 11 losses). All of the standard issues arose early:

#1 The opponent had a monster inning
#2 The Gardeners gave up a lot of runs early
#3 The Gardeners didn’t score a run in the first inning
#4 The Gardeners didn’t score a run in the second inning

All of these contributed to a predicted easy defeat, especially on the in-game betting line in Las Vegas that had Motherload’s odds of winning at -7500 and the Gardeners’ odds of winning at +7000. In truth a prime opportunity to bet on the currently losing better team to come back and win, similar to a highly profitable March Madness in-game betting strategy utilized by the sharpest bettor (rumored to be a Sacramento-raised UCLA grad) this side of Jamestown.

The Gardeners’ opponent Motherload had a ten-run first inning (#1 above), were (#2) leading 13-0 after two innings, and the Gardeners put up a zero-spot in the first (#3) and second (#4) innings. In classic recent Gardeners’ form, this was already headed towards disaster. And despite three putouts in the field by second baseman Dane Dobrinich – Tuesday’s Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game – on grounders in the second inning, the Gardeners still couldn’t get the bats moving. In the first two innings, batters one through seven went 1-for-6 with a walk. A hard lineout-turned-double-play hit by Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde practically delivered the message to the Gardeners that maybe this wasn’t to be their night. Edde’s laser shot up the middle was somehow snagged by Motherload pitcher Jesse Sapolu, who caught everyone by surprise, even himself, when he caught the ball. He was then able to double the runner off first. After this, the Gardeners produced a sole hit by catcher Dave Watters yet went down easily through the remaining four through seven batters.

We at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) only point this out because after the first two innings, batters one through seven turned it around and hit 19-for-25 (.760) for the rest of the game. Leadoff batter and left center fielder Ari Hersher went 5-for-his-next-5 after a first inning walk, scoring four times. Edde in the two spot had an OBP of 1.000 with two RBI singles and two wise walks he took with the slugger Watters behind him. Both walks led to bases loaded scenarios for Watters. Both scenarios resulted in two-RBI plays by Watters, the first two runs scored on a single and the other two scored on a sacrifice fly with Hersher’s racing in from second for the second of the two sac-fly runs. Thus, this key strategery manufactured runs for Edde, who finished the game on the mound with the win.

How about the bottom third of the lineup in shortstop Marshall Kratter, third baseman Dan Gatta, and Dobrinich? They produced even better stats, hitting 12-for-15 (.800) collectively for the night. All three of Gatta's hits produced RBIs; Kratter scored all five times he reached base.

Put the full lineup together and after the first two innings the Gardeners batted 31-for-40 (.775). The 27-21 football score victory for the Gardeners was called with two outs in the bottom of the sixth with Edde at the plate and Dobrinich and Hersher on base. Fearing a three-run jack by Edde over the right-center fence, umpire Ed Hochuli called the game final when the up-til-then-undefeated Motherload team pled for mercy.

Dobrinich was standing on second base when the game was called after getting his fifth hit of the night. The game’s MVP had four RBIs, four runs, three two-out hits, and six groundout putouts at second base. He added a catch of a liner in the fourth and a popup in the fifth, making it eight putouts. Add the catch of a force at second from Kratter and Dobrinich participated in nine of the 18 defensive outs for the evening, 50% of the game’s outs. As shown by his dirt-covered uniform following the game, after diving for ball after ball at second, Dobrinich was essentially everywhere. On top of his softball prowess, over the weekend he was also the top match for girls on Bumble.

Dobrinich’s middle infield mate Kratter added five assists at the shortstop position.

After going down 13-0 after two innings, the Gardeners and their manager started having doubts about the team and their season. Maybe they’d go defeated this year. Maybe they just weren’t good. Maybe their manager flat out sucks. Regardless, a three-up, three-down inning pitched by Edde led to two flyouts to Hersher in left center and a groundout to Dobrinich in the top of the third. The Gardeners were stopping the momentum flow, if only in small pieces.

Yet they soon turned that momentum flow onto their side at the plate, and it started building hard, like blood in the groin upon thinking of images of Miss Davis getting a ten on stage in “Varsity Blues.” Kratter led off the bottom of the third with a simple single to left. Yet with his 4.29 40-speed, he cranked up the wheels and turned the single into a double.

“Okay, a bit of a spark,” the Gardeners were collectively thinking. “Let’s see what happens next.”

Gatta then doubled in Kratter and the Gardeners were on the board! Only 13-1 now! At least they wouldn’t be skunked and would have to run around the field naked after the game.

“Okay, so we’ve got two sparks now,” came the collective thoughts. “Maybe something is building.”

Dobrinich added the third straight double with a liner to left center to bring Gatta in and cut it to 13-2.

Then all shit broke loose. Hersher singled Dobrinich to third, then the following sequence happened:

Runners on…
1st & 3rd: Edde RBI single (score now 13-3)
1st & 3rd: Watters RBI single (13-4)
1st & 3rd: Dan Ewbank RBI single (13-5)
1st & 2nd: David Huffman hard lineout to right. Only one out though.
1st & 2nd: Kyle Kretchmer RBI single (13-6)
1st & 3rd: Tristan Besse sacrifice fly (13-7). Two outs, yet seven runs across.
1st: Kratter single
1st & 2nd: Gatta RBI single (13-8)
1st & 2nd: Dobrinich RBI single (13-9)
1st & 2nd: Hersher RBI single (13-10)
1st & 3rd: Edde RBI single (13-11)
1st & 3rd: Watters RBI single (13-12)
1st & 3rd: Ewbank two-RBI double (14-13, Gardeners lead)

If that’s not the perfect example of station-to-station, clutch hitting, then goddammit we don’t know what is and we’ll finally admit that Grizzly Adams had a beard. After scoring seven runs, the Gardeners scored seven MORE runs with two outs, singling their way to a 14-13 lead. Okay there was Ewbank’s double, yet in the inning there were 11 singles on top of the four doubles. Extreme power wasn’t needed – small ball did the trick.

Motherload tied it back up in the top of the fourth yet Gatta and Dobrinich snared liners for outs one and two, then Dobrinich added one of his six groundout putouts for the final out of the inning.

So Motherload had tried to come back. Yet the damage done by the Gardeners was irreparable – they were in complete mothafuckin’ control now.

The bottom of the fourth saw Besse rope a one-out double and Kratter single him in for the ultimate go-ahead run. Later with two outs, Dobrinich and Hersher both added their third hits for the night (both finished 5-for-5 with four RBIs and four runs apiece, a great turnover of the lineup combo). With two outs and runners on first and second, Edde walked to allow Watters to do the RBI damage, which he easily did with a slash to left that scored Dobrinich and Hersher.

An 18-14 lead got cut to 18-17 after Motherload’s top of the fifth, yet the Gardeners weren’t letting up at the plate in their half. A one-out double by Kretchmer and single by Besse put runners at the corners, where a mini-version of the third inning above occurred:

Runners on…
1st & 3rd: Kratter RBI single (19-17)
1st & 2nd: Gatta RBI single (20-17)
1st & 2nd: Dobrinich RBI single (21-17)
1st & 2nd: Hersher RBI single (22-17)
1st & 2nd: Edde walk
Bases loaded: Watters sacrifice fly to left. Dobrinich scores from third (23-17). Hersher scores from second (24-17). Cause he’s fast.

Ewbank cleaned in the Gardeners’ seventh run of the inning with a single to left for his fourth RBI to bring home Edde (25-17).

Watters’ 4-for-4 night also kept his batting average at 1.000 (13-for-13) for the season.

With an eight-run cushion, the Gardeners gave Motherload some hope and let them score four runs. Yet after Motherload put four runs across and with a runner on first, batter Klaus Wilmsmeyer unwisely decided to hit the ball to Dobrinich at second. With great speed Dobrinich tossed to Kratter covering second, who then fired to Kretchmer at first for the 4-6-3 rally-killing double play, the play that earned the Love Actually Defensive Play of the Game. A groundout next by batter Bart Oates to Kratter easily ended the inning.

Up 25-21 and with the clock ticking, the Gardeners added two more with Dobrinich and Hersher RBI singles whence with Edde next at the plate, Hochuli called the game.

The game brought the Gardeners their second win in their last 13 games, and their first since July 12th, or roughly the last time the Giants won a series. The Giants have a winning record though, as do most of the teams the Gardeners’ players root for – Indians (Gatta), Red Sox (Huffman, Besse), Tigers (Watters’ hat), Nationals (Watters’ other hat), Cubs (Donner), Dodgers (ex-Gardener Snow), Marlins (Kretchmer’s buddy), Pirates (Hersher’s Bobby Bonilla jersey) and Rangers (Kratter always wanted to be a park ranger). It’s evident then that these teams’ winning ways will carry over to the Gardeners. And the Gardeners’ own fans can now be secure that they’ll be rooting for a winning team from here on out, cause this Gardeners ship ain’t stopping sailing.

Yet we all know the formula: even year, be the wild card team, bring in Bumgarner in relief, win World Series. Pretty simple. And with the Gardeners’ fall season rolling into early November at the same time as the World Series, San Francisco could see two local champions crowned on the same night.

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Stat of the Week:

.827 (24-for-29)………Gardeners’ team batting average Tuesday night with runners in scoring position (RISP). The batted .471 (8-for-17) otherwise.

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9/21/2016

The Savage Gardeners still can’t figure out a way to win. They finally scored more than zero runs in an inning since 2013, yet it still wasn’t enough in the 22-19 loss to the SF Seals Tuesday night at KKU Field.

With Garden Hoe Margot Edde on hand as the evening turned from sunny to cold realrealfast, the Gardeners followed the weather pattern by doing the same – looking warm and optimistic as the game started, then turning cold immediately with the bats by scoring zero runs in the first inning and four runs through four innings.

The Gardeners in the recent past have been very successful at starting off cold and doing nothing in the first inning. In their last ten games, they have scored six runs TOTAL in the first inning. It’s like they need pre-game batting practice to warm the bats up so they’re finally prepared for the first inning, rather than going in cold and not warming up until later in the ballgame (if ever, considering their less than stellar record under current management in their last few seasons). Unfortunately, because their home ballpark has the same problems as the Oakland Coliseum, the sewage everywhere seeped into the underground batting cages and flooded everything. Thus, the Gardeners have no opportunity to get pre-game hacks in.

Despite the loss, the Gardeners did have multiple highlights:

- Dave Watters batted 5-for-5
- Dan Ewbank batted 5-for-5
- Marshall Kratter batted 5-for-5
- The Gardeners turned three double plays defensively
- Ari Hersher went 4-for-5 in his first game back this season
- Angelina Jolie is now single
- Because she’s now single, Jolie will likely be cruising to the Bus Stop more frequently
- Kyle Kretchmer hit a bomb

Statistically, one would look at this and guesstimate that the Gardeners won their game. Yet they didn’t. And they’re 0-2 now. They rallied twice, in the sixth and seventh innings, yet the slow start – four runs scored through four innings – ultimately proved their downfall.

After they scored zero runs in the top of the first, the Gardeners gave up six runs in the bottom half yet Matt Bou playing second ended the rally with a third-out putout on a grounder. He added a single in the following inning at the plate.

Before Bou’s single in the top of the second, the Gardeners’ left fielder Ewbank had mashed a leadoff triple over the outfielders’ heads in left center. The shortstop Kratter then squeeze played him in with a bunt to the pitcher. Kratter made it safe to first on the play.

Despite the hot start to the inning and Bou’s later single, the Gardeners didn’t score any more runs in the inning then gave up three in the bottom of the inning to go down 9-1 after two. Which seems to be a theme in the most recent Gardeners’ seasons – create a deficit early to make it hard for themselves. In fact, in the Gardeners’ last 68 innings, the Gardeners have held a lead in..............................wait for it..............................a whopping five of the 68 innings.

They gained those three runs back in the third when Hersher – who may actually be a secret player and spy for the Gardeners’ rival The Legends – led off with a single, tagged to second on Kretchmer’s fly ball to right center, then scored on Watters’ single to left, the second of Watters’ five hits for the night. With his 5-for-5 effort, Watters kept his average at 1.000 (9-for-9) for the season. At this pace, he is projected to bat only 1.000 for the season.

The first of Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde’s easy singles to center moved Watters to second. Watters and Edde then tagged up a base next on right fielder Tristan Besse’s fly ball to center. This heads-up base running by the duo proved key, as, with runners now on second and third, Ewbank could easily single them both in, which he did with a liner to left field. Ewbank’s 5-for-5 output included four singles and his triple, helping him maintain his hot bat to start the season with an .889 average (8-for-9).

With a pie slice of momentum in their tummies and on their side, the Gardeners stepped it up defensively in the bottom of the third. After batter Lee Woodall flied out to Ewbank in left for the first out, the Seals put runners on first and second with one out. Batter Marquez Pope then nailed a one hopper to Kretchmer at first. Kretchmer quickly spun and fired to Kratter covering second. Kratter made the force then fired back to first base, even though Kretchmer was still deep behind the bag because of the location of the grounder.

Not a problem though – Edde had come over from the mound to cover first, catching Kratter’s throw to finish the beautiful 3-6-1 double play. A classic PFP. Which apparently means Pitcher’s Fielding Practice, which we at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) didn’t know. Yet apparently it’s a common term, so maybe we should stop living under a rock. The 3-6-1 double play clearly earned the KKK (Kretchmer/Kratter/K for Edde since he’s a pitcher) Defensive Play of the Game Award.

Nevertheless, for some reason there was public outrage about the name of the award that we at USASSY still are oblivious about. The company sponsoring the award – due to public pressure – soon decided to change the name of the award, so they changed it from the KKK Award to the Concrete is the Color Gray Defensive Play of the Game Award to be as neutral and boring as possible. However, the spark had already been lit as the South is now rising again.

After the inning-ending double play, a lone single by catcher/second baseman Dane Dobrinich was all the Gardeners could muster in the fourth inning and they turned it over to their opponent to score two in their half to take an 11-4 lead. This inning ended with another double play though – a Dobrinich-to-Kratter-to-Kretchmer 4-6-3 beauty for the Gardeners’ second of the game and fourth of the season. They added a fifth double play in the sixth inning, for an outstanding five double plays so far this season. Probably no surprise either that Kratter at shortstop has participated in four of them. So maybe he’s good.

Matching their opponent again, the Gardeners scored two back in the top of the fifth with Edde’s singling in Watters from third after Watters had tripled. Kratter added the other RBI with a single to score Edde later with two outs.

After closing the gap to 11-6, the Gardeners re-opened it again by allowing the Seals to score five runs to take a ten-run 16-6 lead after five innings.

With six outs left to stage a comeback, the Gardeners on paper seemed out of it yet on the field stayed in it. A one-out rally did the trick, starting with back-to-back singles to left by Bou and Dobrinich. Hersher up next slapped a single to right to score Bou, bringing Kretchmer up with two on and one out.

After taking a first strike, Kretchmer then swung at a high inside pitch and absolutely demolished it over the right fielder’s head for a three-run homer. He was due – he hadn’t hit one in his last seven plate appearances, which is essentially a drought for him. And it was a much needed hit at that, as it lit up the Gardeners’ asses and gave them a jolt of life. Watters followed with a double, then with two outs Besse singled him in, Ewbank singled Besse to second, then Kratter knocked a triple to left to bring in Besse and Ewbank and cut the score to 16-13.

Thus, with one out down (five outs left), the Gardeners rallied for four runs, then with two outs scored three more. Two solid rallies with the pressure rising as the number of outs increased.

Now down only a Mike Cofer field goal, the Gardeners regressed to their old habits and gave the opponents another standout inning; the Seals scored six more runs to push the lead to 22-13. Dobrinich behind the plate got some good action during the inning though – the first on a bases loaded grounder to Kretchmer that Kretchmer scooped, ran to touch first, then fired home to Dobrinich for him to tag out a sliding Derrick Deese for a 3-2 double play. Dobrinich’s second tag-out ended the inning when, after a single to right center, base runner Derek Loville coming from second base tested the Gardeners’ relay team. Donner fielded the ball in right center, relayed to Kratter at short, who relayed a strike way ahead of Loville to Dobrinich at the plate for the final out of the inning.

With another Kratter-induced stellar defensive play to end the inning (he had ended two other innings with the aforementioned double plays), the Gardeners finally decided to pay their respects to his determination and efforts to bring the Gardeners closer to victory by rallying again in Kratter's honor.

In the top of the seventh, third baseman Dan Gatta took the lead by singling to lead off the inning. Yet the Gardeners waited until there were two outs to do the damage. Hersher slapped a two-run homer to deep right to bring the score to 22-15. Kretchmer, Watters, and Edde all followed with two-out singles to score another (Kretchmer on Edde’s hit), then Besse tripled to right center to score the other two and cut it to 22-18. Ewbank singled Besse in to make it 22-19, yet the rally stalled after that and the Gardeners were once again walking off the field in defeat.

Their next two games are against new opponents in the division, so the Gardeners have no clue what to expect. Are these new teams good? Better than the Gardeners? Worse? Or is the reality that the Gardeners are actually the worst team? Maybe that is the case. As they say in poker, if you can’t spot the sucker, it’s you. Cause maybe the Gardeners (or, actually, we at USASSY) are blind to the fact that maybe their management sucks and USASSY’s hopes are way way too high for the Gardeners. So we at USASSY will set low expectations. Let’s wish for the Gardeners to score three runs next game. That’ll be our new perspective.

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Stat of the Week:

1…………Gardeners win in their last 12 games

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9/17/2016

Nobody goes undefeated in softball, everyone knows that. Plato said that. And whatever Plato said was smart, because he was from a long time ago, and people who said things a long time ago just seem smarter. With a grueling 162-game regular season (minus 154 games) the chances of a team’s winning every single game are essentially negative-zero percent. In short – it’s not happening.

The Savage Gardeners understood this heading into the fall season and Tuesday’s season opener against The Legends at KKU Field. And so they took the pressure off themselves.

“We know by the law of probability that we’re going to have a loss sometime this season,” left center fielder David Huffman quoted after the game as he took a break from snapping photos with the thousands of female fans clamoring for his attention and a chance at a selfie with the five-tool player. “So we got it out of the way. Now all the other teams have to worry about losses. We’re done with ours.”

The 19-10 loss to the reigning champion Legends yes was a loss, yet it looks worse on the scoreboard than it was in reality. After six innings, the score was 11-10, Gardeners down one; the Legends erupted for an eight-run seventh inning that put the game away.

“We’ll take a couple positives from the game,” first baseman Dave Watters stated as he swapped ice packs on his groin after doing the splits multiple times on throws to first during the game. “And with Marsh [shortstop Marshall Kratter] back this season we should be very tight defensively.”

Kratter proved his worth too at the shortstop position, displaying his Gold Glove-worthy skills and awareness all night throughout the defensive battle. He participated in two double plays, getting the ball out of his glove at second with rapid efficiency on turning two in the second and third inning. His most aware play however happened in the fourth with no outs and runners on first and second. Batter Elvis Grbac lined a sharp hopper that deflected off third baseman Dan Gatta’s glove and bounced into short left field. Yet Kratter chased it down in the hole and fired back to Gatta who in a heads-up play went back to cover third to get the force.

Kratter also made a putout in the first and flipped one to second baseman Phil Zackler in the third for a force play right before Zackler turned it back to Kratter by starting a clean 4-6-3 double play to end the inning.

At this point – the middle of the third inning – the Gardeners had scored zero runs. Yet defensively they had backed up Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde in only ceding two runs to their opponent through three innings. Edde’s battery mate behind the plate, Matt Bou, then decided to get the Gardeners rolling towards the scoreboard. His leadoff single and Huffman’s single put them both on first and second for right fielder Tristan Besse later in the inning with two outs. Besse then cranked the Gardeners’ first run across the plate with an easy single to right center that scored Bou from second. The slugger Watters up next singled to left to score Huffman and the Gardeners had soon tied it up at 2-2.

The Legends bounced back for three runs in the top of the fourth yet were stifled by Kratter’s deep in-the-hole heads-up play for the second out and Gatta’s scoop of a grounder and putout for the first out. Gatta at third got plenty of action as well – in the field, not just from the action of lustful looks from the ladies when he’s out at the bars – by making four groundout putouts for the evening and almost a fifth on a down-the-line deep across-the-diamond throw that batter Dexter Carter beat by just a step.

Right center fielder Alan Donner caught a deep fly ball from batter William Floyd for the third out of the fourth inning, then quickly picked up his favorite bat from the dugout and crushed a double to left to lead off the Gardeners’ half. His roommate and now-in-a-committed-relationship-to-the-disappointment-of-single-girls-everywhere Zackler then sacrificed Donner over to third with a half sac-fly to right (called a “half” sac-fly because it didn’t score a runner yet still moved a base runner forward – also another stupid term that we at USA Softball Statistics Yearly [USASSY] created). With Donner now on third, left fielder Dan Ewbank singled him in to cut the deficit to 5-3.

A fielder’s choice by Bou and a single by Edde then put two runners on for Huffman to drop a well-placed triple immediately between the right and right center fielders to allow Bou and Edde to score, tying the game at 5-5. This hit was a key hit for the evening, as, being a two-out RBI hit, it boosted the Gardeners’ hopes and put them on even ground – a tied game – with three innings to play. In fact, the Gardeners scored eight of their ten runs Tuesday with two outs, a testament to the mental toughness training they went through in the offseason under former Marine and St. Louis Rams’ defensive line coach Mike Waufle’s leadership the Gardeners learned about from his "Hard Knocks" appearances.

Gatta made two of his four putouts in the fifth despite the Legends’ scoring three runs in the inning to take an 8-5 lead. The Gardeners put up an o-fer in their half, then gave up three more runs in the sixth to go down 11-5 with six outs left in their at-bats.

Yet the sixth inning occurred for the sole reason of showing that the Gardeners can – and will – rally and hit the ball this season. Despite leadoff batter Zackler’s drag bunt attempt that Legends’ pitcher Tyronne Drakeford made a great play on for the first out, the Gardeners didn’t let having one out affect them. Ewbank singled to left, Bou followed with an infield single, then Edde slapped a liner into right center to score Ewbank. Huffman’s laser up next somehow found the second baseman’s glove – even he was flabbergasted at how in the hell he caught the sizzler – yet with two outs now the Gardeners reached inside their Katniss Everdeen hearts and fought bravely like the girl on fire. Kratter doubled to center, scoring Bou and allowing Edde to show off his new sliding skills when he jumped/dove/flipped/slid into third base to avoid a tag on the play.

With runners in the sexy scoring position of second and third, Besse – fresh off the Patriots’ predictable victory over the Cardinals Sunday – ripped a shot down the first base line that allowed Edde and Kratter to score easily and put him on second with a stand-up double. This brought the score to 11-9 where Watters added one more with his fourth hit of the night, a double to left that pushed Besse across.

Having closed the deficit to 11-10, the Gardeners took the field in the top of the seventh confident and prepared to shut down the Legends’ offense to give themselves an easy bottom half of the inning to win it.

Unfortunately, karma or fate or Allah or the devil or whoever the fuck decided it wasn’t the Gardeners’ night then put some juice in the Legends’ bats. They poked around eight runs for the inning, effectively deflating the Gardeners and making lots of little kids in the stands cry because they likely weren’t going to see their heroes the Gardeners win that evening then spend the night partying in strippy clubs doing shots and pills and coke and numerous other mind-altering drugs they have easy access to because they’re professional athletes and hot groupies want to have sex with them at every opportunity especially during their epic victory parties at the Gold Club or that time they flew the team plane to Las Vegas for a night and ended up partying with Carrot Top and Jon Voight and William Hung and Eugene Levy (yes, it was a random crew) and deejaying with Calvin Harris at XS into the wee hours of the morning while their groupies took turns chasing them down in the bathroom just for a chance to get a sliver of some Gardener ass.

That just got kind of weird.

Accurate though.

Anyhow, despite Zackler’s totally hard-hit line drive double in the seventh and Ewbank’s third single of the night, the Gardeners couldn’t put any runs across and walked off the field looking at the 19-10 scoreboard with feelings of regret yet determination to turn things around for the rest of the season.

The Gardeners flew out to left field for almost one-third of their outs (six times) while also leaving nine runners on base. USASSY only points out these facts because the flyouts to left field advanced a total of zero runners while the nine runners left on base implies that the Gardeners missed opportunities to score base runners with two outs.

Thus, these are two areas they discussed in their team meeting and that the Gardeners plan on working on for future games. Since MLB puts a limit on practice hours and film room time, the Gardeners will have to spend more time improving their games on their own, be it doing 500lb Body-By-Gatta squats like Gatta does, P90X-ing like Zackler does to keep in shape, taking 500 swings nightly in front of the mirror like Watters does, practicing blackjack card-counting for the next South Lake trip like Kratter does, or mentally cleansing by meditating nightly for two hours in a hot aromatic soapy bathtub like Donner does. Regardless of their different approaches to reaching ultimate success as Gardeners and claiming their first ever championship in their 14-season history (this is the 15th), the players are taking the right steps towards fulfilling that dream. And when that dream gets fulfilled – when the Gardeners win that first championship – shit’s gonna get real fucking crazy with muni buses burning, strippy clubs blowing up, and other stupid-ass shit happening.

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Stat of the Week:

.511/.623/.692………Mike Edde’s career batting average with no outs (.511), one out (.623), and two outs (.692). He and Watters (.684/.688/.709) are the only players who have progressively better averages the more outs there are.

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8/03/2016

After Tuesday night’s game had long ended, TMZ spotted a couple Savage Gardeners out at the local bar, downing drinks and commiserating their lost season. Yet despite no females’ giving them attention thanks to their loser 1-7 final record, the players seemed upbeat and optimistic.

“We’re pouring out the summer season and getting ready for the fall,” right fielder Tristan Besse stated as he leaned against the bar sipping his drink (which was not beer, as he smartly generally refrains from the poison due to its toxic effects and high-carb content, keeping his body the temple he demands of it). “We ended relatively strong, and we’re pumped for the fall to start. We’re ready to Ball So Hard, stop Flatlining, be Legends, and club some SF Seals for fun. The Vegas betting line on our winning the championship is +7000? I’d Tap That line then spend the winnings for a team party crushing the sushi bar at Ace Wasabi.”

Besse backed up his talk with his play during the 14-10 loss to the Legends at KKU Field, where he went 3-for-4 with a three-run homer, two singles, and five RBIs. The homer and one of the RBI singles also both came with two outs. In the field he caught the lion’s share of balls – five flyouts in right field, each of them not so easy in the Tuesday night Marina air.

The football score 14-10 loss was the Gardeners’ second best game of the year in their disastrous .125 winning percentage season (their lone win, of course, was their best game). The team stuck together like Brangelina, played solid defense like the ’85 Chicago Bears (side note: that “30-for-30” is pretty interesting), and kept the bats active like Phil Zackler’s message feed in his Bumble account. Zackler helped contribute to the active-ness too with a 2-for-3 effort with a walk as well, keeping his on-base-percentage (OBP) for the season above the .500 softball Mendoza Line.

After the first three innings playing second base, Zackler caught battery-mate Dane Dobrinich in innings four through six, allowing only three runs total – for a Catcher’s ERA (CERA) of 1.00, or one run per inning – with a shutout inning in the fifth.

Dobrinich in his best outing also threw a shutout inning in the second, the first of two three-up, three-down innings in the game (the fifth inning was the other). And, despite the ten-run outburst in the bottom of the first by the Legends, Dobrinich only gave up four runs in the final five innings. At the plate Dobrinich went 4-for-4 in the cleanup spot with a key two-out, two-RBI single in the sixth that brought the Gardeners within four at the time at 13-9.

With every Gardener finally on time for first pitch for the first time this season, the players entered the game warmed up, loose, and carrying the right winning mentality. They proved this by matching their season total for runs in the first inning by putting up three in the frame. Yes – in games one through seven, they had scored three runs TOTAL in every first inning combined. They matched that number Tuesday, started by none other than leadoff left center fielder Ari Hersher, whose smooth swing produced one of his classic line drive singles to right.

In contrast, the Gardeners gave up 40 runs total in the first inning this season, an average of five first inning runs per game.

It wasn’t until the Gardeners put the pressure on themselves with two outs that they scored. Dobrinich singled Hersher to second, then with two on and two out, Besse lifted a fly ball to right that kept carrying and carrying, landing over right fielder Laney Boggs’ head for an easy three-run round tripper.

The bomb cemented his spot as the Gardeners’ season leader in home runs with two.

Up 3-0, the Gardeners were looking at their first lead of the season since their win in week five. In fact, other than the week five victory, the Gardeners DIDN’T HAVE A LEAD ALL SEASON.

We’re sorry, yet WHAT............THE............FUCK.

Looking to get rid of this unfamiliar "lead" thing against the Legends, they allowed ten runs – six of them on two three-run homers – to allow the Legends to take the lead for good at 10-3. Dobrinich snagged a comebacker and flip to Kyle Kretchmer at first base for the second out, then swapped roles and covered first just in time on a grounder to Kretchmer to end the inning.

Looking at a seven-run hole, the Gardeners decided to keep it that way in the second by going three-up, three-down. However, they did the same defensively to their opponent in the bottom half. Besse and left fielder Dan Ewbank caught flyouts and Kretchmer made an unassisted putout for the 1-2-3 shutdown inning and soon the Gardeners were back in the dugout to get back to spitting seeds, snapping selfies, and sexing supermodels, all three of which never happened.

In their half of the third, the Gardeners put together perfect station-to-station small ball with four singles, a walk, and a sacrifice fly contributing three runs for the inning. Ewbank’s leadoff single and one-out singles by Dobrinich, Besse, and third baseman Dan Gatta scored two runs (Besse and Gatta earning RBIs). A Zackler walk loaded the bases for right center fielder Jim Mitchell to sacrifice fly in Besse and the Gardeners had cut it to 10-6.

The Legends put across one run in their half, then – despite a leadoff double by Matt Bou – didn’t allow the Gardeners to score in the fourth. They scored two more to go ahead 13-6 after four innings. The Gardeners kept up the success of not scoring by having another four-batter shutdown inning offensively. Nevertheless, they tempered the damage on defense by shutting down the Legends in the bottom of the fifth in another three-up, three-down inning with Hersher’s closing it out with a sprinting catch of a short fly ball for the third out.

Still down by seven at 13-6, and with doomsday lurking with only two innings left in their season, the Gardeners read some Tony Robbins shit, got inspired, and pumped themselves up for the sixth inning. Back to back singles to lead off the inning by Mitchell and shortstop Alan Donner then a one-out walk by Hersher loaded the bases for Ewbank. Ewbank cut the deficit to 13-7 with a sacrifice fly down the right field line to plate Mitchell.

With two outs, Legends’ pitcher Zack Siler got too scared of the slugger Kretchmer’s blasting a three-run shot and thus walked him on three straight pitches. It was Kretchmer’s first ever walk as a Gardener, coming on his 70th career plate appearance.

With the bases loaded and two outs, the Gardeners could’ve capitulated and kept their harder-to-overcome six-run deficit going into the Legends’ half of the sixth and then the Gardeners’ final at-bats in the seventh. Yet the pitcher Dobrinich said, “Fuck that” to any six-run deficit and giving in for the inning. His clutch two-run single to center scored Donner from third. Hersher on second base had to first jump out of the way of the ball screaming up the middle – hopping towards first base to avoid the ball – then he had to touch second again, round third, then score to become the only base runner in history to score from second base yet cross three total bases on the play.

With the score now closer at 13-9, Besse’s fifth RBI of the night on a single to right center scored Kretchmer from second and the Gardeners were looking at only a three-run obstacle to overcome at 13-10. The Legends put one across in the bottom of the sixth yet a 6-4-3 Donner-to-Bou-to-Kretchmer double play ended any threat of the Legends’ scoring more in the inning.

Down by an easily surmountable four runs at 14-10 in their final at-bats, the Gardeners entered the seventh inning upbeat, confident, and ready to crush the Bus Stop in celebratory fashion afterwards.

However, fate had other plans, and reminiscent of the Gardeners’ season in a nutshell, they put two runners on with no outs then refused to score, finishing the defeat and clearly staking claim to the worst season in the Gardeners’ 14-season history.

To point out shit, for the season the Gardeners batted .472 as a team and gave up 149 runs, more than twice as many as the 70 runs total (8.75/game) they scored. We’re sure there’s way more team-low stats we could point out yet it doesn’t seem worth the effort anymore to conclude that this was their worst statistical season ever.

The cardboard cutout of Nia Long still stands essentially untapped, now in the janitor’s closet of the Gardeners' locker room to collect dust until the fall season. And to clarify this whole fucking weird Nia Long cardboard cutout thing, what we at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) meant is this: If you’ve seen the movie “Major League,” they take a cardboard cutout of their female owner, put it in the locker room fully clothed, then peel off a piece of her clothing after each victory. So this season the Gardeners attempted to do the same. They chose Nia Long solely because one of USASSY’s writers learned who Nia Long was one day, looked her up on Google Images, thought she was super sexy, then decided to put her on a figurative pedestal and become the poster (cardboard) image for the Gardeners to lust after in their locker room.

However, hopefully USASSY will realize how fucking dumb this writer is and fire him so nobody has to deal with this insane stupidity any more.

The Gardeners can only go upward from where they are now, as this current state after the 1-7 season is truly rock bottom. Okay nerdface you're right - technically this isn’t rock bottom as they can still go downward and lose all of their games next season. Yet that shit ain’t happening. This is the Gardeners we’re talking about. We’ve got confidence in the fuckin' Catalina Wine Mixer Savage Gardeners all right. That they’ll be back to their big dick swingin’ ways: Truly. Madly. Deeply. Cause If You Can’t Run with the Big Dogs, Stay on the Porch, Bottom of the Ninth, Down by Three, Bases Loaded, Full Count, Two Outs, Five Seconds Left, At the Three Point Line, Down by Two, 5...4...3...2...1...NO FEAR.

Stussy.

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Stat of the Week:

23%.........Percentage of the Gardeners’ outs this season that were flyouts to left center. Essentially what this means is the Gardeners flew out to left center for almost 1/4 of their outs.

Season Total Outs Breakdown Below:

Flyouts to
Left: 11 (7% of the total season outs)
Left Center: 36 (23%)
Right Center: 22 (14%)
Right: 16 (10%)
Infield (any position): 23 (14%)

Groundouts to
Shortstop: 19 (12%)
Second Base: 11 (7%)
Third Base: 9 (6%)
Pitcher: 2 (1%)

On another note, for the season there was only one base running out (a.k.a a player tagged out trying to advance to a base).

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7/27/2016

Kyle Kretchmer led off the inning launching a deep shot over the right center field fence that soared into Addison Street beyond, enabling the crowd to go apeshit at the Savage Gardeners' slugger’s power. As the blast was a clear homer the moment it left the bat, the Gardeners players starting growing confident and believing in themselves.

However, the score was already 21-1 at the time. The solo shot brought the Gardeners to only down 19 runs – losing only 21-2 now – since it was the seventh inning and the Gardeners hadn’t done shit at all during the game.

At Stu Jackson Ballpark Tuesday evening – as half the Gardeners raced into the dugout right at kickoff, clothes and cleats and jock straps flying – the Gardeners entered the game with positive expectations and high hopes despite their miserable their-manager-is-a-piece-of-shit 1-5 record. Nevertheless, current with this season’s overall theme, the bats couldn’t wake up as the Gardeners put together nine hits total en route to the 21-4 defeat to the Flatliners.

Despite the Flatliners’ 11-run fifth inning, the Gardeners defense held pat throughout the game. Take out that inning and the Flatliners only have ten runs. And take out the first through seventh innings and the Gardeners escape with a 0-0 tie, much better than a shitty loss. Take out the Gardeners manager and the entire organization and they’d probably fare better not even sending players out onto the field. In truth, the Gardeners probably have a better chance winning by not even showing up to the ballpark.

Yet they showed up Tuesday. And battled. And played good defense. And pitcher Dane Dobrinich pitched well, as did Matt Bou in the first inning. And the team looked good in their stirrups, three-fingered gloves, and 1936 throwback jerseys, which were actually uncomfortable onesies, which apparently was the trendy uniform that year.

The bats didn’t show up though. And it hurt, again. Nine hits and four runs for the entire game didn’t cut it too well. Mathematically, they averaged one hit every two innings through the first four innings. Or, in other terms, they produced two hits total in the first four innings. For the game, they had three three-up, three-down innings; a four-batter inning; two five-batter innings; and a seven-batter inning. On the positive side, for the first time this season they hit into more groundouts than outfield flyouts, making the Flatliners’ defense work harder for outs, since grounders are generally tougher than fly balls.

The defense did show up, with Bou’s catching innings two through five after starting the game on the mound due to a disruption of the pitching rotation thanks to the All-Star Game. Which had zero Gardeners’ representatives, save for Pablo the grounds crew guy because MLB felt pity for the Gardeners’ overall shittiness this season.

In Bou’s early bout behind the plate in the second inning, with two outs batter Mitch Martin snapped a single to right center with runner Frank Ricard on second. Ricard turned around third yet stopped one-third of the way towards home after right center fielder Jim Mitchell had hustled in and relayed the hit quickly to Phil Zackler at second. Zackler then fired to Dan Gatta at third, who chased Ricard down the third base line in perfect pickle form – ball in throwing hand, perpendicular right at the ear – where, at the right moment, he flipped to the catcher Bou. Ricard turned direction back towards third base, yet Bou was too fast for him, chasing him down and putting the tag on by sacrificing his body, diving into the dirt, and making the out.

In the inning, Gatta had snagged a grounder for the first out, Dobrinich a comebacker for the second. The Flatliners had still rallied for four runs in the inning before Bou’s defense ended it.

The third out hustle by Bou boosted life into the Gardeners as they then attempted to model Bou’s attitude of toughness and courage and transfer that mentality to the batting side. Yet they were shut down in their at-bats, and it wasn’t until Bou himself in the third inning led the charge to get the Gardeners on the board. Bou’s leadoff single to center put him on, Mitchell singled him to third, and Dobrinich line drive sacrifice-flied him in for the Gardeners’ first run.

At this point though, the Flatliners had scored seven runs. They put up another in the fourth, shut down the Gardeners’ not high-flying offense in the bottom half, then erupted for an 11-run fifth inning to take a 19-1 lead.

That’s NINETEEN TO ONE.

This is when we at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) determined that the Gardeners are officially terrible this season, mainly due to their manager, who fired himself and was last seen on a stool at the Horseshoe, unshaven, overweight, and drowning in his twelfth whiskey on the rocks while slurring the wrong words to “Freebird.”

Down 19-1 in the bottom of the fifth, the Gardeners decided to keep doing what they were doing successfully: not score runs. They put two runners on yet didn’t score. In the sixth they put runners on second and third with no outs – and didn’t score. Mitchell (3-for-3) sat there on third after his second hit and got a nice tan hanging out there in the sun and not moving from his spot. Dobrinich was doing the same on second base after his double.

Facing a 21-1 deficit, Kretchmer then led off the seventh with the solo shot to keep the Gardeners from being mercy-ruled and sent home crying to do some soul-searching and start finding meaning in their lives. His trot around the bases livened up the Gardeners, if ever so slightly. Gatta followed with a double, shortstop Alan Donner walked, then later with two outs Mitchell singled them both home to give the Gardeners their whopping total of four runs for the game.

This season has snowballed into by far the worst season in the Gardeners’ 14-season history. They’ve scored 60 runs total this season in seven games. In the fall 2015 season they surpassed that total in the first inning of game three. Last season they hit the 60-run mark in the third inning of game three. They’ve played seven games so far this season. Their cumulative run totals per inning are below:

1st Inning: 3 total runs
2nd Inning: 3 runs
3rd Inning: 11 runs

So yes, they’ve scored a total of 17 runs in the first three innings this year. Apparently starting off hot and setting the tone early is not a Gardeners’ strategy this season.

We’ll list the other innings here too, simply to round it out:

4th Inning: 18 runs
5th Inning: 12 runs
6th Inning: 5 runs
7th Inning: 8 runs

What we see is that the Gardeners don’t start off games (1st & 2nd innings) or finish them well (6th & 7th innings) . They score the meat of their low run total in the 3rd through 5th innings. They’re like a sandwich – meat on the inside covered on both sides by shit (bread, aka carbs).

Dan Ewbank received the most action in the field by making six putouts in left center field. Tristan Besse in left and Mitchell in right center each got two flyouts; Brett Hirsch in right field showed a solid glove with three flyout putouts. It was hard getting the Flatliners to swing the bat though, because most of them came to the plate looking to walk, especially when they were up by 20 runs fucking dickwads. A random nerd at USASSY actually discovered that the Flatliners track their stats as well on slowpitchstats.com and found that they’ve played almost the same number of games as the Gardeners. Our nerd came to this unsurprising finding about their love of taking walks:

Flatliners – 131 games played, 430 walks
Gardeners – 133 games played, 257 walks

Fuck those guys.

The Gardeners played without mainstays Dave Watters and Ari Hersher, both given days off to rest their chiseled bodies. The duo also wanted to give other Gardeners a chance to start climbing on them on the career leader board, where either of them holds the top spot in every category – Watters in average, slugging, OPS, hits, doubles, triples, homers, sacrifice flies, and RBIs; Hersher in on-base percentage, runs, singles, and walks.

As referenced in last week’s totally hilarious newspaper summary, Kretchmer had a comparable plate appearances per home run (PA/HR) stat of 7.0 PA/HR to Watters’ 6.9 PA/HR. Kretchmer’s solo shot Tuesday lowered his to 6.6 PA/HR. That’s what Watters gets for taking a day off. Zackler is catching up too, at only 43.0 PA/HR, or one homer every 43 plate appearances. His last homer was 18 plate appearances ago, so he’s due sometime in the middle of next season. Or is that motivation to hit one next game, in the Gardeners’ regular season finale…

Preliminary plans are for them to go to the Bus Stop following next Tuesday’s game to pour out the summer season, cheers the fall season, reminisce on all the long road trips on the team bus through the Midwest – the laughs, the tears, the late-night Denny’s stops, shitty motels, groupies, cocaine parties – receive their season-incentive bonuses (currently none), and fend off the paparazzi and hella Marina girls chasing them down like Bou did to the base runner Ricard in that pickle – aggressively and successfully.

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Stat of the Week:

.643 versus .400………Difference in career batting average for Jim Mitchell with runners-in-scoring-position [RISP] (.643) versus without RISP (.400). The plus-243 point difference is tops of all current Gardeners.

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7/21/2016

With shortstop Marshall Kratter reacquired after a two-year stint playing for the Los Angeles Fairy Angels, the Savage Gardeners welcomed the familiar face, former USD ballplayer, North Coast Section Division II Champions high school coach, and solid glove back to the diamond with open arms and seesaw riddles. Yet the boost in defense wasn’t enough to help the Gardeners’ bats overall as they fell to the SF Seals 19-11 Tuesday night at Stu Jackson Ballpark.

In other negative news, left center fielder Ari Hersher’s Uber driver got lost in traffic and delivered him late to the game, throwing off all of his pregame routines, rituals, and momentum he instills for the Gardeners as their mainstay leadoff batter.

With Hersher in traffic, and pitcher Dane Dobrinich facing the same traffic obstacle – due to San Franciscans’ packing the roads to drive out to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland (Phil Zackler hit the road to Cleveland after the game to avoid the traffic) – the Gardeners found themselves starting the top of the first inning defensively with nine players. Dave Watters took the mound, gave up only one run, produced a flyout to Jim Mitchell in right field, and – after Dobrinich arrived and took an outfield spot to give the Gardeners a full ten fielders – induced a Dan Gatta-to-Alan Donner-to-Kyle Kretchmer 5-4-3 double play to end the inning. Dobrinich then took over for Watters on the hill for the rest of the game.

Watters next led the one-run rally in the bottom half by doubling to left center with two outs for the first of his four hits for the game. Left fielder Dan Ewbank then sliced a triple to right field to score Watters, tie the game at 1-1, and instill some confidence in the Gardeners. A 1-1 tie after one inning wasn’t a pure disaster like that 20-run inning by I’d Tap That two games ago. Things looked positive, like all numbers above zero. Haha math joke……so funny.

To now go off on a tangent: Unfortunately, professional ballplayers like the Gardeners receive an unfair perception from the general public because of their lofty celebrity status. The problem is that fans think that the Gardeners are supernatural human beings who magically show up at the ballpark every day, dressed and ready to play. Yet it doesn’t cross the public’s mind that these professionals still have to GET to the ballpark – they aren’t simply transported there in some fancy celebrity time travel machine. They drive cars, ride the bus, and Uber just like normal folks do. They have bills to pay, laundry to do, groceries to shop for just like normal folks do. They watch TV shows just like normal folks do. They love the “Redwall” book series just like normal folks do. They take showers. They eat. They poop.

And they get stuck in traffic. And that happened to both Hersher and Dobrinich Tuesday. Thus, the fans’ outrage at their being missing from the opening lineup is unjustified – Gardeners players can get stuck in traffic too, just like anyone else.

In truth, the Gardeners’ actually are superhuman humans, yet the point is that they can still get stuck in traffic.

Nevertheless, that confidence Ewbank tried to instill with his bat in the first inning didn’t truly resonate down the lineup until the fourth inning. In the interim, the Seals scored two runs in the second and three in the third to take a 6-1 lead heading into the bottom of the third.

What’s both surprising and relieving is that the Seals didn’t score more runs in those innings. They rallied in both innings, yet – similar to the first inning – both innings ended in double plays. Yes – the Gardeners ended the first three innings defensively with double plays. The momentum gods were CLEARLY on their side. The second inning saw another Gatta-to-Donner-to-Kretchmer double play end it. The third inning saw Seals base runner Chazz Michael Michaels try to tag from third on a popout to short left field caught by Kratter at short. Kratter’s laser throw to the All-Star catcher Zackler for the tag ended Michael Michaels’ ill-attempted hopes of scoring. In fact, earlier with no outs and the bases loaded, base runner Jimmy MacElroy had tried to score on a grounder to Gatta at third. Yet Gatta’s easy throw to Zackler for the force got the out.

So catcher’s not important? Heads-up plays by Zackler to cover the plate both times makes you think again.

Down 6-1 in the third, the Gardeners with two outs rallied, right fielder Tristan Besse’s starting the hits with a single. The slugger Kretchmer then launched a shot into the trees above the fence in right field, the ball’s then dropping back into play. For some reason the apparent homer was not deemed a home run and Kretchmer was held to a double. Besse did score from first on the play however. Watters singled in Kretchmer in the next at-bat, so Kretchmer’s non-homer call didn’t affect much in terms of runs for the Gardeners – Kretchmer still scored regardless. The non-homer call solely affected Kretchmer’s slugging percentage and his moving up the leaderboard for career homers.

Despite earning two runs back in the third, the Gardeners gave up three more in the top of the fourth to go down farther at 9-3.

Then the bats finally woke up. At least for an inning. The Gardeners led off the bottom of the fourth with six consecutive hits. Three straight singles by Gatta, Donner, and Zackler loaded the bases for Mitchell, who hit a solid two-run double to put the first two runs on the board in the inning for the Gardeners. Zackler on the play slid under the tag at a play at third base to keep the inning going with no outs.

Kratter then added his first hit back as a Gardener with a double to left center – Zackler’s and Mitchell’s coming around to score to bring the Gardeners closer at 9-7. Dobrinich’s single right after was the sixth straight hit; the Gardeners didn’t get a seventh hit in the inning until Watters came up later with two outs to single in Kratter and Dobrinich to tie the game at 9-9.

Despite this comeback, the defense created holes for the Seals to rally back in the top of the fifth, the Seals’ scoring five runs to go ahead 14-9. A five-batter inning for the Gardeners produced no runs in their half, and the Seals capitalized by keeping the momentum on their side and scoring five more to go up ten, 19-9. With two batting innings to go, the Gardeners didn’t feel the pressure at all though – they know they’re clearly capable of putting up 40-run innings at any time.

Yet Tuesday wasn’t to be one of those times that they put up a 40-run inning. A leadoff opposite field triple by Kretchmer and singles by Watters and Ewbank started the inning off hot. Yet only Kretchmer and Watters were able to score as the Gardeners, in Giants-like fashion, loaded the bases with one out yet failed to score a single runner.

Which seemed to be a preferred strategy Tuesday, as in innings four through six, the Gardeners left eight runners on base. With two outs in each inning, they couldn’t score the runners on first and second in the fourth, nor take advantage of the bases loaded in the fifth and sixth and score a single runner either time. Throwing in the 1-2-3 innings in the second and seventh and you’re not creating a recipe for victory, nor a recipe for sex with models afterward.

Thus, the Gardeners looked at a 19-11 deficit in their last at-bats, couldn’t score, and thus walked off the field with that 19-11 defeat and their fifth - yikes - loss this season.

To keep pointing out poor statistics from the game, the Gardeners flew out 13 times total to the outfield, pretty much lazy fly balls each time. They flew out twice to left, six times to left center, and five times to right center. When they weren’t flying out, they tended to hit groundouts to the shortstop, grounding out to him four times. At least they’re consistent though – 17 of their outs went only to four different positions (LF, LC, RC, and SS).

Yet on the other side, the Seals were consistent in hitting five groundouts to Gatta at third – two of their being double plays to account for seven outs total to the hot corner. Kratter made four groundout putouts at short while also catching a flyout that turned into the aforementioned double play. Thus, the left side of the infield in Kratter and Gatta accounted for 13 outs (including the double plays) defensively for the Gardeners.

Yet as we look at these numbers, maybe what we at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) are gleaning from this analysis is the hidden statistic that determines the winner or loser of a game: the flyouts-to-groundouts ratio. Tuesday’s numbers are shown below:

- Flyouts: Gardeners 16; Seals 7
- Groundouts: Gardeners 5; Seals 14
- Flyout-to-Groundout Ratio: Gardeners 3.2 Flyouts Per Groundout; Seals 0.5

Season Numbers:

- Gardeners: 66 Outfield Flyouts, 26 Infield Groundouts – 2.54 Flyouts Per Groundout
- Opponents: 43 Outfield Flyouts, 45 Infield Groundouts – 0.96 Flyouts Per Groundout
- Essentially, the Gardeners are flying out 2.5x more than their opponents
- Lastly, outfield flyouts account for 56% of the Gardeners’ outs and only 38% of their opponents’ outs.

What all these stupid numbers imply are that the Seals – and the Gardeners’ opponents all season – put the ball on the ground and the Gardeners lift it into the air. Fly balls are generally easier outs. Cut out the fly balls and the Gardeners are looking at more victories.

Victorious was also the cardboard cutout of Nia Long, who still stands pretty-much fully clothed in the Gardeners’ locker room, with only her left shoulder showing, after a peeling after last week’s victory, the Gardeners’ only win this season. Rumor has it that their manager has seen the writing on the wall and is already contacting different teams for interviews, apparently trying to get out before getting fired, which will probably happen.

Nevertheless, the Gardeners will continue to push onward in their last two games, their being predicted to win both, according to Bovada. This despite their losing Watters and Kratter for the season. Regardless, the two final games are opportunities for the Gardeners to work on padding their stats. They’re also a chance to start gaining on Watters on the leaderboard, as Kretchmer is apt to do for career homers (only 61 homers behind, yet with a comparable Plate Appearances-per-Home Run ratio: 7.0 PA/HR versus Watters’ 6.9 PA/HR - in layman’s terms, one home run every seven plate appearances). Zackler is also working to catch Watters in career RBIs - at only 267 RBIs behind.

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Stat of the Week:

3-13 (.188 Win Percentage)………The Gardeners’ record in their last 16 games at Jackson 1

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7/13/2016

After 77 days, six straight losses, and a two-week hiatus to allow the players to do weird Pedro Cerrano voodoo shit to get out the demons and bad karma, the Savage Gardeners won a softball game. Yep - they won a mothafuckin’ softball game. Didn’t think we’d say that in a while. Somewhere in India an uber-skinny young 15-year old boy who watches every Gardeners game on his old-ass TV is flipping out, flailing his arms and dancing around all weird in his dark Slumdog Millionaire room, screaming nonsense like a girl that the Gardeners won.

We at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) clearly have this image in our head. No? You don’t have that image too? Eh…….whelp, see ya later then.

The Gardeners defeated nemesis Ball So Hard University (BSHU) 17-15 at KKU Field Tuesday evening through a mix of hitting, pitching, and fielding, which, if you look at it, encompass the main aspects of softball. Throw in base running and looking saucy in their uniforms to get girls all horny and shit and you round out the top five.

The game score was much closer than the actual game – the Gardeners led 17-5 through six innings; a ten-run rally by BSHU in the top of the seventh brought it close – yet with their confidence and charisma the Gardeners closed it out like Jerry Seinfeld whipping out his American Express card at the supermarket in that 1997 TV commercial.

The Gardeners benefited from the influx of slugger first baseman Kyle Kretchmer and catcher Matt Bou, both past Gardeners called up from the Triple-A club. They had been playing on the Triple-A Minneapolis Doggie Yellow Snows for the first half of the season to get more reps in as the big-league Gardeners’ ballclub’s 25-man roster limits were maxxed out for the first half of the season. Bou went 3-for-4 for the day with two doubles, three runs, and an RBI; Kretchmer 2-for-4 with three RBIs.

With no one representing the Gardeners at the All-Star Game,* upper management had to make some moves during the break. Bringing up Kretchmer and Bou was called upon.

*[Despite each team’s supposed to have a representative for the All-Star team, the Gardeners have been so bad that they were deemed too shitty to have a representative. The closest selection was perennial All-Star Dave Watters. Yet because his Gardeners softball loyalties are questionable, out of spite the selection committee left him off the team.]

The whole Gardeners team top to bottom contributed to the all-around win Tuesday. The top of the lineup in left center fielder Ari Hersher and right fielder Tristan Besse combined to go 6-for-8, Besse’s finally getting his swing back and providing four of those hits, plus three runs scored. Hersher added the other two hits as well as a walk, a sacrifice fly, and two runs.

The team raised its season batting average from .452 to .494 after the game. Things are trending up for the Gardeners, including their success at the plate. This is shown in the increase of the team’s batting average from games one to five, listed in chronological order here starting with game one: .364, .406, .469, .586, and .632 on Tuesday.

Alan Donner played shortstop for the first time as a Gardener and excelled defensively, making four groundout putouts, catching a liner, and catching the final out of the game with a screaming, “BALL. BALL.” yell to cement the fact that he was catching the ball and to cement the Gardeners’ victory.

A couple feet in front of him on the field and keeping BSHU’s feet in cement all game was the Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game, pitcher Dane Dobrinich.

Dobrinich – taking over pitching duties after Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde departed for Europe on a scouting trip – lasered in on BSHU’s batters from the get-go. Despite the ten-run seventh inning, BSHU couldn’t do shit all night. Dobrinich held them to five runs through six innings – a three-run inning, two one-run innings, and three shutout innings. The fifth inning saw BSHU go three-up, three-down, with Dobrinich’s pitching deep, shoulder-high fastballs that BSHU’s three batters in the inning all flew out on – the first out a popout to third baseman Dan Gatta and the other two to Hersher in left center.

The sixth inning saw Dobrinich and the defense lock it down again. After leadoff batter Cal Naughton Jr.’s single, Dobrinich goaded two straight force outs to Donner at shortstop, Donner’s flipping to Bou at second both times for the outs. With two outs and a runner on first, batter Walker Bobby then slashed a single to left. Runner on first Texas Ranger Bobby unwisely then decided to test left fielder Dan Ewbank’s arm by trying for third base. Yet Ewbank was on top of it, nailing a throw to Gatta at third for the swipe tag on Bobby and final out of the inning.

In between those two defensive innings, the Gardeners erupted at the plate for nine runs.

Until then, they had pieced together some good hits, taking a 5-2 lead into the fourth and an 8-5 lead into the fifth.

BSHU had started the scoring in the first, yet a heads up catch of a quick popup over his head by the catcher Bou stopped all momentum. His play earned him the Nintendo Racket Attack Defensive Play of the Game Award. Catcher isn’t important? Yeah – said no one ever. Which is also a Jana Kramer song. Just go Google “Jana Kramer no one ever” and enjoy getting lost in the Google Images rabbit hole of gorgeousness.

Jim Mitchell behind the plate caught the fifth and sixth innings: seven batters total, six outs, no runs, contributing to a Catcher’s ERA (CERA) of 0.00 for the game. [Side Note: The historical average CERA is 2.53, or 2.53 runs given up per inning]. And Brett Hirsch caught the third and fourth for a CERA of only 1.50 – a three-run inning and a shutout inning. Shutout innings are key because they deflate the batting team’s hopes and move the momentum meter towards the side of the shutdown defensive side now coming to the plate. So, short to say, catcher is important.

After a one-run first inning, BSHU scored one more in the second, yet Gatta at third scooped a grounder for the first out then made an unassisted force play for the third out with runners on first and second to squelch BSHU’s attempted rally. In the bottom half, Gatta singled a sharp liner to left center to move Dobrinich to second on the play. Dobrinich had singled to lead off the inning.

Dobrinich – in a Madison Bumgarner-like display of contributing to his pitching cause by mashing at the plate as well – went 3-for-3 with two doubles, a single, a walk, three RBIs, and two runs. He scored the first run for the Gardeners by scoring from third on Hirsch’s sacrifice fly later in the second inning. His all-around performance easily led to his player of the game award.

Mitchell – on top of his calling two shutout innings behind the plate – added more magic in the field in right center, making two running catches in the third inning as the Gardeners and Dobrinich held BSHU scoreless in the inning.

Then the bats finally started to wake up. Bou’s leadoff single, Hersher’s walk, and Besse’s second single of the day loaded the bases for Kretchmer for the now-stirring crowd (“Oh shit, the Gardeners are actually getting on base now this season? This is new.”). Kretchmer added his first RBI of the night with a sac-fly to right center to score Bou, Hersher’s taking third on the play. Ewbank then crushed a run-scoring double over the right center fielder’s head to put the Gardeners ahead at 3-2. Dobrinich following roped a double to left to score Besse and Ewbank and push his cushion to 5-2.

BSHU tied it at 5-5 in the top of the fourth with three runs. Yet the Gardeners avenged the inning starting with a Hirsch leadoff single to left. The hit got the wheels going as Bou singled Hirsch to third, then Hirsch trotted home on a Hersher one-out sacrifice fly to give the Gardeners the lead – ultimately for good – at 6-5.

Yet with two outs the Gardeners didn’t cave like a cave caving in a caveland. Besse singled to right center, then Kretchmer did the same, scoring Bou. Ewbank singled to left to score Besse and after four the Gardeners had their solid lead back at 8-5 to allow the pitcher-catcher combo of Dobrinich and Mitchell to work their two-inning, seven-batters total, shutout magic.

And, as mentioned, in between those innings, the Gardeners erupted like Katniss Everdeen, girl on fire. Singles by Donner and Mitchell put runners on first and second with one out for Bou to double in Donner with a liner to left. Hersher then slapped a casual single to center to score Mitchell and Bou – a simple, easy hit that did the job of scoring runners, getting Hersher on base, and building more momentum for the rally. Keeping the hits going, Besse hit his fourth single and Kretchmer followed after with a single as well to score Hersher. Ewbank’s third RBI of the night scored Besse, then Dobrinich did it again by doubling for the second time, this time scoring Kretchmer. Gatta singled home Ewbank, then Donner fielder’s choiced in Dobrinich.

Phew. Eight straight hits before Donner’s at-bat; after his at-bat the scoreboard saw the Gardeners had put eight runs across as well. The Gardeners could finally say they were fucking back. And that fully clothed cardboard cutout of Nia Long standing as yet untouched downstairs in the locker room? Trembling at the thought of a piece of her clothing being ripped off.

With two outs Hirsch singled Donner to second, then Mitchell doubled in Donner to put the Gardeners at 17 runs for the evening and extend their lead to 12 runs heading into the sixth inning, where, as mentioned, he and Dobrinich battery-mated to a shutout inning. The Gardeners couldn’t add any insurance runs in their half of the sixth, leading to the same 12-run, 17-5 lead going into the seventh.

BSHU then rallied like crazy for seven runs before Hirsch at second flipped a grounder to Donner for a force at second and the first out. BSHU’s Reese Bobby then knocked a three-run homer to cut the score to 17-15, only a two-run Gardeners lead. This shit was now getting too close.

Yet with the bases now empty and one out, Dobrinich dialed it up. A flyout to Ewbank in deep left cut it to two outs, yet a single then put a runner on and the tying run in Frenchman batter Jean Girard at the plate. Yet Dobrinich knew how to pitch to Girard. In the fifth inning he had made Girard whiff on a high curveball then got him to foul out to Gatta at third on the next pitch. This time, Dobrinich surprised Girard with a changeup, getting him to loft a lazy popup to Donner at short. Donner, as mentioned, yelled, “BALL. BALL.” loud enough for Watters to hear playing over in Orinda, and as the ball settled easily into Donner’s glove, fireworks simultaneously went off behind the center field bleachers, celebrating the Gardeners’ first win of the season.

The players subsequently high-fived each other, the opposing team, then scrambled to the locker room to watch the removal of a piece of the cardboard Nia Long’s clothing, which now shows an exposed left shoulder. Yum.

The game lasted seven hours.

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Stat of the Week:

.815………Ari Hersher’s career on-base percentage (OBP) leading off a game. Put simply, to lead off a game, Hersher gets on base 81.5% of the time.

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6/30/2016

Tuesday night – as the Giants concurrently battled the A’s at AT&T Park – the real Battle of the Bay was occurring in the heart of San Francisco’s Marina District.

At KKU Field, the visiting Savage Gardeners with only nine players – battling the home I’d Tap That team – put up 11 runs, setting their season high for runs scored in a game. Their previous three games this season, all (cough) losses, the Gardeners had scored four, eight, and five runs, respectively. They topped those games with their 11 runs Tuesday.

However, I’d Tap That scored 36 runs so the Gardeners still got crushed.

The game was a battle from the beginning, as at first pitch the score was knotted at 0-0. Yet if you took a power nap and woke up only ten minutes later, you would’ve seen the scoreboard read 20-0 in favor of I’d Tap That.

Wait WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!

Yeah.................the Tap Thats scored 20 runs in the first inning.

That topped the Gardeners’ cumulative run total in three games (17 runs total) to that point. The Tap Thats bested that mark in one frigging inning.

This season is clearly turning into the lost season of the Savage Gardeners. In an ancient library 350 years from now, someone will be browsing through the Savage Gardeners’ epic 1,065-season* history and will be wondering where that lost 2016 summer season is hiding. They’ll browse the dusty bookshelves and nowhere will that 2016 summer season be found – it’ll either be thankfully lost forever, or someone tore it out of the Gardeners’ history book like in the movie “National Treasure (1 or 2)” and then there will be some awesomely badass treasure hunt with Nicholas Cage and crazy symbols and riddles and caverns and cool American history stuff and shit. That’s gonna be sick.

*[Side note: 1,065 seasons equals 350 years x 3 softball seasons/year + 15 seasons completed through the year 2016 (this season is #14, fall season will be #15). Slugger Dave Watters is predicted to lead the team in homers in 1,050 of those remaining seasons; one season Phil Zackler will lead the team in homers. The next season he’ll be suspended due to testing positive for a steroids test.]

Looking back through the 14-season Gardeners’ history, the last time the Gardeners were performing this poorly was…………let’s see… ………..carry the seven………….cross multiply…………take the first derivative……………..pour it into a beaker……………add hydrogen peroxide…………….conjugate in the past tense……………..ah ha! Got the solution.

The last time the Gardeners were this bad was never.

A year ago, in the 2015 summer season, the Gardeners did start 1-5 yet finished 3-5 albeit to miss the playoffs for the only time in their history. This season they're technically still able to reach the playoffs, yet the odds of their doing so are pretty much…

…one-hundred percent.

The feeling in the locker room after the game was highly upbeat, with all of the players’ chattering excitedly, towel-whipping each other, vowing to turn the season around, win four straight to reach the playoffs, then go undefeated in the postseason to claim their first championship ever, subsequently riot in the Mission burning and flipping over cars and shit, go to jail, then escape from jail, tunneling with a chess piece through a Rita Hayworth poster Shawshank Redemption-style.

The Gardeners face an uphill battle for the rest of the season with the loss of Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde to Edde’s departure to Europe to scout internationally for Cuban and Dominican players playing in Croatian leagues. In fact, center fielder Alan Donner and third baseman Dan Gatta were discovered in the Croatian league when they were crushing the ball there years ago together. Donner actually has a variety of international softball experience under his belt, playing in the aforementioned Croatian League, a Brazilian League, most recently with Phil Zackler in the Chinese League, for two years domestically in the Chicago League, and concurrently in the 25-Year Old Cradle Robbing Poundtown League. Gatta prefers the 34-Years and Up League.

Speaking of 34-Plus, the Tap Thats, yes, scored 36 fucking runs against the Gardeners. After scoring 20 in the first inning, they put up seven in the second, two in the third, five in the fourth, and two in the fifth. So despite the first inning Titanic disaster that only lacked a nude Kate Winslet sketch, the Tap Thats only scored 16 runs in the other four innings, which if you look at it relatively, isn’t that bad. The Gardeners put up 11 runs in those four innings, so if the first inning were deleted from memory Jason Bourne-style, the game was actually a tight battle.

The new Jason Bourne movie comes out a month from now so that’s sick too. Whoever created that franchise was simply a genius, those movies are fucking well done. Other franchises that fall into that well-done category include “Home Alone 1 & 2” and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series. Ari Hersher’s all-time favorite “Fast and Furious” franchise doesn’t make the cut because it’s too sad for us to think about Lance Harbor.

With Lance Harbor Moscone Field – the opposite field in right field – under construction and roped off, the Gardeners were limited in hitting bombs to right field, as each ball that went onto that field – fly or ground – would be deemed a ground-rule double. Thus, with this handicap, the second baseman Zackler had to adjust his natural hit-to-right-field swing for the evening, limiting his maybe-he-uses-steroids-maybe-he-doesn’t power. Yet he helped participate in the Gardeners’ first run of the evening when he singled with one out in the second inning to move Gatta to third (Gatta had led off the inning with a single to left).

Catcher/first baseman Ben Robinson – fresh back from leading the Prague Gardeners to a championship in the Czech Republic – then continued his winning ways by singling to center to score Gatta. Robinson led the Gardeners in RBIs for the night with three.

This cut the deficit to 20-1, yet the Gardeners weren’t done closing in on the gap. Newcomer Jack Komar then with his lefty swing took advantage of the ground-rule double rule and slashed a double into Lance Harbor Moscone Field in right to score Zackler.

Komar’s two doubles for the night have now accounted for 28% (2 of 7) of the Gardeners’ doubles as a team this entire season.

Despite going down 27-2 after the Tap Thats scored seven in the second, the Gardeners felt momentum inching their way just as pitcher Dane Dobrinich out at the bars can sense women inching his way once he enters. Dobrinich had gotten the second and third outs of the inning by throwing nasty sliders over the outside corner of the plate that left Tap That batters Brick Tamland and Champ Kind lunging for and stepping on home plate for automatic outs. Dobrinich had also snagged a comebacker for the first out of the inning.

In the first inning as well, Dobrinich had struck out batter Brian Fantana staring at a called strike three RIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE OF THE PLATE. The ball literally bounced square in the middle of home plate for strike three, yet Fantana quizzically stared at the umpire, questioning the strike-three call. Robinson catching behind the plate as well as every other person in attendance was thoroughly confused as to why Fantana was questioning the call. The ball could not have been more of a strike.

Dobrinich led off the third inning batting with a single to center, followed by the shortstop Watters’ booming triple to left center to bring him home. Gatta sacrifice-flied in Watters and the Gardeners were up to four runs in three innings, not too bad considering their recent bout of shittiness.

The Gardeners however flew out 12 times versus three groundouts, a disastrous 4:1 flyball-to-groundball ratio.

Komar in right field made one of his three flyball putouts for the first out of the third. Gatta defensively at third base threw a strike to first baseman Brett Hirsch for the second out to get batter Ed Harken, Hirsch’s making a nice lunging stretch that also stretched his Bills white long-sleeve tighter around his chiseled body. On a similar note, we feel sorry for his being a Bills fan, yet we also respect his loyalty and the passion of Bills fans. Patriots fans left fielder Tristan Besse and manager J.J. Warren – due to the rivalry, however – didn’t talk to their AFC East enemy Hirsch all night. The series history is pretty equal though – since 2000 the Patriots are only 28-4 against the Bills. It’s not even the right sport to be talking about though, it’s still June, football isn’t even relevant right now (only 69 days left until the season starts, Fantasy magazines are hitting the shelves, and Robinson has done only 67 mock drafts this year. It’s cool though, no one is excited for the NFL to start already).

Watters – who has done negative-12 fantasy NFL mock drafts this summer – fielded a grounder for the third out and the Gardeners only looked at a 29-4 deficit heading into the fourth.

Where they put forth their first rally and real inning hitting this season. That’s 24 innings of pretty much nothingness and lethargy at the plate before they scored more than three runs in an inning. They put up seven in the top of the fourth – Hirsch’s and Besse’s both singling then Hirsch’s scoring from third on a Dobrinich single. Watters singled in Besse then Gatta added his second sacrifice fly of the evening, this one scoring Dobrinich.

With two outs, the Gardeners kept the rally going with Donner’s crushing a pitch to the pitcher yet beating it out for an infield single. Zackler – who had guaranteed three hits for himself for the evening, and was 2-for-2 already – then walked to make sure he didn’t follow through on his promise. His walk loaded the bases for Robinson, now up with two outs holy fuck shit cock balls THIS IS HIGH PRESSURE. Robinson then added to the pressure by falling behind with two strikes and no foul balls left. Yet he then pulled out of his bag the ‘ol Hack Robinson, squaring up on a ball six feet above his head and tomahawking it to left for a two-RBI single.

Zackler's pre-game guarantees haven't come to fruition, yet individually they have indirectly helped him. Since he's started making guarantees, he's gotten on base five of his last six times (four hits, one walk, one flyout).

Hirsch in his second at-bat of the evening then ripped a single to left to score Zackler, both of them again wearing GoPro cameras on their heads to get a cool double-perspective video of the play, both from Zackler’s view as a baseunner and Hirsch’s as a batter. Komar followed with his second double of the day – this one to left center to score Robinson as he hustled his way to second to beat the throw.

Thus, the inning ended with the Gardeners’ putting up seven runs, their biggest inning of the season and highest-scoring inning in the last 35 innings. They couldn’t score in the fifth inning and weren’t given any more chances after umpire Tim Donaghy called the game unfairly after the bottom of the fifth with the Gardeners’ bats just warming up for a 25-run inning that would’ve tied the game at 36-36. Fuck that shit.

The game ended just in time for the Gardeners to head to the locker room and catch the end of the other Battle of the Bay game, where the Giants were winning 8-to-…wait, never mind, we blocked it out, that game never happened. The Giants are still the hottest team in baseball, and we’re not solely talking about Brandon Crawford’s flowing curly locks that Zackler and Donner go giddy over when they watch the games together, spooning on the couch in their apartment while feeding each other cherries.

Not to be outdone, Gatta’s Cleveland Indians are the other hottest team in baseball with Cleveland’s aiming to usurp the new title of Titletown, USA. And speaking of the Tribe and just to keep referencing the stupid “Major League” reference we at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) think is so clever, the Gardeners’ cardboard cutout of Nia Long still stands untapped in the locker room.

If anyone is still confused about this Nia Long cardboard cutout reference, please excuse the writers at USASSY, because in our mind it’s perfectly clear yet maybe we’re just delusional about the image we’ve created, kind of like how we’re always delusional about the Gardeners’ title hopes.

The Gardeners have a bye week next week to rest up, heal injuries, study film, hit the bench, hit the squat, hit the cable-flyes, hit the tricep rope pressdowns, hit the Smith-machine shrugs, hit the bent-over cable lat raises, hit the hex bar deadlifts, hit the 3-pound pink dumbbells for biceps curls, hit the inner thigh adductor machine, hit the outer thigh abductor machine, then hit the fro-yo bar for a post-workout snack and OMG heyyy gurl let’s totes get drinks this thurs ttyl luv ya bye.

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Stat of the Week:

0………Wins for the Gardeners in their last six games, their worst losing streak ever (four games was their previous worst streak). Zero is also the number of guarantees to little Jimmy in the hospital followed through on by Phil Zackler, after predicting three hits last week (fail), three hits this week (fail), and a win this week (fail).

Jimmy? Still crying.

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6/22/2016

Which is correct?

1. Seventeen equals

a.) The usual number of runs scored in a game by the Gardeners (their historical average)
b.) The number of runs scored total in the Gardeners’ last three games
c.) Todd Helton’s jersey number
d.) Ryan Tannehill’s jersey number
e.) The lower-bound age on Tinder for Phil Zackler’s searches
f.) The greatest magazine ever

If you have a decent amount of knowledge in your brain, you’ll realize it’s a trick question and the answer is All of the Above.

The most glaring choice of the options above is clearly c.) Todd Helton’s number, as you’re obviously thinking, “What? That’s a crazy statistic! I can’t believe 17 was his number! Insane! Statistics are crazy!”

We at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) are with you in your disbelief. It is crazy isn’t it. Seventeen and Todd Helton. Who would’ve thought.

What’s also crazy is option b.) The number of runs scored total in the Gardeners’ last three games.

Because it’s embarrassing. They’ve never been in such a shitty stretch of softball in their lives.

Once again the Gardeners fell short, losing 17-5 to Ace Wasabi Tuesday during a sunny evening at Stu Jackson Ballpark. The Gardeners almost topped out at two runs for the evening, yet a two-out, seventh inning, three-run home run into the trees by right fielder Tristan Besse pushed the Gardeners’ run total to five. His hit proved essentially the main (and only) boost for the day. Besse’s homer – the first non-Dave Watters homer this season for the Gardeners – carried nicely into the trees overhanging the fence in right field. Right center fielder Alan Donner scored from second while left center fielder Ari Hersher trotted in from first after a walk and single, respectively.

Hersher in the leadoff spot batted 3-for-4 for the evening. Donner went 1-for-2 in the tenth spot. Donner would’ve likely had another at-bat to his tally, as he was originally slated to bat higher in the lineup. Yet thanks to the magic of two Ubers and one Lyft, Donner showed up at the ballpark 15 minutes after first pitch, casually strolling into the dugout in his SoFi business casual attire, dealing out student loans like a shark left and right (“There ya go......There ya go......There ya go......There ya go.”).

Former St. Mary’s Gael Dane Dobrinich stepped in at shortstop and played exceptionally, making four groundball putouts and catching a liner. Two groundouts ended in throws to J. Cohn (or Eric Chavez - we actually think it was Chavez) at first base – the second play’s being a Derek Jeter-like nab of a ball in the hole and rifle to Cohn just in time in the sixth. The other two putouts were forces at second base – one toss to Phil Zackler playing second base in the third inning and the other to Triple-A callup Brett Hirsch in the sixth.

Hirsch had played catcher the first four innings then switched positions with fellow coworker Zackler for the fifth and sixth. They both wore GoPro cameras strapped to their heads to capture the excitement and gnarliness extreme sport-ism of being a Gardener, especially Zackler with his promise to little Jimmy in the hospital that he would get three hits for him in the game (see bottom).

Both catchers helped contribute to defensive shutout innings in the fourth and sixth inning, Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde’s mowing down the Wasabis in four batters each inning.

Edde in his final start of the season kept the Wasabis relatively quiet through six innings of work. The Wasabis blew up for seven runs in the fifth inning, yet other than that were kept mainly in check.

The Wasabis however did take advantage of the trees in right field that kept balls from flying over the fence. They hit a two-run homer in each of the first and second inning into the right field trees – the balls’ dropping into the field of play each time for automatic home runs while keeping their one-homer-per-game-over-the-fence option intact. A three-run shot cleared the fence in the third to end the handicap. They then switched fields and hit two three-run homers to left center in the fifth inning to cap their total at five homers for the evening. The five homers accounted for 12 of their runs; take them all away and they have 12 runs less, the game goes from 17-5 to 5-5 and ends in a tie, and the Gardeners feel better about themselves.

Nevertheless, there wasn’t much for the Gardeners to feel good about throughout the game. The few highlights include Besse’s homer in the seventh (the Gardeners’ only extra-base hit), Dobrinich’s play at shortstop, Zackler’s pink shirt, Eric Chavez’ return from retirement, and Edde’s called-looking strikeout of batter Jimmy Dugan in the second inning. Edde’s nasty sinker that caught Dugan trembling like a little bitch and peeing his pants was his first for the season. With Edde’s departure for the summer to scout internationally for the Gardeners in Europe, going out with a strikeout and two shutout innings was a fitting accomplishment.

He also batted 2-for-3 with an RBI at the plate, accounting for one of the two non-Besse home run RBIs for the Gardeners.

Karma had it in for the Gardeners from the beginning. In the first three innings, the Gardeners hit into inning-ending double plays each time.

Three straight innings ending in double plays. Which is insane. The balls were hit hard – simply right to the Wasabis’ fielders, allowing them to turn the double plays that much quicker.

To put the double plays in context, in 128 games before Tuesday, the Gardeners had hit into a total of 31 double plays, an average of one double play every four games, or one roughly every 28 innings.

They hit into three in three straight innings on Tuesday.

Thus, thanks to the double plays, the Gardeners scored a total of one run in the first three innings, on a bases loaded sacrifice fly by Edde that scored Hirsch from third in the third inning.

The opponent Wasabis in the first three innings put up ten runs to take a 10-1 lead into the fourth. The Gardeners then loaded the bases yet didn’t score in the top of the fourth, shut down the Wasabis in the bottom half to keep the momentum tamed, then stranded runners on first and third in the fifth. Thus, five runners were left stranded combined in innings four and five. The double plays in the first through third all occurred with a runner on second or third each time as well. Therefore, in the first five innings, the Gardeners left eight runners on base. In total, the Gardeners put 13 runners on base in the first five innings; only two scored.

Left fielder Dan Ewbank had singled in Edde with two outs in the fifth to cut it to 10-2, yet the Wasabis in the bottom half erupted for seven runs to put them ahead 17-2. The Gardeners put up a 1-2-3 sixth offensively, shut down the Wasabis thanks to two catches in right center by Donner, yet still were looking at the 15-run deficit heading into the last inning.

Not to go down without a fight, with two outs Besse knocked his three-run homer into the trees in right to provide the briefest spark for the Gardeners. The shot cut the Gardeners’ total run differential from negative-30 to negative-27 runs this season (losses of 4-16, 8-11, and 5-17 adding to a negative-27 run differential). Which is not too hot. Unlike Nia Long, who is unlike the Gardeners and actually is hot. Yet she’s still untapped, standing all cardboard-y and fully clothed in the Gardeners’ desolate locker room.

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Stat of the Week:

5-4-3-2-1:

5………Straight Gardeners’ losses
4………Straight games scoring less than ten runs
3………Hits promised by Phil Zackler for Tuesday’s game. The promise was made to Glide Memorial, Mark Zuckerberg, and to little Jimmy in the hospital
2………Hits by Phil Zackler Tuesday
1………Crying little boy named Jimmy

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6/16/2016

Whelp, at least they’re trending upward.

On Tuesday night the Savage Gardeners showed a little more life in their bats than their previous two outings yet still fell short of victory for the third game in a row. At KKU Field, The Legends – arguably the best team in the vaunted O.Co San Francisco Municipal Slow-Pitch Moscone/Jackson Incorporated CC Division – beat the Gardeners 11-8 on a windy evening that limited second baseman Phil Zackler’s bombs to left field.

Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde once again proved his worth on the mound, holding the Legends scoreless in the fourth through sixth innings. The defense assisted him in making quality stops behind him as well. In addition, catcher Dane Dobrinich toughed it out squatting behind the plate with an aggravated calf, yet the injury didn’t hamper him from calling a majority of curveballs to take advantage of the heavy wind blowing in from left field.

The wind hampered a few of the Gardeners’ at-bats, as they produced a fair share of lazy fly balls for easy, wasted outs. The Legends’ outfielders made a few lucky shoestring catches as well. One dropping here or there would’ve changed the game, as it seems they made a couple of their lucky catches when the Gardeners threatened rallies with runners in scoring position.

Zackler is always in scoring position – if we’re talking Tinder dates and sexual aura – yet on Tuesday at the plate he fell short. We at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) only mention this because we’ve run the data and we’re trying to advise the team on helping Zackler’s swing.

On Sunday a couple Gardeners were found at their Spring Training complex in Peoria taking extra batting practice. Zackler was one of them. And he practiced an inside-out hit-to-center-and-to-right swing that connected well and portended to produce multiple hits for Tuesday. He even cranked a few over the wall in right at the batting practice field.

So in his first at-bat, leading off the second inning, Zackler dug in, remembered what he practiced on Sunday, and…………..lifted a flyout to left field. The swing looked exactly like Zackler’s flyout to left swing – wide stance and a scooping swing, lifting the ball nicely as a gift to the left fielder. So the batting practice session went well – it was like teaching a child to stop touching the hot stove. Then the child touches the stove again.

In the film room following the game, it was pointed out that Zackler’s wide stance was reminiscent of Jeff Bagwell’s in his prime. Thus, a solution could be to tighten his stance. Or do steroids like Bagwell has sometimes been accused of doing. Which, in an Internet search using the Google search bar in the middle of the Internet page, finds no concrete proof of his doing so. So we at USASSY will keep our high respect and admiration for Bagwell, because he was the shit. So if steroids aren’t the solution, maybe Zackler can tighten his stance, or swing inside-out to center and right. Or preserve the status quo and just keep flying out.

We at USASSY don’t believe in negative news, disrespecting players, talking about outs, or even Santa Claus. Yet something needs to happen for the Gardeners to stop doing what they’re doing (hint: losing) and wake themselves up. They are in a three-game losing streak, have scored 16 runs and batted .362 in their last 21 innings, haven’t scored more than three runs in an inning in three games, have their pets’ heads falling off again, and the cardboard cutout of Nia Long in the locker room is still fully untapped and hence fully clothed. (Long is the Gardeners’ owner; every time the Gardeners win, they’ll peel a section from the cardboard cutout of her standing in the locker room.)

Despite giving up two runs to the visiting Legends in the top of the first, the Gardeners bounced back with two of their own, left center fielder Ari Hersher’s and Edde’s getting on base then scoring later in the inning. The Legends bounced back for four more in the second, yet a heads up play from left fielder Dan Ewbank quelled the rally.

With no outs and runners on first and third, slugger Scotty Smalls at the plate lifted a short fly ball to left field. Ewbank battled the wind, hustled in, and with momentum carrying him forward, caught the fly ball and quickly rifled a throw to Dobrinich at home plate with runner Benny Rodriguez’ attempting to tag from third. The throw was COMPLETELY on point, Dobrinich’s catching the laser and making the tag in one swift motion to complete the impeccable left-to-catcher 7-2 double play. The crowd of 41,915 at KKU Field jumped to their feet in a raucous standing ovation and hella chicks took their tops off and threw their bras at Ewbank and Dobrinich. If runner on first Ham Porter had tried tagging to second on the play, the Gardeners would’ve easily gunned him down for their first triple play in history. Alas, after watching Dobrinich throw out Squints Palledorous trying to steal second in the first inning, Porter decided not to try his luck tagging to second.

The play easily earned the “O-O-O-O’Reilly’s……..Auto Parts Defensive Play of the Game.”

Losing 6-2, the Gardeners decided to not score in the second inning then give up two runs in the third to go down 8-2. Right fielder Alan Donner singled in Edde for a run in the third to cut it to 8-3 after three.

Then for the next three innings Edde completely dominated the Legends’ batters. He pitched a Bumgarner-like easy three-up, three-down inning in the top of the fourth, goading a lineout to Zackler at second, a groundout to Dan Gatta at third base, and a flyout to Donner in right.

Donner – moved from his natural infield positions to right field for the matchup – caught five fly balls for the evening, easily claiming the title of “Sponsored by Tesla Winner for Defensive Most Outs Made in a June 14th Softball Game at 8:50pm Against the Legends” for the evening. He received a Tesla for his efforts, which he and his Gardeners teammates bashed to pieces with their bats after the game in their annual clothes-optional charity car bash in the Marina Safeway parking lot.

After the 1-2-3 inning defensively, the Gardeners ran into the dugout then turned immediately around and ran straight back out to the field after they produced their own 1-2-3 inning at the plate.

However, they found themselves back in the dugout soon enough as Edde shut down the Legends in four batters in the top of the fifth.

Thus, the momentum was clearly favoring the Gardeners – two straight shutout innings defensively – and their bats were saying, “Jesus let’s fucking go, we are literally handing the keys of momentum to you and saying crush the shit out of these balls now.” Kind of like a girl standing completely naked in front of you, literally throwing herself at you. All signs are pointing to you to take advantage of the situation.

Yet the Gardeners sort of microwaved their TV dinner first and flipped on the TV instead, completely oblivious to the begging female lusting four feet away. They finally got the hint and scored two runs – Hersher’s and Edde’s scoring on a double by right center fielder Dave Watters and a single by shortstop J.J. Warren, respectively, to cut the deficit to 8-5. Warren was subsequently doubled off first base like a fucking idiot on Donner’s liner to shortstop, putting a dead stop to the Gardeners’ rally, especially with Ewbank coming to the plate.

Edde and the Gardeners did it again in the top of the sixth, as in, they produced ANOTHER SHUTOUT INNING defensively, their third in a row. Their bats were literally screaming now, “WE CAN’T GIVE YOU ANY MORE SIGNS, IT’S TIME TO FUCKING TAKE THE REINS AND DOMINATE. THE MOMENTUM IS SO HARD ON YOUR SIDE WE DON’T REALLY KNOW WHAT ELSE TO SAY TO YOU.”

For an analogy, it’d be like the naked female from above literally jumping on you, then five of her hot friends jumping on you naked, then Mila Kunis jumps on you naked, then Scarlett Johansson jumps on you naked, then Shannon Elizabeth jumps on you naked, then Jennifer Love Hewitt jumps on you naked, then Michelle Rodriguez jumps on you naked, then Megan Fox jumps on you naked, then Neve Campbell and Denise Richards stop making out and jump on you naked, yet you’re like, “Uhhhhhh, but I’m eating mac ‘n cheese and Wheel of Fortune is on. I wanna watch it!”

In other words, you’re not taking advantage of the prime situation literally slapping you in the face.

The Gardeners in the bottom of the sixth finally got the hint of their bats’ screaming at them to be used to their advantage. Down three runs, Ewbank, Gatta, and Dobrinich all singled, bringing up first baseman Deacon Steve Smith with the bases loaded and one out.

And the new Deac dizz dawg came through with a sharp single to left to score Ewbank and cut it to 8-6. With the bases still loaded, Hersher walked, allowing Gatta to score, then Edde sacrifice-flied in Dobrinich from third to tie the game at 8-8. Technically it was pinch runner Zackler’s scoring for Dobrinich from third, since Dobrinich’s injury limited him from running the base paths. And Zackler was the designated runner because the rule states that the last out has to be the pinch runner. And because Zackler kept going back to his scoop-upward-fly-out swing instead of using what he learned in Sunday’s batting practice, Zackler, yes, had been the most recent out.

Tied going into the seventh, all the Gardeners had to do was lock it down like Zackler on a first Bumble date and they’d be set. Painfully though, despite Gatta’s snag of a 100mph screaming liner for the first out, the Legends bounced three runs across to take an 11-8 lead into the bottom of the seventh, the Gardeners’ last chance to rally.

Warren’s leading off led the rally charge by flying out to right like a dumbass and ultimately the Gardeners couldn’t score at all in the inning, watching the clock tick 0:00 for their second defeat this season.

The Gardeners now stand at 0-2, the second time in their 14-season history they’ve started with such a shitty record. With six games left in the regular season, plus the two playoff victories, the Gardeners however are already predicted to go 8-0 for the rest of the season; Vegas is pricing their odds at minus-220 that it occurs. They get right fielder Tristan Besse back next week and have made Alan from the "Hangover"-like blood oaths - slicing their hands with knives to pour forth blood for the oath - to win every game henceforth. Yet, still, Nia Long’s cutout still has her clothes on.

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Stat of the Week:

94%.........Percentage of Phil Zackler’s career outs that have gone to the left side (3B, SS, LF, LC) of the infield or outfield

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6/08/2016

After last season’s disastrous 18-4 loss to the Flatliners in the Final Four, the Savage Gardeners as a team vowed to pick up their bats and focus on hitting and crushing balls, babes, and box for the summer season.

And with the NFL scheduling the Gardeners’ playing against the nemesis Flatliners as the opening game of the season on national television, the Gardeners were revved up to show off their new approach to the plate.

Yet none of that happened Tuesday night at KKU Field. The Gardeners matched their playoff loss run total with four runs in seven innings, losing once again to the Flatliners – last season’s champions – 16-4 in another sluggish output at the plate.

Thus, in their last two games, the Gardeners have scored eight runs total in 14 innings.

In comparison, two games ago against the SF Seals, they scored eight runs in the third inning alone.

“Nothing is working right now. Not our bats. Not our confidence. Not our sickness. Not these ED pills I’m taking,” Manager J.J. Warren stated in his office in the locker room after the game as he switched off between watching film of Tuesday’s game on one TV and the movie “Mean Girls” on the other TV for quick laughs and comic relief oh Karen you’re so funny and ditzy. “We’ve got to change something. To boost team morale, I’m bringing in a cardboard cutout of our female team owner Nia Long......and every time we win......we peel a section.”

[Aside: We only mention Nia Long because we just learned about her today and she’s hot as fuck. So, naturally, now she's the Gardeners' owner.]

However, winning has been nonexistent for the Gardeners recently. They are 0-3 in their last three games, getting outscored 54-27 in the process – scoring only one run per their opponents’ every two.

In the summer season opener, the visiting team Gardeners struggled once again in one of the key aspects of the game………as in, hitting. For the game they batted 12-for-33 (.364), their second straight game of sub-.400 hitting. Third baseman Dave Watters is the only player who batted above .500 for the game (4-for-4). He carried the team Atlas-like on his shoulders in the stats columns with a homer, double, and two singles.

The main issue was the Gardeners’ flying out too many times. They flew out 14 times – two-thirds of their 21 total outs – 11 to the outfield and three to the infield. Eight of those flyouts went to the left center fielder in mostly easy fly balls.

They also succeeded in making back-to-back outs quite often. The Gardeners made outs one and two back-to-back in five of seven innings. They had back-to-back hits only twice, never stringing together three hits in a row. Essentially, all attempts at getting sick were stifled after one cough, maybe a second.

In sum, their last two games – both against the Flatliners – have been complete bombs: a total of eight runs in fourteen innings with a whopping .339 team batting average. Maybe they’re eating too many carbs and are sluggish.

Maybe they’re crushing the gym too much and their muscles are worn out.

Maybe they’re having too much sex with models and are playing with oxytocin-induced I just wanna close my eyes for a sec and pass out now sleepy brains.

Whatever the case - they’re in trouble. Attendance is down, sponsors are pulling out, fans are losing hope, babies are crying, our pets’ heads are falling off, and there are rumors of management’s moving the team to Siberia after the season.

Or maybe they can rebound. They can’t have ANYONE FREAK OUT OUT THERE OKAY? THEY’VE GOTTA KEEP THEIR COMPOSURE...... ...THEY’VE COME TOO FAR......THERE’S TOO MUCH TO LOSE......THEY’VE GOTTA......KEEP THEIR COMPOSURE.

Watters kept his composure out there with his 4-for-4 night and milestone 70th career homer, tying him with Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds as the only three players to reach 70 homers. McGwire took 155 games to do so, Bonds took 150. Watters? Only 108 games. It also took McGwire 681 plate appearances to hit 70 and 654 for Bonds. Watters again? – 471. Thus, Watters has done his home run duty in roughly 1/3 less the time it took the two other dudes to achieve their feats. He now averages 6.8 plate appearances per home run. [For comparison: McGwire 13.1, Bonds 16.5, Eric Sogard 166.4]

Plate appearances per home run were nonexistent however for the Gardeners’ bats Tuesday save for Watters’ blast. The Gardeners didn’t score in the first three innings until Watters ended that with home run #70 to lead off the fourth. Left fielder Dan Ewbank doubled then later scored in the inning for the Gardeners’ second run, and despite only scoring two runs through four innings, the Gardeners were only looking at a 6-2 deficit heading into the fifth. That’s because Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde and catcher Phil Zackler behind the plate were dialed in together for the first four innings, producing easy three-up, three-down innings in both the second and fourth. The Flatliners scored only one run in the first inning yet despite peppering in five runs in the third the score was only 6-2 after four.

Thus the Gardeners were in the ballgame, as Edde really was PUTTING SOME PEPPER ON IT on the mound, according to the advice of the wise bearded man screaming from the stands. In the first four innings, Edde goaded three groundouts to himself – the best outs defensively because they usually end up being the easiest outs because no one else in the field has to do anything except watch Edde casually jog over to first baseman Jim Mitchell and underhand toss him the ball.

Watters at third base also PUT SOME PEPPER ON IT by adding a highlight catch in foul territory in the third inning, keeping one foot inbounds (inside the dead-ball line) college football rules-style for the first out of the inning.

So through four innings Edde had kept the Gardeners in the game with his pitching despite the lack of run support at the plate. Nevertheless, the Gardeners went scoreless again in the fifth…and the sixth…while the Flatliners poured on five runs in each inning to take a 11-2 lead after five and a 16-2 lead after six.

Zackler and right center fielder Jason Friedman led an attempted comeback rally in the top of the seventh with a leadoff single and double, respectively, yet despite these first two batters’ efforts to light shit on fire, the Gardeners only managed two more hits in the inning (singles by left center fielder Ari Hersher and Watters) and could only push two runs across in Zackler and Friedman. Thus, the 16-4 loss came to an abrupt end and the Gardeners went home scratching their heads in disbelief at their lack of hitting once again.

On a positive note, the Gardeners finally saw a Garden Hoe show up in the form of Meredith Watters, her first time watching the studs this year. And once again we at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) have to point this out – the lack of Garden Hoes at games seems to predict a lack of hitting as well. In fact, the numbers show a highly positive correlation between the Gardeners’ winning on a given night and the number of Garden Hoes present.

We at USASSY don’t actually have data on that, yet you get the point about females in attendance – no Hoes drinking zins, no Gardeners wins.

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Stat of the Week:

.222 (4-for-18)………Gardeners’ batting average the last two games with one out
.316 (6-for-19)………Gardeners’ batting average the last two games with two outs
.270 (10-for-37)………Gardeners’ combined batting average the last two games with one or two outs

Yikes.

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5/21/2016

flat•line (verb):
1. To come to an end
2. To be in a state of no progress or advancement
3. To register on an electronic monitor as having no brain waves or heartbeat

The Savage Gardeners’ playoff semifinal game Tuesday evening accurately could be described by the definitions of the word “flatline” above, not coincidentally the moniker of their opponent in the game.

Their season flatlined (definition #1 – came to an end) very rapidly early on in the 18-4 loss to the Flatliners at Steven Jackson Memorial Field. Under current management, the path of the team seems to be flatlining (#2 – being in a state of no progress or advancement). Definition #2 could also be applied to their inability to move runners on base around (no advancement). And definition #3 (having no heartbeat) easily applied to the general feeling of their bats and output as well as their manager (having no brain waves).

In essence, the Gardeners’ quest for their first championship in 13 seasons flatlined in multiple ways and meanings as they, for the 12th season, failed to move forward in the playoffs to a championship game. The Flatliners simply got hits and took extra bases when they could, nothing the Gardeners could do to prevent.

Yet with high hopes and aspirations on a warm Tuesday night, the Gardeners came to play and battle their way into the CC Division Championship Game and into immortality like the 12 Olympian Gods. With ten players Tuesday, the other two to fill the Greek thrones would’ve been up to only a minor debate. An absent Dan Ewbank would’ve definitely filled one spot; the other would’ve maybe been given to Alan Donner, yet by his scheduling something stupid on a Tuesday night instead of playing softball, the Gods committee was easily looking elsewhere. Possibly to an honorary member like Mark Lemke.

If any of this shit is making no sense at all, please excuse the USASSY (USA Softball Statistics Yearly) staff collaborating to write this. Half the staff was up late the last few nights crying miserably and drowning their sorrows by drinking heavily because of the Gardeners’ loss. The other half of the staff is currently doing heroin in the bathroom.

With a solid ten players against the Flatliners – whom the Gardeners had beat 23-18 in the regular season – the Gardeners looked to get many at-bats, turning the lineup over and over for a slew of hits and runs.

Yet almost the opposite happened. Each Gardener only batted three times in the game (left center fielder Ari Hersher is the only player who batted four times. The Gardeners’ players usually average four to six at-bats per player per game). Thus, the math comes to 31 plate appearances on Tuesday. Then factor in 21 total outs (seven innings times three outs per inning). Tally up the hits (nine) and walks (two), and the Gardeners batted 9-for-29 for the game, a crushing .310 average. Yes, in Major League Baseball a .310 average gets you an All-Star nod. In softball it gets you another failed season.

As a comparison, until this game, the Gardeners were batting .626 as a team for the season, over twice as good.

And looking back at the Gardeners’ history, the poorest the Gardeners have ever batted in a game was………

Tuesday night!

The closest they came to matching Tuesday’s .310 game average was the summer 2010 playoffs when they batted .333 in a 14-2 loss. Yet at least on Tuesday they doubled that score by scoring four runs, versus two on that miserable night. And also when they die………on their deathbeds………they will receive total consciousness. So they have that going for them. Which is nice.

We at USASSY are only pointing out these shitty numbers to give context to the loss to the Flatliners. Batting .310 doesn’t usually cut it.

To finally end this negativity, we’re going to list the number of batters each inning the Gardeners brought to the plate:

1st inning – 3
2nd – 5
3rd – 4
4th – 4
5th – 7
6th – 4
7th – 4

In summary, the Gardeners had one three-up, three-down inning, and four innings with only one batter reaching base. In those five innings combined, the Gardeners batted 3-for-17 (.176).

Yet the poor batting didn’t hurt the Gardeners initially. After a scoreless top of the first at the plate, they and Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde turned it on the Flatliners by shutting them down as well, with back-from-the-DL second baseman Dane Dobrinich throwing himself straight back into the fire by making all three putouts for the inning on grounders.

Left fielder Pat Reilly tripled to right to lead off the second, then scored on third baseman Dan Gatta’s RBI single to left for the Gardeners’ first run.

The Flatliners slashed back two two-out runs in the second to take a 2-1 lead, shut down the Gardeners in the third, scored two more in their half, shut down the Gardeners again in the fourth, then scored two more again to take a 6-1 lead into the top of the fifth.

Thus, through four innings, the Gardeners had scored one run and were batting 4-for-16 (.250). That’s when spring 2013 home run champion Phil Zackler decided to change the tempo.

After back-to-back singles by the middle infield of Dobrinich and shortstop Brian Williams to lead off the inning, the catcher Zackler stepped up to the plate looking to atone for his flyout in the third inning. This time he laced a liner to left field that skipped past left fielder Darren Daulton and into the valley of deep left field. Dobrinich and Williams coasted home easily while Zackler turned on his Chinese jet-lagged wheels and rounded all four bases for a homer, his first of the season and first since (gulp)…………that spring 2013 season.

This only bodes well for the summer 2016 season though – Zackler's rolling that momentum, power, and confidence into next season, where the Gardeners are predicted to do the same as always: lose in the semifinals.

This is a disaster as there really is no positivity whatsoever in this USASSY office today. Heroin really is a downer. Lotta solo pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream being eaten too. This office is kind of like Valentine’s Day for single girls – “Yeah let’s have a girls night - we don’t need guys! Wine and brie cheese and watching 'The Notebook' at Kristen’s house! OMG guys are like so dumb, cheers to girls!......(Three glasses of wine and 43 minutes later, cue incessant sobbing noises)......WAAAHHHH I’M SO LONELY AND DEPRESSED WHY DOES NO GUY LIKE ME?!?!?!?!”

Zackler’s donger brought the Gardeners’ run total to four – where they maxxed out for the game. As Zackler stated after the game as he shaved in front of the mirror while facing media questions, “If you would’ve told me before the game that I’d contribute 75% of the Gardeners’ RBIs tonight I would’ve laughed and said, ‘You’re fucking kidding me, that’d be a joke. If you said it’d be Dave Watters (contributing 75% of the Gardeners’ runs) then yeah I’d say that sounds right.’”

Whelp, it was Zackler. And he contributed 75% of the Gardeners’ runs. It only happened that 75% on Tuesday amounted to three runs total.

And speaking of maxxed out, Gatta benched 650lbs the other day, no big deal.

This also may be the first time that USASSY has used an actual, truthful quote (Zackler's above) in this newspaper. As in, he actually said that. Apparently USASSY has been accused of making up quotes attributed to players. Yeah, and Grizzly Adams had a beard.

After Zackler and the Gardeners pulled it within two at 6-4, the Flatliners’ bats came alive. They knocked around seven runs in the bottom of the fifth to take a 13-4 lead, shut down the Gardeners in the sixth, then piled on five more to lead 18-4 heading into the seventh. A 14-run rally wasn’t in the cards for the Gardeners in their last at-bats, as a single by first baseman Jim Mitchell was the only hitting damage done before the game ended with the defeat.

Edde finished the regular season on the mound with decent numbers Tuesday, if you take out the seven-run fifth inning when the Flatliners couldn’t seem to stop getting hits. Erase that inning and he gave up only 11 runs in five innings (2.2 runs/inning). Take out the five-run sixth and it's six runs in four innings (1.5 runs/inning). This in a league where 2.5 runs scored per inning is a rough average.

Watters also overall for the season put up strong numbers, with an absurd 74% of his hits' being extra-base hits. Out of 23 hits this season, only six were singles (the other 17: six doubles, three triples, eight homers). He also produced the sixth best hitting season in Gardeners' history and now has five of the top ten hitting seasons in Gardeners' history.

When the Flatliners hit into outs, they did it consistently, with Dobrinich at second base contributing for eight of the 18 putouts, either on grounders, fly balls, or catching force plays at second. He and Williams at short combined for four force plays at second, Edde made a dashing scramble and throw to first on a two-out bunt in the fourth inning, and right fielder Tristan Besse made two key catches in right – one on a tailing liner in the second inning and another by finding the fence behind him with his left hand and making the catch with his right for out number three in the third.

Otherwise, the Flatliners hit well, the Gardeners didn’t, and your mom goes to college.

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Stat of the Week:

8………Times a Gardeners’ runner reached second base on Tuesday. Take out the four runs scored………only four other runners reached second base.

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SPRING 2016 SEASON RECAP

Players of the Game:

Week 1 (W, 20-16): Dan Ewbank – 5/5, HR, 4 1B, 5 RBI
Week 2 (W, 15-12): Dave Watters – 3/4, HR, 2B, 1B, 3 RBI
Week 3 (W, 41-6):
Brian Williams (co) – 5/5, 3B, 2B, 3 1B, 4 Runs, 7 RBI, 7 Putouts at SS
Dave Watters (co) – 5/6, 2 HR, 2 2B, 1B, 4 Runs, 8 RBI
Week 4 (L, 22-35):
Alan Donner (co) – 4/5, HR, 2B, 2 1B, 3 RBI
Jim Mitchell (co) – 4/5, HR, 2B, 2 1B, 3 RBI
Week 5 (W, 23-18): Dave Watters – 3/5, HR, 2 3B, 4 Runs, 4 RBI
Week 6 (L, 14-30):
Dave Watters (co) – 1/2, HR, 5 RBI, 2 SAC
Dan Ewbank (co) – 3/4, 2 3B, 1B, 2 Runs, 2 RBI
Week 7 (W, 22-10):
Pat Reilly (co) – 4/4, HR, 3 1B, 3 Runs, 4 RBI
Mike Edde (co) – 4/5, 3B, 2B, 2 1B, 2 RBI; Pitching – W, 7 IP, 4 Shutout Innings
Week 8 (L, 19-20): Dave Watters – 3/4, 2 3-Run HR, 1B, 3 Runs, 7 RBI

Spring 2016 Season Stats - New Entries to the Gardeners’ Single Season Leaderboard (Through 13 Total Gardeners Seasons):

Slugging Percentage (SLG)
4th in Gardeners’ history – Dave Watters (1.735)

On-Base Percentage (OBP)
5th – Ari Hersher (.784)

On-Base Plus Slugging (OPS)
5th – Dave Watters (2.402)

Runs
5th (tie) – Ari Hersher (22)

Triples
4th (tie) – Dave Watters (3) and Dan Ewbank (3)

Home Runs
3rd (tie) – Dave Watters (8)

Walks
3rd – Ari Hersher (7)

RBI
3rd – Dave Watters (32)
10th – Tristan Besse (26)

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5/05/2016

With a nine-man team at Steven Jackson Memorial Field, the Savage Gardeners played an impressively strong battle against the SF Seals Tuesday evening. Yet a bottom of the seventh, two-out, two-RBI, game-winning single by Seals’ batter Andy Ashby ended the Gardeners’ valiant fight and sent them home waiting for Selection Sunday to learn of their postseason fate.

According to Jeff Sagarin and the Gardeners’ RPI ratings, despite the 20-19 loss the Gardeners have already clinched the playoffs. They simply fumbled their chance at locking in the #2 seed and a home matchup at Steven Jackson Memorial Field. Now they’ll sit as a team on Selection Sunday in the team’s meeting room watching CBS’ Seth Davis, Clark Kellogg, and Doug Gottlieb announce their opponent, ranking, and game location. With crossed fingers the team doesn’t want to be in the Midwest bracket and have to play in Des Moines in the early Thursday 9AM game.

Luckily for the Gardeners? None of this seeding or ranking or opponent or travel bothers them. In fact, nothing bothers them, like that time second baseman Alan Donner and catcher Phil Zackler were attacked by horny blonde Fembots in China and were able to keep their mojos intact. Like that time Dave Watters hit on a soft 18 (Ace-7) against a dealer ten on a $1,000 blackjack hand and got dealt a three for 21. Like that time in 2016 when the Cubs won the World Series and shortstop Brian Williams went apeshit and went missing/partying in the bars of Wrigleyville for five days.

In short, the Gardeners - no matter what - act stone-faced in the face of the temptress Adversity, that little bitch.

On Tuesday the Gardeners did everything right. They were losing and they came back multiple times. They took advantage of the unlimited homers over the fence in right, with Watters' knocking two over the fences. They turned a double play. They had a 1-2-3 inning defensively. They erupted for a nine-run inning.

Yet in the end, they fell short. You could blame it on poor coaching in that their manager interrupted Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde’s flow in the seventh by taking a quick timeout to discuss a poorly-advised strategy: potentially walking the number-ten hitter to load the bases for the leadoff guy. Really?

Otherwise, the Gardeners held their own with only three men in the outfield chasing everything down. The trio of Watters in left, Ari Hersher in center, and Tristan Besse in right made the cutoffs and catches on balls to the best of their ranges, with ease covering the vast manse of the Steven Jackson outfield grass.

At the plate, the trio – who bat one, two, three in the lineup (in the order of Hersher, Besse, Watters) – ran the gamut in their combined 18 plate appearances: 10-for-14 (.714 average), two homers, one triple, one double, six singles, two walks, two sacrifice flies, 13 RBIs, and nine runs.

Throw in the batter at the bottom of the lineup – Zackler, who batted ninth and turned the lineup over to the leadoff batter Hersher – and you’re adding four more hits, four more runs, and two more RBIs, bringing the quartet’s total number of RBIs to 15, 78% of the Gardeners’ 19 runs.

“I get to be included in the trio as a fourth member of the Three Musketeers?” Zackler commented after the game. “Call me D’Artagnan then. D’Artagnannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!”

Things got weirder when Zackler tossed aside the catcher’s mask and insisted on wearing a feathered cap for the rest of the game.

In short on Tuesday, the handicapped Gardeners put together almost a complete game. As the game progressed, they did the following:

Went down by five (1-6 score)
Went up by four (10-6)
Went down by one (13-14)
Went up by two (16-14)
Went down by one (16-17)
Went up by two (19-17)
Then lost by one in a walkoff (19-20)

The game was a seesaw battle all night, reminiscent of the structure in Jackson Playground on which two kids played that was almost hit by Watters on his second bash over the fence.

As the visiting team, the Gardeners went quiet in the first inning and only scored one through two innings, after third baseman Dan Gatta doubled down the line in left, moved to third on Donner’s single, then scored on a Williams single. The Seals scored three runs both in the first and second inning to take a 6-1 lead after two. In fact, the Seals scored three runs each in five of their seven innings. The Gardeners also scored three runs exactly in three of their innings. Thus, exactly three runs were scored in eight of the 14 total batting innings. Which is a completely meaningless stat yet still kind of weird.

Williams, Donner, and first baseman Jim Mitchell combined for a 6-4-3 double play in the second – the second straight game with a Gardeners’ double play, both started by Williams – if only to arouse the thousands of female fans in attendance.

Down 6-1 heading into the top of the third, the Gardeners finally decided to heat the bats up using sticks and flint, like the Indians the white men relocated in the Trail of Tears. Besse’s leadoff double to left center followed by Watters’ single to right center scored Besse to give the Gardeners the first push of momentum. Six singles in the next seven batters did the trick – Edde, Gatta, Donner, Zackler, Hersher, then Besse again all hitting one-baggers to push a total of five runs across and put the Gardeners up 7-6 with Watters’ soon stepping to the plate. Three of the singles came clutch with two outs.

Finally taking advantage of the short porch in right, Watters then launched a three-run shot into the upper deck in right to make it 10-6. The homer easily earned him the Kelly Evans CNBC Hot Drive of the Game Award, as it was the first homer the Gardeners hit over a fence all season. Granted, they only played one other game at a field with a short fence (at Stu Jackson Ballpark in Week Five), yet it still had been a while, sort of like a team slumpbuster.

The Gardeners kept the good feelings jiving by posting a quick 1-2-3 defensive inning in the bottom of the third. They then put it on themselves in the fourth by doing the same however: three-up, three-down. The Seals capitalized and scored three to bring it to 10-9. The Gardeners pushed back with their three runs, Watters déjà vuing it with another three-run bomb over the fence, this one over the right center wall over the seesaw and into the Gordon Biersch concession stand.

The Seals roared back for a five-run bottom of the fifth to regain the lead at 14-13. And the seesaw continued.

The top of the sixth saw a one-out rally started by Zackler’s and Hersher’s singles, followed by a Kirk Gibson-esque triple to right center by Besse to put the Gardeners ahead at 15-14. We say Kirk Gibson-esque because Besse had twisted his hamstring earlier in the game, and thus was limping around the bases like that shitty homer (because it was against the A’s) by Gibson in the 1988 World Series. Hersher then came in to pinch run for Besse at third and soon scored his second run of the inning, on a fielder’s choice by Mitchell. This was the first time ever that the same runner had scored back-to-back runs in an inning, a remarkable first in the history of baseball dating all the way back to the 800s when Charlemagne and the Franks invented baseball by swatting a conquered Spanish pig’s head with a jousting lance.

Holding a two-run lead in the bottom of the sixth, the Gardeners couldn’t keep the Seals from scoring their typical three runs that gave the enemy the lead back at 17-16. Yet after they had scored their three runs, Zackler at catcher stopped any further damage by performing the Rockford Peaches Gene Davis Scottie Hinson Defensive Play of the Game on a popup by batter Archi Cianfrocco.

With one out, three runs across, a runner on second and the Seals’ threatening for more, Cianfrocco popped one up twenty feet to the left of home plate in fair territory down the third base line. Zackler popped out of his stance like Scottie Hinson, tossed his catcher’s mask to a curvaceous screaming damsel in the stands behind the dugout, raced down the third base line, fought the blowing San Francisco winds, then made a spinning, reaching grab of the popup to quash the momentum and preserve any extra outs given to the Seals.

As a side note, the damsel who caught Zackler’s mask wouldn’t give up her treasure until Zackler promised to have sex with her on a mechanical horse wearing a wizard suit after the game, which Zackler graciously did with ease and flair like his Wilt Chamberlain-esque prowess and reputation afforded him.

Edde easily got next batter Phil Plantier to line out to Williams at short for the third out, leading the Gardeners into the dugout for their last at-bats in the top of the seventh, needing only one run to tie, two to take the lead.

And they did so the best way possible – by simply getting on base and moving runners station to station. Donner started the inning with a single. Williams singled him to second. Zackler tied it up with a lined single to left to score Donner.

With the score knotted at 17-17 and Williams on second and Zackler on first, Hersher up next strategically lifted a flyout to right field, caught by right fielder Andy Benes. Zackler then decided to tag from first with Williams still on second. This thoroughly confused the Seals’ defense, as Benes compensated by throwing to third baseman Derek Bell, who then hurriedly threw back to second to try and get Zackler in a rundown. Yet Bell’s throw skipped past second and back into right field, allowing Williams to scamper around third then to home to score and give the Gardeners the lead at 18-17. Zackler cruised to third on the play.

In essence, a sacrifice fly executed to a tee.

Besse then sac-flied in Zackler from third to make it 19-17.

The Seals got out of the inning then came to their final at-bats looking to crush the Gardeners’ dreams, starting with leadoff batter Doug Brocail stretching a hit to left from a single to a double. Yet Brocail underestimated Watters’ arm in left, Zackler’s tagging ability at second, and ultimately the location of second base. Brocail stepped off the bag at second for a split second, Zackler tagged him right at that moment, and the Gardeners had their first out of the inning. Two to go.

Nevertheless, the Seals had other plans. They scored one to cut it to 19-18 then put runners on second and third with two outs. Manager J.J. Warren then decided mid-batter to bring up the topic of walking the current batter, the Seals’ tenth batter, to load the bases for a potential easy force out at any base since the winning run was already on second. This bonehead pause interrupted Edde’s flow on the mound, the tenth batter ended up walking, then the Seals’ next batter Ashby singled to left to score the game-tying and game-winning runs, sending the Gardeners home in defeat, 20-19.

The loss hurt the Gardeners because they now rest their playoff seeding on the result of the Seals-Flatiners matchup next Tuesday, when the Gardeners will have a Tuesday night off to get healthy (Besse), sex the Chinawomen (Donner, Zackler), be an actual gardener (Watters), or be a dad and admire his .832 DOBP (Hersher). Regardless of what they do, the Gardeners are prepared this time to win a playoff game. We at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) and Vegas bookmakers are setting the expectations low this year because in their history the Gardeners are 0-for-11 in having success in the postseason. They’ve won playoff games, yes, yet they’re overall 9-11 (.450) in postseason play. So the bar is set low for the Gardeners this season. All we can ask is for one game. Win just one. Or, as the late Al Davis said, “Just one, baby.”

Or maybe it was “Just win, baby.” Whatever. We don’t really care. The Raiders are going to move to Vegas soon enough and shit’s gonna start getting really weird in the NFL gambling world.

Yet all anyone cares about now is the Gardeners' winning in the playoffs: Just one, baby.

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Stat of the Week:

2………Playoff wins in the Gardeners’ last six seasons (2-6 playoff record overall).

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4/27/2016

The atmosphere differed slightly from last week for the Savage Gardeners – new field, cold weather, sweatpants, and onesies replacing KKU Field, the warm sun, Hawaiian shirts, and flippy-floppies.

At Lance Harbor Moscone Field Tuesday evening, the new environment didn’t shake the Gardeners as they played possibly their most complete game all season, handily defeating Ace Wasabi 22-10 in the late game.

With temperatures dropping to negative six degrees by first pitch, Gardeners fielders bundled up in sweats, hoodies, and those plaid wool badass ear-flap hunter hats as they took the field against the Wasabis. Yet the frozen temperatures didn’t turn their blood cold as their gloves and arms stayed warm, their bats started off hot, and the hot apple cider stand behind home plate filled with wistful Marina chicks attempting to catch the eyes of and babytrap your local heroes playing in the field.

With their ace – Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde – back on the mound after returning from the bayou on a trip to mentor the Gardeners’ single-A club, the New Orleans Pearl Jams, the Gardeners showed a fresh pep in their step as they took the field in the top of the first. And with battery-mate Phil Zackler calling pitches behind the plate, the 1-2 combo didn’t miss a beat, posting a shutout inning in the first, setting the game’s tone by mowing down three of Wasabis' first four batters.

Edde and first baseman Dane Dobrinich started the game aggressively by combining on a flashy defensive play. Leadoff batter Steve Sax decided to test Dobrinich’s prowess at first base by lining a grounder right at him. Dobrinich picked the bouncer, yet because of where it was hit, saw he was too far to run to the bag in time for the out. Enter Edde, automatically performing a fundamental movement we all learned as pitchers in Little League – run to cover first. The Gardeners pitcher was there just in time to catch the toss from Dobrinich to get Sax in a bam-bam fashion.

Dan Ewbank caught an easy flyball in left field for the second out while right fielder Tristan Besse made a key running catch for out number three.

This dominant start warmed the Gardeners’ bodies and the hearts of the 80,000 fans in attendance while also portending an auspicious start for the team at the plate. To lead off the Gardeners’ hitting, Besse flied out.

Wait………what?

Besse doesn’t get out. When we at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) crunched the numbers, we immediately discovered the problem – Besse had no runners in scoring position. As stated in last week’s recap, Besse for his career was batting 28-for-34 (.824) with runners in scoring position. So starting the game off with the bases empty for Besse was poor planning by Gardeners’ management.

With one out, the Gardeners then sent Bash Brothers Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire to the plate back-to-back.

And back-to-back bash they did, left center fielder Pat Reilly bashing a solo homer to right, then right center fielder Dave Watters bashing one to left. According to our database, both balls flew a combined 1,001 feet, marking the longest combined distance for back-to-back homers recorded since August 24, 1875, when Grover S. Grant and Ulysses Cleveland hit back-to-back homers 1,002 feet for the Akron Geometry Squares. [The Squares won the World Series that year, besting the Buffalo (Baseball) Bills, 1-0, in a best-of-one-game series, a 23-inning, complete game-by-both-pitchers battle.]

After the bashes, Ewbank kept up his hot bat by singling, Edde ripped a double down the left field line, then third baseman Dan Gatta (Gardeners 5-0 when he has played this season, 0-2 in his absence) lasered a shot to left to score them both and make the score 4-0.

Ewbank’s 3-for-4 night raised his batting average to .714 for the season.

Sober second baseman Alan Donner hit a single behind Gatta, then a fielder’s choice at second base put runners at the corners with two outs for Dobrinich. Dobrinich – who received a lot of action at first on multiple groundout throws from Brian Williams at shortstop – then roped a single to left to score Gatta from third. Dobrinich (3-for-4) knocked the ball hard in each of his at-bats while raising his season average to .632.

Zackler singled to left to score Williams hustling from second to push the Gardeners’ lead to 6-0, turning over the lineup to Besse, coming up for the second time that inning. This time around, the Gardeners were smart: they put runners in scoring position for the lefty. Now in a familiar position, Besse laced a two-RBI double to left center to make the score 8-0 and boost his career RISP average to .829 at the time.

For the night Besse went 3-for-4 with RISP (What? An out in there? It was brutal – a lined shot right to second base that would’ve easily scored Dobrinich from second). Despite the out, his career RISP batting average still stands at a whopping .816 (31-for-38). Essentially, eight out of every ten times with runners in scoring position, a run will score; a lefty hit will almost 100% of the time score a runner from second, not to mention always score a runner from third. Besse executes it with ease.

Reilly’s second of his four hits for the night scored Besse and after one inning the Gardeners sat pretty with a 9-0 lead.

The Wasabis rallied for five runs in the top of the second to cut their deficit to 9-5. Besides the 0-0 score to start the game, that was the closest they’d get to competing all night. The Gardeners were blanked in their at-bats, yet that didn’t faze Edde in the third as he mowed down the Wasabi hitters for the second of his four shutout innings for the evening, tying (with four) the number of shutout innings he’s had all season. Edde (5-0) now has a clear path to the Cy Young Award with one regular season game remaining; the Chicago Cubs’ Jake Arrieta (4-0) is the only other player who may come close to getting any first place votes. In short, Edde’s receiving the award is predicted to be unanimous.

Edde was helped in the inning by Williams at shortstop, who made a sprinting over-the-shoulder catch on a popup in short left field by batter Joey Cora for out number two.

The Gardeners cruised three runs across in the bottom of the third, led by Dobrinich’s second hard hit of the night, another single to left. Zackler’s Happy Gilmore-esque hop forward at the plate single behind Dobrinich put two on when Besse hit his aforementioned lineout that in any other ballpark goes for a base hit.

Reilly’s single and third RBI of the night scored Dobrinich from second; Watters followed after with an RBI single as well, Zackler’s scoring and Reilly’s moving to third. Ewbank’s sacrifice fly to that blonde surfer-looking dude in left center scored Reilly and after three the Gardeners led 12-5. On a related note, the Gardeners seemed to have that surfer dude’s number as he didn’t do much at the plate and the Gardeners dropped hits in front of him all night. The last two games he had been catching everything in sight and hitting the ball fairly well. Tuesday – nada.

The Wasabis’ fourth inning of batting saw more of the same – pure dominance by Edde on the mound. Zackler’s pitch calling of a couple changeups to fool Wasabis’ hitters didn’t go unnoticed. After each inning defensively, Zackler would rush downstairs into the clubhouse and into the film room to watch Wasabi batters’ at-bats to get a read and an edge on them. The film study paid off as the Wasabis didn’t get much going at the plate all night.

This was backed up by stellar defensive play by the Gardeners in the field, especially in clutch situations where they got key outs with runners on base. In the fourth, after scoring a run, the Wasabis put runners on first and second with one out, threatening a strong rally when batter Ron Karkovice lifted a lined flyball to Ewbank in left. The hard-hit ball popped out of Ewbank’s glove, yet the left fielder quickly made a huge heads-up play by firing to Gatta at third to get a force out of baserunner Tim Raines just in time. On the base paths nothing much changed – still runners on first and second, yet now two outs. Counter this with – without Ewbank’s heads-up decision – bases loaded, one out, and momentum clearly in the Wasabis’ favor. Edde then easily goaded a flout to Reilly in left center to get out of the inning, keeping the Gardeners up six at 12-6.

The Gardeners couldn’t score in their half of the fourth, yet it didn’t matter much with Edde on the mound – he forced a groundout to Gatta at third for the first out, Gatta’s making a leaping grab of the bouncer then patiently tossing to Dobrinich across the diamond. Wasabis’ next two batters singled, yet a flyout to Ewbank then groundout to Williams at short ended the threat.

Dobrinich in the bottom half hustled on a hit to left for a leadoff double, Zackler hit an infield single, then Besse as expected RISP’d through with a single to center to score Dobrinich. Reilly then launched a shot to deep right that the right fielder Raines barely caught with a snow-cone catch. Zackler easily tagged from third for the run, and – in the Gillette Stadium Heads-Up Baserunning Play of the Game Step One – Besse tagged from first to second. On a Watters flyout to right center in the next at-bat, Besse performed the Gillette Stadium Heads-Up Baserunning Play of the Game Step Two by tagging from second to third. Now on third with two outs, Besse had put himself in strong position to score an insurance run, instead of simply hanging out at first base during both flyouts.

The moves paid off as Ewbank’s single to left easily scored him from third. Without the tagging, Besse only would’ve been at second base after Ewbank’s hit; now the Gardeners had another run on the scoreboard, the lead now 15-6.

In the top of the sixth, the Wasabis tried to counter by getting leadoff batter Carlton Fisk on first.

That was enough.

Edde pitched a low sinker to next batter Jack McDowell, which McDowell pushed back to Edde. Edde quickly spun and threw to Williams covering second, who then fired to Dobrinich at first just in time for the 1-6-3 double play. That pretty much did in the Wasabis – next batter Wilson Alvarez weakly grounded to Edde for the third out, essentially leaving the Wasabi team super despondent from then on.

To rub in the despondency, the Gardeners cranked the bats back on in the bottom of the sixth, all with two outs. Yes, they were leading 15-6 with the Wasabis' only having one more chance at the plate; nevertheless, the Gardeners felt they owed it to Edde to give him more breathing room pitching the final inning.

With two outs and Dobrinich on second and Zackler (4-for-4) on first, Besse came up. And what do we say when Besse has runners in scoring position? Well, we (and the stats) say, as they teach us with a 16 against a dealer ten in blackjack, “Hit.”

Which Besse did to perfection, opposite-fielding a three run homer to left center to earn the Kelly Evans CNBC Hot Drive of the Game Award and extend the Gardeners’ lead to 12 at 18-6. Not done yet, the rest of the team wanted to get some more hits in before the regular season finale. Reilly singled oppo to left and Watters doubled behind him. Ewbank singled in Reilly from third, then Edde helped his cause by lashing a slicing triple to right to score two more and push his pitching cushion to 15 runs at 21-6. Gatta’s third RBI of the night, on a single to left, scored Edde for the Gardeners’ 22nd run.

Edde finished the night 4-for-5 at the plate, falling a home run short of the cycle. Besse finished a triple short, and Donner needed only a double, triple, and homer to get his cycle.

The Wasabis scored four in their final at-bats, yet two straight groundouts to Williams at short ended the rally and the ballgame, the Gardeners contentedly slapping backs and smiling at their 22-10 solid all-around victory.

Williams at short once again held it down, stopping all four groundouts in his range, getting a force from Donner in the second, catching the running popup in the third, and assisting in the 1-6-3 double play in the sixth. Edde also made it easy by forcing three comeback groundouts to himself, one leading to the double play for four total comebacker outs.

The win clinched a spot in the playoffs for the Gardeners, their 12th playoff trip in 13 seasons. Yet, as we all know, they have never won a championship, let alone reach the championship game. Is this the season? Or is it another “Wait til next season” season? They’ll have to dig down in their hearts and guts to discover what they really want – fame, glory, and bling bling championship rings? Or another early exit?

As of now, the Gardeners are like Gardener J.J. Warren (60-day DL) leaving a bunch of voicemails for girls then sitting by his phone for days waiting for callbacks. Yet ultimately the result is the same as the Gardeners’ postseason history – no rings.

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Stat of the Week:

13………Regular season games in which Pat Reilly and Dave Watters have been in the lineup together. In EVERY SINGLE GAME, at least one of them has hit a home run.

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4/23/2016

After a classic come-from-behind victory last week against the Flatliners, the Savage Gardeners seemed to be trending upward, like every new Taylor Swift song. However, poor play and warm weather doomed the Gardeners from the start as they fell to previously winless Ball So Hard University (BSHU), 30-14, in a shortened five-inning game.

Maybe it was the sun beaming down on their glistening toned backs. Maybe it was the warm-weather uniform of Hawaiian shirts, swim trunks, and Panama hats the Gardeners were forced to wear on Warm Weather Fan Appreciation Night. Maybe it was the seven piña coladas each team member guzzled before the game at the pre-game pool party where Calvin Harris DJ'd and tattooed chicks wore string bikinis and boots with the furrrrr. Regardless of the reason, at KKU Field Tuesday evening against BSHU, the Gardeners played seemingly lethargic and distracted.

Counter that – the bats swung decently. In the field the team struggled, allowing eight runs to BSHU in the second inning and 12 in the third. So yeah, facing a 23-2 deficit after two-and-a-half innings seemed to not be the smart move Tuesday. Check and mate. Or if it were checkers, BSHU essentially got a shitload of king pieces and stomped all over the Gardeners’ pawns.

With temperatures reaching 95 degrees at the 6:35pm first pitch, the Gardeners battled the glare of the sun, the glare of the flashing photography from the Japanese media following Japanese hero Alan Hiroshima Donner-san’s every move, and desiring voracious glares from Marina chicks sharing Marina Girl Salads and gossiping outside Tacolicious on Chestnut. These potential obstacles hit the Gardeners square in their chests as they gave up three runs in the top of the first inning and never saw a tie score or a lead the rest of the game.

They gained back two in the bottom half however – the first on left center fielder Ari Hersher’s leadoff walk then score on left fielder Dan Ewbank’s triple. The second baseman Donner-san singled in Ewbank for the other run.

So a 3-2 deficit didn’t look too poor after one inning. Yet add a half inning and now the score was 11-2, the deficit ballooning eight more runs in BSHU’s top half of the second. The Gardeners couldn’t score in their half and thus rapidly found themselves back out on the field playing defense for the top of the third.

Where BSHU scored 12 more runs to go ahead 23-2.

This 19-run deficit was unfamiliar territory, kind of like pitcher Phil Zackler not having sex on a weekday, third baseman Dave Watters not hitting a home run, or outfielder Pat Reilly not having a beautiful swing. All unfamiliar scenarios.

What really hurt was that in the first inning BSHU scored their three runs all with two outs. In the second they scored five of the eight runs with two outs. Limit those opportunities and the Gardeners minimize the damage. BSHU’s third inning countered the first two though, as they scored at least seven runs before recording an out. Thus, we can say that from out two in the second inning through out one of the third, BSHU scored at least 12 runs while using up only one out. We are also saying “at least” because the official scorekeeper at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) was keeping track of hits and outs for the opposing team, yet in the third inning when nine straight batters reached base he got tired of keeping track of the debacle, flung his No. 2 pencil at the glass window looking out from the press box, and stormed to the concession stands to bury himself in an O.Co Coliseum plastic-looking hot dog and 20oz. watered-down Bud Light. It’s cool though, in a ranking by Thrillist, O.Co ranked 25th of all MLB stadiums in a ranking of food and drinks. Top 25 holla!

[Side note: AT&T Park finished second; Safeco Field in Seattle ranked first. And to nobody’s surprise the bottom five stadiums (26th – 30th) were all in the Midwest – St. Louis, Chicago White Sox, Toronto (close enough to the Midwest), Chicago Cubs, and, last, Kansas City.]

Regardless of good or bad ballpark food, especially that bratwurst stand at AT&T Park on the first base side where you can load up on a shitload of onions and peppers and sauerkraut OH MY GAWD SUMBUDDY GONNA GET PREGNANT, the Gardeners were still looking into a 23-2 hole in the bottom of the third. Yet slowly the bats started coming alive to counter back. Hersher led off with a single, ultimately (after completing his final at-bat of the game) ending up raising his DOBP to .905 (19-for-21). And we’ll keep mentioning it because Hersher seems to always put up these insane on-base-percentage stats (DOBP is Dad On-Base-Percentage, or on-base-percentage as a father. See: Write-up, Game 3). Hersher’s other record-setting OBP stats were from the most recent fall and winter seasons, where, in 31 innings of his leading off an inning, he got on base 30 of those times, a ridiculous .968 OBP.

After Hersher’s single, right fielder Tristan Besse singled to move Hersher to second, setting the table with forks and knives for Watters in the three-hole to mash the 66th homer of his career, this one to deep left to give the Gardeners three runs for the inning.

The fun stopped there though, as Ewbank’s second triple of the game fell for naught in the runs column as he was left stranded at third.

The relief pitcher Watters held BSHU to one run in the fourth, giving the Gardeners a chance to seize a slice of apple pie momentum back in their half. With one out, newcomer outfielder/first baseman Sean Biddinger singled to left and long-lost Gardener returnee Max Dibble singled behind him. Hersher then scored Biddinger with a strategically placed infield single to the pitcher. Besse followed with an RBI single to right to score Dibble, then Watters, with Hersher on second and Besse on first, hit a sacrifice fly to left center. And yes, that’s a sacrifice fly without a runner on third – Hersher hustled all the way from second to score on the play, Besse’s moving to third in the process.

As a random stat no one cares about, the Gardeners in their history now have ten sacrifice flies (of 139 total) with the runner on second’s hustling around and scoring. They have yet to have a sacrifice fly with the runner on first’s scoring. If that happens, we at USASSY will be happy to buy that runner one beer. Just one though.

If someone can also find a way to hit a sacrifice fly with the batter’s scoring then we’ll buy the team a 30-pack and unlimited rounds of beers at the Bus Stop. That’s a promise.

Ewbank’s third hit of the game – a single – scored Besse from third, Donner-san doubled Ewbank to third, then Zackler singled them both in with a hard-bouncing single down the line in left.

After the fourth, the Gardeners had earned six runs back to bring the score to (a relatively decent to where they started) 24-11. Any other game a 24-11 deficit would bring melancholy and depression to loyal Gardeners’ fans. Thus, putting up nine runs in two innings showed faith.

The teams swapped three runs apiece in the fifth, the Gardeners’ scoring all with one out. Biddinger’s second single started the rally, Dibble and Hersher both walked to load the bases, then Besse came through with his second and third RBI of the night with a single to plate Biddinger and Dibble. Hersher once again scored on a Watters sacrifice fly, albeit this one only from third, instead of from second base last time.

As USASSY pointed out last week, Besse has been clutch hitting throughout his stellar 16-game career as a Gardener, knocking RBIs like it ain’t no thang with runners in scoring position. Tuesday he didn’t disappoint as expected, going 2-for-2 with runners in scoring position and raising his career RISP batting average to .824 (28-for-34).

Which is insane.

On another note, Biddinger with his 2-for-3 effort now stands fifth all-time in Gardeners’ history in batting average (.667), quite the splash for the new Gardener.

Defensively, Donner-san played brilliantly for his Japanese followers, making two stops at second for force plays, then, when he moved to third base later in the game, making another stop and toss to first to the delight of those in the media area not staring at their screens watching Pokémon.

The Bud Light Lime Heads-up Defensive Play of the Game occurred in the top of the fourth when, with the bases loaded, Dibble at shortstop stopped a grounder and threw to catcher Ben Robinson covering home, Robinson's making a stellar scoop for the force out.

With a 27-14 lead, BSHU scored three runs in the top of the sixth to take a 16-run lead when umpire Mike Pereira called the game due to time limits and because he was late to the Catalina Wine Mixer. This was very fortunate for the enemy BSHU, for the Gardeners in the bottom of the sixth had the trio of Donner, Zackler, and Robinson leading off the inning with their bats. According to Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight, the Gardeners with those three starting a rally were predicted to score 17 runs that inning, which would’ve given them the win at 31-30. Fuckin’ Catalina Wine Mixer.

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Stat of the Week:

Gardeners’ historical winning percentage by game time:

6:30pm: .512 (21-20 W-L)
7:40pm: .735 (25-9)
8:50pm: .710 (22-9)

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4/14/2016

No hats were spiked down in frustration at second base, no hugs given to opposing players, no flyouts made to left field – Phil Zackler was locked in to play softball against the Flatliners. And in providing the Producers Dairy Defensive Play of the Game, Zackler at second base saved the Savage Gardeners from a defeating comeback by their opponent.

With one out and a runner on second in the bottom of the seventh inning Tuesday night, the Gardeners held a 23-18 lead over the Flatliners at Stu Jackson Ballpark. Threatening a rally like their momentum-changing, seven-run fifth inning, the Flatliners looked to provide a comeback similar to the Gardeners’ 13-run bashfest the inning before. Yet with Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde on the mound and Zackler behind him playing second, the Gardeners had opposing plans.

Batter Danny Tartabull stepped up and lined a two-hopper to the right of second base, a clear base hit in any major league ballpark. Yet Zackler – who stayed up until 2am the night before studying film for defensive positioning and shifts in preparation for the matchup – reached to his right with a backhand, made the stop, and, while initially facing completely to left field due to his momentum in stopping the ball, spun and fired to Dane Dobrinich at first base for the out and rally-crusher.

This stellar stop by Zackler ended all hopes of a Flatliner resurgence in the last inning; next batter Paul Assenmacher flew out to left fielder Pat Reilly on an Edde curveball and that ended it: 23-18 Gardeners victory.

The win did not come easy – the Gardeners faced a possibly deflating seven-run inning by their opponent in the bottom of the fifth that turned the tide in favor of the enemy. Yet with the spirit of Toad chasing Princess down the final stretch of Koopa Troopa Beach with a green shell in tow, the Gardeners mustered their inner heroes to rally back in the come-from-behind victory.

Playing without leadoff outfielder and on-base specialist Ari Hersher – at the ABC (Annual Baby Convention) in Chicago – the Gardeners started the game off handicapped without their career leader in games played, plate appearances, runs, singles, walks, and on-base percentage. They hit their stride early though, roping across four runs in the top of the first, in honor of the four games Hersher has played in so far this season. A one-out single by Edde then a triple by right center fielder Dave Watters scored the Gardeners’ first run, while a sacrifice fly by the cleanup batter Reilly added the second.

With two outs and the bases empty, the Gardeners provided key hits to keep their momentum going, with third baseman Dan Gatta singling, Dobrinich doubling him to third, then shortstop Brian Williams pulling through with a clutch two-out, two-RBI single to push the Gardeners ahead 4-0 after one.

How can a hit be clutch in the top of the first inning you say? With potentially small margins of victory in the vaunted CC Division, every run counts. Thus, Williams’ two-out, two-RBI liner produced undervalued benefits and a confidence boost for the Gardeners’ bats. The hit essentially said they’d be okay Tuesday night – they were going to score runs.........No fear. We all learned that phrase as kids with that shirt we always wanted: "Bottom of the Ninth. Down by Three. Bases Loaded. Full Count. Two Outs. NO FEAR.”

The Flatliners roared back with five runs in the bottom half, then both teams turned it around on each other in the second by both not scoring. Down 5-4 after two, the Gardeners produced another one- and two- out rally in the top of the third when Reilly singled in one, Gatta lined a two-run homer to left center for two more, and left center fielder Jim Mitchell doubled home another two with two outs to give the Gardeners breathing room at 9-5.

A two-run third then a shutdown of the Gardeners in the fourth kept the Flatliners chomping at your local heroes like a barking, snarling, biting dog chasing the main character in a movie.

On that note, when has there ever been a time in a movie when a snarling, saliva-spewing dog chasing someone is actually entertaining?

That’s right – NEVER. That scene is so overplayed and predictable we should get at least a fifty-cent refund on our $11.50 theater ticket. Oh – guy irritates barking dog, dog breaks away from chained stake, chases guy, guy climbs over chain-link fence, thinks he’s okay, yet somehow dog jumps over fence, keeps chase going for four minutes, cue awkward shot of actor running un-athletically with dog chasing seven feet behind, dog jumps on guy, then hot girl happens to be in vicinity somehow and pulls dog off guy and sends dog home. We at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) just vomited in our mouths thinking of those scenes.

The Flatliners scored another in the bottom of the fourth to cut the gap to 9-8, Gardeners, through four innings. At this juncture, solid defense on both sides portended to keep the game a seesaw battle through the latter half of the matchup.

The fourth inning for the Gardeners highlighted the defense on display as Gatta at third made a great scoop of an insane liner to his left at third for the Gardeners’ first putout, the ball’s being registered as the hardest hit ball ever at Stu Jackson Ballpark. Williams backhanded a ball in the hole for the second out, and Reilly lasered a throw from left to Zackler covering second to nab batter Randy Velarde trying to stretch a single into a double for the third out.

Watters led off the top of the fifth with a solo shot to deep left to make it 10-8, Gardeners, yet after that they couldn’t push any more runs across in the inning. The Flatliners capitalized on this lull in the Gardeners’ bats to take matters into their own hands and slosh the ball around for seven runs in the bottom of the fifth to take a 15-10 lead and scare the 107,601 fans in attendance for Stu Jackson in Neon Green Shades and Swim Trunks Bobblehead Night, in honor of the park’s namesake Hall of Famer. Gatta stopped a grounder at third and made the throw to Dobrinich at first for the third out to end the demolition and lead the Gardeners into the dugout for their turn at the plate heading into the top of the sixth.

And this is where things turned around rapidly, like Marina girls’ gasping and whirling on the street when Zackler walks by, dick out optional.

Williams casually led off the sixth with a single, Zackler singled behind him, then Mitchell decided to do the same, loading the bases. And this was done on purpose to give a big test to Triple-A callup Ben Robinson, brought up that afternoon to play catcher and give regular catcher Trevor Brown a night off to rest his knees.

Robinson and his Grizzly Adams beard had already singled in the fourth inning to get his name on the hits board, yet this was to be his first true test as a Gardener: bases loaded, down five, Gardeners attempting a rally to keep themselves in the ballgame. An out stalls any previous momentum; a hit keeps the legends rolling along.

After walking up to the plate to his favorite song – “Achy Breaky Heart” by Billy Ray Cyrus – Robinson surveyed the Flatliners’ fielders’ positioning and found a spot to place the ball – right over the shortstop’s head and in front of the left fielder playing 400 feet deep to protect against the potential of a Robinson biceps-and-back-and-traps-generated grand slam. Robinson played it perfectly by dropping in a single to short left field to score Williams from third and keep the bases loaded and momentum going for the Gardeners, cutting the score to 15-11 in the process.

This then brought up right fielder Tristan Besse to the plate, who until now had struggled at the dish in his first few at-bats. Yet with the memory of Tom Brady who puts the interception on the last drive behind him, forgets about it, and starts fresh, Besse got back to his usual hitting habits with runners-in-scoring-position by singling home Zackler and Mitchell to bring the Gardeners within two at 15-13. The hit brought his career batting average with RISP to .806 at the time. A double later in the inning with runners on second and third raised it to .813 (26-for-32) for his career as it now stands, tops on the team.

In comparison, MLB’s historical leader – Todd Helton – had a career RISP batting average of .339, peanuts compared to Besse’s mark.

With runners on first and second and still no outs, the Gardeners proceeded to keep up the contagion and spread the sickness by piling on more runs. Edde’s third hit of the game scored a hustling Robinson from second to bring it to a one-run game at 15-14. Watters up next with Edde on first and Besse on second then kept it a one-run game after his at-bat. Yet the one run lead was switched to the Gardeners’ favor, 16-15, after he launched a triple to deep left center to easily score Besse and Edde and, ultimately, end up being the tying and go-ahead RBIs that kept the Gardeners ahead for good.

Yet the Gardeners weren’t done plowing away like Zackler at a Playboy Mansion party. Reilly following Watters then launched a two-run bomb that stayed just inside the fences in right center – this despite the Gardeners’ having their one-home-run-over-the-fence allocation still in play. His shot – which raised his average to one home run every 7.6 at-bats, or roughly one every game and a half – lifted the Gardeners to an 18-15 lead.

STILL with no outs, after eight straight hits, the Gardeners kept the bats rolling with Gatta’s adding his fourth hit of the night – his third with the bases empty, with the fourth being his homer in the third with a runner on first. Dobrinich (4-for-5) singled behind him, then later with one out Zackler (3-for-4) singled in Gatta to extend the lead to 19-15. The insurance runs kept adding up as Mitchell (4-for-4) doubled in Dobrinich and Besse soon came up again, this time with two outs and runners on second and third. And as we stated earlier, he produced as expected with RISP, doubling in Zackler and Mitchell to make it 22-15. Edde’s RBI double to right center behind him gave the Cy Younger an eight-run lead to work with on the mound with two innings left to play.

The Flatliners threatened in the bottom half for three runs, yet a running over-the-shoulder catch by Williams at short and a putout by Zackler at second ended the rally with the Gardeners up five, 23-18.

A scoreless at-bat for the Gardeners in the top of the seventh led them needing to lock it down in the bottom half to secure the victory and guarantee them at least a .500 regular season record (four wins) in the exhausting eight-game season.

And the Gardeners trotted out Edde to the mound in the seventh to close out the complete game to the delight of the 107,600 fans still there (one fan was kicked out of the stadium for disorderly conduct, peeing in a corner near the concessions stands in the Club Level of Section 209. It was a girl too, which was weird because everybody could see her squatting and peeing and were like, “Um, you’re totally gonna get busted by security, and the girls’ bathroom line isn’t even that long right now. Or just cut the guys’ line.” Which works every fucking time because guys are such suckers for girls and every time they see a girl or two use the men’s restroom they immediately let them use whatever stall available, whereas if it were a dude cutting the line they’d start threatening and picking a fight immediately. “Hey bro, there’s a line here, no cutting, I’ll punch you in the fucking face,” versus (girl walks in), “[Higher pitched voice] Totally use the stall, haha you’re so smart, the girls line is soooo long girl, yeah go for it, mumble mumble mumble something idiotic and stupid” cause it’s a female and males are dumb animals sometimes who can’t even say coherent words at times when the opposite sex is present. There’s something seriously defective about males and their penchant to let every single female use the men’s restroom ahead of them.). [Disclaimer: We at USASSY fall for this every time too. We’re simply writing about it in the third-person plural, that’s all.]

In the seventh, Edde worked his magic on leadoff batter Wade Boggs by getting ahead of him 1-and-2, then, upon seeing Boggs creep up in the batter’s box, lay a high and deep pitch on him, challenging him to chase with two strikes.

Well………Boggs fell for the trickery, easily flying out to Besse in right for the first out. Second batter Bob Wickman doubled, yet the next play in Zackler’s defensive play of the game stopped all shenanigans. The flyout to Reilly ended it, and the Gardeners walked off the field back on the winning side, taking their 4-1 record with them to Lombard Street and chucking it at slow-moving photo-taking tourists going gaga over the cars creeping down the zigzag.

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Stat of the Week:

.631/.594/.547………Savage Gardeners’ team career batting average with no outs (.631), one out (.594), and two outs (.547).

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4/07/2016

The Savage Gardeners’ epic quest for an undefeated season came to a halt Tuesday night when The Legends battered your local heroes 35-22 in a bashfest at the Gardeners’ home KKU Field.

Slugger Paul Sorrento slugged four homers for the Legends, accounting for pretty much all of their runs since four homers is a shitload. The rest of the lineup slashed the ball all over the place as they proceeded to put up the most runs ever scored against the Gardeners. The previous record was 34 runs scored by El Nino in the fall season; the next highest was 30 dating back to summer 2012 when “Call Me Maybe” was the song of the summer and pretty much became the catchiest song of all-time.

In short, the Gardeners’ opponent deserved to win because they scored five touchdowns’ worth of runs. The Gardeners also took too long to get their bats going, only scoring five runs through three innings while giving up 17.

Phil Zackler boldly took the mound for the Gardeners in the absence of Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde, who was given a day off for rest to prepare for the second half of the season.

After the Legends peppered around five runs in the top of the first inning, left center fielder Ari Hersher led off the hitting for the Gardeners by doing what he does best: forecast college basketball accurately. Rumors (and actual observations) state that in last year’s March Madness Tournament Hersher’s in-game betting cleaned up at the sportsbook in South Lake Tahoe, then subsequently that casino had to shut down a week later because of the losses. In addition, he may have placed third in a 2016 bracket pool while also winning money in another, this despite not even picking Villanova to win it all yet having his earlier picks carry the way strongly for him.

Thus, despite the allegations of his successful betting activities, of which there are no rules against in his contract as a professional softball player and which the Gardeners' organization highly condones, Hersher kept his softball prowess going by singling in his first at-bat. In addition - we have to keep referencing it because it's a hot number - Hersher’s game stats kept his DOBP elevated at 15-for-17 (.882).

Right fielder Tristan Besse singled him to third, leaving sandwiched outfielder (right center fielder Dave Watters, “sandwiched” because he played between Hersher and Besse in the outfield – you could say he was the bacon to their lettuce and tomato, or that he was the turkey to their mustard and banana) to single in Hersher for the Gardeners’ first run.

However, later with runners on second and third with one out, catcher J.J. Warren didn’t take the smart play of hitting to the right side of the field to at least score one runner – be it on a groundout to second, sac-fly to right, or somehow a base hit. (When there’s a runner at least on third with less than two outs, it should be impossible to not score that runner – simply hit it to the right side and the run comes in guaranteed.) Yet nope, Warren decided to pull the ball and line out to third baseman Carlos Baerga. No baserunners moved, now two outs. Fucking idiot.

The Gardeners couldn’t get those runners across the plate, allowed three runs in the second, and were quickly down 8-1 after one-and-a-half innings.

Second baseman Alan Donner, leading off the bottom of the second, decided to say, “Fuck diz shit” and end all dilly-dallying for the Gardeners by hitting a solo homer to left. Hersher doubled in third baseman Dane Dobrinich and first baseman Jim Mitchell a few batters later, then came across again on a Watters single to cut the Gardeners’ deficit to 8-5 after two. Hersher at this point had accounted for four of the Gardeners’ five runs (two scored, two on RBIs).

Well…………the Legends had other plans in their half of the third. They cranked around nine runs then blanked the Gardeners defensively to take a 17-5 lead into the fourth inning. They didn’t stop there, scoring six more runs to push the lead to 23-5. What the fuck was this shit? This was what the Gardeners do – score a shitload of runs and punish their opponent into a pile of mulch mixed with pig shit, beetle brains, and Dodgers jerseys and any other worthless bottom of the barrel lower than scum shit you can find.

Thus, the Gardeners had never seen themselves in this situation before – down 18 runs, having given up 23 so far in only four innings. Yet at least in the next four innings they started putting together little rallies and getting their bats in tow. Dobrinich and Mitchell led off the bottom of the fourth with back-to-back singles while Besse in his third of four hits for the night cleaned them in with his nicely swung lefty stroke, singling to center. Three singles by Watters, left fielder Dan Ewbank, and Warren scored Besse and loaded the bases later for Donner with two outs, where Donner contributed the If I Don’t Talk to You Keep On…Keep Truckin’ Hit of the Game with a double to center to score Watters and Ewbank and bring some life into the Gardeners. This cut the score to 23-10, breathing confidence into the Gardeners’ players and their fans that they finally hit double digits for the game. Kind of like how Zackler’s sex number reached double digits solely on 8th grade graduation dance night.

The Gardeners held the Legends to a sole run in the fifth with Zackler’s grabbing a comebacker by batter Candy Maldonado for the third out.

Five straight two-out hits by the top of the lineup – Hersher, Besse, Watters, Ewbank, and Warren – scored three for the Gardeners in the bottom of the fifth to keep them in it at 24-13.

Yet shit fell apart again in the sixth when those fucking pesky Legends kept scoring like Oregon’s offense that keeps coming at you no matter what the score is. They scored five in their half to take a 29-13 lead, mostly due to shitty pitch-calling by the Gardeners’ catcher. The Gardeners clawed back though – they’re men, by the way – the lower half of the lineup’s taking charge with Donner, shortstop Brian Williams, Dobrinich, and Mitchell all singling to score two (Donner and Williams), then Hersher’s doubling to score another. Watters added an RBI triple and two other runners scored on groundouts to keep the Gardeners within breathing distance at 29-19.

Yet the fucking Legends wouldn’t let up again. They scored six more in the seventh to push it to 35-19. They literally scored every fucking inning, and, it seemed like, every batter. It was relentless, like waves crashing against a fishing boat in the stormy Atlantic Ocean, or Donner’s Tinder game before he got locked down. Either way, the Gardeners’ opponent kept pouring it on and all the Gardeners could do was tip their hats, buckle up their chinstraps for the rest of the season, and accept defeat for the first time this season.

Yet they didn’t whimper in their final at-bats. They scored three more all with two outs – one on a fielder’s choice and the final two on a Mitchell homer to right center to demonstrate that the Gardeners battle with a fighting spirit all the way to the final whistle. Even if they were to see a non-zero number pop up in their loss column, they still fought valiantly until the end, like the valiant Knights of the Round Table, or even knights who weren’t a part of the Round Table and started their own clique called Knights of the Hut, where they gathered around in a hut and played dominos, put cheese and pepperoni on flatbread, heated it up, and ate it, thus becoming known as the Knights of the Dominos and Pizza Hut. Then they started infighting when one dude they called “Little Caesar” said he was trying this new “vegetarian” craze out and didn’t want pepperoni on his pizza anymore, so then guys started taking sides and sword fighting and soon enough the knights were breaking up into factions and that’s how Pizza Hut and Dominos were born.

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Stat of the Week:

.800 vs. .350………Alan Donner’s career batting average (.800, 12-for-15) with two outs and runners-in-scoring-position (RISP). With RISP and less than two outs he’s .350 (7-for-20). We only say this to make sure Donner has two outs when he comes to the plate with RISP. Or with two outs, have a lone runner on first steal second so he can be in scoring position.

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4/03/2016

So that was fun.

After back-to-back, last-inning, come-from-behind victories, the Savage Gardeners pulled together a hitting fest for the ages Tuesday night, slashing The Good Guys to pieces in only four innings, 41-6, a score reminiscent of the first half of an LSU-Arkansas Northwestern Southeast State season-opener football game.

Yes. In case you think you misread that, your eyes are not deceiving you. The Gardeners scored 41 runs in four innings (technically 3 2/3 innings, since the umpires mercifully called the game after second baseman Alan Donner’s two-out RBI single that pushed the Gardeners’ lead to only 35 runs in the bottom of the fourth inning).

The game at KKU Field was actually a pitching battle from the start, as the score started 0-0. In the top of the first inning Gardeners’ Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde held The Good Guys to one run.

Thus, after half an inning, the score was 1-0 and the defensive battle looked like it would play out all night.

The pitcher’s duel quickly ended when the Gardeners came to the plate in the bottom of the first. In essence, The Good Guys shouldn’t have even taken the field against their powerhouse opponent, those truly, madly, deeply strapping lads in Gardeners’ uniforms.

[Side note: What would Savage Gardeners uniforms look like? What colors? Orange and black? Green and yellow (we know who'd vote for that one, rhymes with Rave Lotters). Anyone have thoughts if for some reason the USA Softball Association (or whoever runs USA slow-pitch softball) wanted to sponsor these champions? Or is their swag the non-uniform look, like the "Sandlot" crew, able to wear whatever lucky shirts/shorts/underwear/Producers Dairy hats they choose?]

Another observation taken from Tuesday’s game is how much pitching matters. The Good Guys’ pitcher Luis Aquino threw erratically all night with no semblance of control; the Gardeners took advantage of this by scoring their highest run total in their history while batting 42-for-51 (.824) for the night, the best game-batting average in their history (the previous record was .800 – 40-for-50 – in the fall 2015 season). Counter the Gardeners' ability to take advantage of Aquino's shitty pitching with the control and precision of Edde's pitching and you can see why the Gardeners have a huge pitching edge every game.

After one inning, the Gardeners were up 12-1. After two it was 17-4. After three innings the Gardeners led 37-4.

Wait, what? Thirty-seven to four? It was 17-4 three minutes ago.

Yes – the Gardeners scored 20 – TWENTY – runs in the third inning, setting their record for runs in an inning. To recap, a couple game records were set Tuesday night:

- Most runs scored (41)
- Runs in an inning (20)
- Batting Average (.824)
- On-base percentage (.810)
- Pens used to keep filling in the diamonds on the scorebook (3)
- Models having sex with catcher Phil Zackler after the game (18)
- Models having sex with catcher Phil Zackler the morning after the game (17; one was being bulimic in the bathroom)

In that hot hot hot third inning, the Gardeners rolled off seven runs in eight batters before recording the first out. They then scored nine more runs with 11 batters before the second out. They topped it off by scoring four more runs with two outs.

Leading the charge by leading off the game for the Gardeners for the first time since last week was new papa left center fielder Ari Hersher, who went a cool 5-for-5 at the plate with a triple, two doubles, two singles, a walk, four RBIs, and scoring all six times he came to the plate. He started off the Gardeners’ 12-run first inning with an infield single. So far he has reached base ten times in 11 tries as a father, a whopping dad on-base-percentage (DOBP.) of .909.

First baseman J.J. Warren singled behind Hersher, leaving right center fielder Dave Watters the mess of brining in the first run in Hersher with an RBI double to left. Later with one out and the bases loaded, Edde knocked a single to right center to score two and put the Gardeners in the lead for good at 3-1, thus solidifying that he get the win on the mound as well.

Zackler’s sacrifice fly tactically scored a runner from second, Edde moved to third from first on the play, and Donner walked after Zackler. With two outs, the Gardeners held only a 4-1 lead.

Not so anymore. Shortstop Brian Williams then singled in Edde from third to make it 5-1. This was the first of Williams’ five hits in five at-bats for the night, as well as the first of his seven RBIs. His work at the plate, combined with his lockdown night defensively, helped earn him the Jana Kramer Whiskey co-Player of the Game Award. Defensively, Williams played a great game in the field by helping provide seven of the Gardeners’ 12 outs, 58% of the team’s total. In all, he caught a liner, fielded four groundouts (one for a double play), and caught a force at second. He added to his mantelpiece a second trophy in the And Boom Goes the Dynamite Defensive Play of the Game Award, when, in the second inning and with runners on first and second, he fielded a grounder from batter Gerónimo Berroa, stepped on second, then fired to first for a 6-3 double-play that stalled any momentum The Good Guys were attempting to gather. He executed the play to perfection by fielding the ball and bringing it to his throwing hand before stepping on second, thus allowing him to touch second for the force and fire to first in a bang-bang nanosecond to get Berroa by a step in the Gardeners’ first double play this season.

Watters was the other recipient of the Jana Kramer Whiskey co-Player of the Game Award with his 5-for-6, two homer, two double, eight RBI night. Pulling double duty as a softball Gardener and actual gardener at his home in Lafayette, Watters’ earning his second POTG award spares no time for shenanigans.

After Williams’ single in the first, right fielder Pat Reilly – making his season debut after last playing in November for the Gardeners – came back to the team strong by doubling to right to score Donner. Reilly doubled in his first three at-bats and raised his career Gardeners average to .672 in the process, as well as his first at-bat slugging percentage to 1.667, to point out a random stat that we at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) stubbornly have.

Hersher in his second at-bat of the inning doubled in Williams and Reilly to push it to 8-1, your classic Supreme Court abortion vote tally. Warren ended up at second in his next at-bat, setting the table for Watters to smash a bomb to the opposite field infield in left for at two-run round-tripper. Edde singled in left fielder Dan Ewbank later in the inning to cap the Gardeners’ 12-run first-inning outburst.

The Gardeners were back in form. Or, more aptly, tapping the potential within.

The Good Guys scored three runs in the second yet were held in check by Williams’ double play at short and a comebacker to Edde that ended the inning.

Up 12-4, the Gardeners kept piling on in the second, starting with Williams’ single, his second hit of the game. Reilly doubled him in from first, Hersher tripled in Reilly, Warren cheated and sliced a homer to right over the shitty right fielder’s head, then two batters later Ewbank added a solo shot to left center to make it 17-4, Gardeners, after two.

Ewbank, batting in the cleanup spot Tuesday, has been demolishing the ball lately, batting .800 so far this season (12-for-15) with a 1.400 slugging percentage. He also currently leads all left fielders in All-Star balloting, with second place Starling Marte 1,045,682 votes behind.

Edde pitching in the third inning produced a liner to Williams at short, a groundout to third baseman Dan Gatta, then a grounder to Williams for a shutdown inning.

Then all hell broke loose.

Seeing a 17-4 lead as not enough, the Gardeners said “Fuck that” and proceeded to produce the best inning in their history (hits- and runs-wise). Zackler (3-for-3 for the night with a walk and two sacrifice flies) led off the inning by staring down the pitcher Aquino and walking. Donner singled, then Williams tripled them both in, pushing the lead to 19-4 now. That was probably good enough.

Not for the Gardeners. They scored 18 more runs in the inning. That's 18 - eighteen, one-eight - more runs in the inning. Eighteen runs is usually enough for an ENTIRE ballgame. The Gardeners simply decided to hit that total in the third inning, sending 24 batters to the plate. Reilly’s third double of the evening scored Williams, Hersher walked, Warren singled to load the bases for Watters, and Watters easily came through with a double to score two. Ewbank liked that idea and did the same – doubling and scoring two more. Singles by Edde and Zackler and a walk by Donner loaded the bases for Williams, who added RBIs four and five for the evening with a single to center. Reilly’s fourth hit – a single – scored Donner, Hersher and Warren doubled behind him for three more runs (Williams, Reilly, Hersher), bringing up Watters again.

And Watters did what he does best as usual, knocking his second homer of the night, an easy one to left center for the 64th of his career to put the Gardeners up 33-4.

Not stopping there, three singles in a row by Ewbank, Gatta, and Edde loaded the bases for Zackler. Disappointed that he lost his spot as the team career leader in sacrifice flies, overtaken by Watters the past few seasons, Zackler added one back with one to left to score Ewbank. Donner singled Gatta in to push it to 35-4 and tie the Gardeners’ record for most runs scored in a game.

Whelp, Williams wanted to help set the record for runs scored, so he doubled in Edde and Donner and the Gardeners were now at 37 runs, hitting 20 runs for the inning and extending their lead to only 33 runs at 37-4. This is also through three innings, let us be reminded.

The Gardeners let their opponent feel a little better about themselves in the top of the fourth by allowing them to score two runs, yet Williams once again defensively held The Good Guys in check, catching a force at second for the first out then making two flips to Donner at second for outs two and three.

Thinking The Good Guys would bring out the white surrender flags after the top of the fourth, the Gardeners ambled to the dugout believing the game would be called short. Yet the umpires let them play on, and the Gardeners only padded their stats and hit the 40-run mark by scoring four more in the fourth – Watters and Ewbank hitting RBI singles before Zackler came up with two on and two out.

Aiming to catch Watters in another category – career homers, currently only 58 homers behind – Zackler launched a shot to deep right over the right fielder’s Carl Everett’s head. Like all of our golf swings, the ball was perfectly sliced so it tailed away from Everett in right, looking like an easy homer.

However, the huge light tower in the foul area in right field decided to dance around and get in the way of Zackler’s ball, leading the umpire to call a ground-rule double and keeping Zackler short of rounding all four bases. With Zackler on second and Edde on third, Donner singled to bring in Edde, and this time the white flags came out. The Good Guys surrendered, the umpires called the game with the Gardeners only ahead 41-6, and the girls in the Marina screamed in ecstasy that their heroes had won and with high hopes would possibly trek over to their apartments and ravage them like a lumberjack traveling 5,000 miles to give them their seeds.

In actuality, after the game the Gardeners – acting like they’d been there before – ignored the catcalls from the hopeful Marina girls and simply went to their respective homes to rest up for another week of practice before next week’s game, leaving thousands of desperate and horny women sobbing into their sheets at the Gardeners’ lack of interest in their superficial social media makeup-laden selfie lives.

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Stat of the Week:

37…8…0: Runs (37) the Gardeners scored Tuesday night using only eight outs in their first three innings. Last week in the first three innings, the Gardeners got eight outs IN A ROW, and obviously scored 37 less runs (0).

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3/25/2016

After 20 days of not playing any softball, the Savage Gardeners seemed destined to start off their game against I’d Tap That slightly rusty at the plate.

They weren’t prepared for how rusty they’d be.

At KKU Field Tuesday night, the Gardeners through four innings had put up a whopping one run at the plate. That’s four innings, 17 batters, and one run total. On top of that, their opponent I’d Tap That had scored nine to take a 9-1 lead heading into the fifth inning.

In the top of the first inning, left center fielder Ari Hersher’s leadoff double led to his scoring on right fielder Tristan Besse’s RBI single directly after him. Yet after that for the Gardeners? Complete dogshit.

In the first four innings, the Gardeners…

…made eight straight outs
…made 12 outs in 15 at-bats leading to the end of the fourth inning, a .200 batting average. In the first four innings total, they batted 5-for-17 (.294) – adding Hersher’s and Besse’s first inning hits.

In essence, something needed to change.

It could’ve been the steroids first baseman J.J. Warren provided after the fourth inning to himself and some players in the Moscone bathroom stall after kicking out the homeless guy sleeping there. It could’ve been the oncoming presence of Garden Hoes Char, Margot, Sophie, and the sisters’ celebrity mom visiting. It could’ve been the beej second baseman Alan Donner was scheduled to receive after the game from his 24-year old girlfriend. It could’ve been the bowl of Wheaties Hersher shared with his daughter Noa for breakfast Tuesday.

Regardless of what sparked the Gardeners, it was a big spark, like a big Hadoken fireball shot from Dhalsim’s mouth in “Street Fighter” that crushes all of Chun Li’s hopes and stupid-ass twirling moves.

“We Noa June place where we want to be, and that’s hoisting a championship trophy in three months after our parade down Market Street,” Hersher commented after the game, as he stepped out of the shower and grabbed the one shared used towel used by all the showering Gardeners in the locker room. “We’re determined to get there no matter what, and Peezy Zeezy Pop Rockin’ Gangsta’ [Phil Zackler] started it off in that fifth inning for us.”

After scoring one run in the first four innings, while giving up nine to the nemesis, the Gardeners headed into the top of the fifth down 9-1 and needing something. The catcher Zackler – $15 richer thanks to the generosity of the Fort McDowell Indians from the casino reservations outside Scottsdale, Arizona – lit the fuse by leading off the fifth inning with a single. Roommate Donner doubled him to third, then shortstop Brian Williams tripled in the chums with a two-RBI shot to left center.

I’d Tap That’s pitcher Kevin Tapani was thereafter rattled, as he proceeded to walk three of the next four batters in Hersher, right center fielder Dave Watters, and Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde (Edde with the bases loaded to score Hersher), while giving up an RBI single to Besse that scored Williams. Warren singled in Besse and Watters to cut it to 9-7, then left fielder Dan Ewbank tripled to deep right to score Edde and Warren and tie the game at 9-9. Finally – finally! – the Gardeners were getting into a groove, getting runners on base, and, yes, getting sick. That was nine straight baserunners for the Gardeners – making up for their eight straight outs they produced earlier in the game.

Third baseman Dan Gatta kept the hits and baserunners moving by singling in Ewbank from third to give the Gardeners the lead at 10-9. The Gardeners couldn’t score him, and after the top of the fifth the tables had turned like that underrated Adele song (“Turning Tables,” not “Hello,” because since it’s so popular it can’t be an underrated song, yet, let's be honest, still incredibly catchy).

The Tap Thats scored one in the bottom of the fifth to tie it back up at 10-10. The Gardeners were shut down in their half of the sixth, and the Tap Thats capitalized by scoring one in their half and taking an 11-10 lead heading into the last inning. The damage could’ve been a lot worse defensively for the Gardeners in the bottom of the sixth, yet with two outs the crowd was presented with the Hampton Dellinger Defensive Play of the Game by none other than the fan favorite Zackler.

With two outs and runners on first and second, Tap Thats batter Kent Hrbek attempted a bunt single in front of home plate. However, he underestimated the incredible agility – thanks to almost 90 days of P90X3 workouts – of the catcher Zackler. Zackler sprung to his feet from behind the plate like Ray Lewis in an Oklahoma drill, moved his feet and scooped the dribbler reminiscent of the grace of the guy ballet dancer in the “Black Swan” (um, yeah…great role…get to hang with Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman, then actually marry Portman in real life. Yes, please), and tossed to Warren at first for the third out. This subtle play gave the Gardeners a shot of confidence heading into their at-bats in the top of the seventh.

And guess who got to start the rally? Yep – the stud Zackler himself, with one out singling to left. No………not singling – DOUBLING to left by hustling around first and into second. With Zackler as the tying run in scoring position, Donner took charge. He knocked a liner to left that moved Zackler to third. When the throw came in errant to the pitcher, Donner took off for second. The pitcher Tapani then threw the ball away to second trying to get a sliding Donner. The ball scurried into right field, allowing Zackler to score the tying run and Donner to move to third. Huge moves by both individuals independently – Zackler taking second on his hit, Donner doing the same – changed the fortunes of the whole night. In contrast, if Zackler had stayed at first on his hit, Donner’s hit would’ve only moved him to second, thus leaving a force open at third and second and the Gardeners still down one. Yet both of their hustling put the tying run across and a runner on third, still with only one out.

Williams then came through with his second key hit of the night by singling to left to let Donner easily score the go-ahead run from third. Up 12-11, the Gardeners looked to the skies for a few insurance runs. And Watters took to the skies to make that happen, with two outs and after a Besse single, blasting the Kelly Evans CNBC Hot Drive of the Game to left for a three-RBI round-tripper that pushed the Gardeners’ lead to 15-11. This hit nailed down for him the Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game Award, his first this season since he missed the only other game the Gardeners have played thus far. He finished the night 3-for-4 with three RBIs.

Up 15-11, the Gardeners defensively locked it down in the bottom of the seventh, with Edde on the mound getting the first two batters out – first batter Lenny Webster flying out to left and second batter Greg Gagne flying out to right. Yet two Gardeners’ outfielders made key plays on both – Ewbank making a running grab in left on Webster’s flyout and Besse in right doing the same on Gagne’s.

The Tap Thats scored one to cut it to 15-12, yet an inside hanging curve by Edde caught final batter Shane Mack tied up, forcing him into a popup to Williams at short to end the game.

Edde shut down the opponent from inning three onward – allowing only four runs in five innings while producing his first strikeout of the season, a swinging fastball to batter Chili Davis that ended the third inning. He also stopped three comebackers up the middle for outs at different times in the game.

In the field as well, in the first inning, the Gardeners produced a nice relay play from the left fielder Ewbank to Williams at short to Gatta at third for an out to get a baserunner trying for third. Ewbank in left made six putouts on fly balls and added an assist on the play above, thus accounting for one-third of the Gardeners’ defensive outs. Each Gardener on defense had a putout for the night, save for Hersher in left center, which was probably a good thing so he can protect his hands for important things like diaper-changing and spoon-feeding baby food.

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Stat of the Week:

.720 (36-14)………Gardeners’ winning percentage (W-L) when Dave Watters hits a homer in a game. They are .540 (27-23) otherwise.

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3/03/2016

With two outs in the top of the seventh inning, down by one, and the tying runner on second base, the Savage Gardeners had only one hope to keep their game alive against Ball So Hard University (BSHU) Tuesday night. Coincidentally, blaring over the loudspeakers at KKU Field as third baseman Dan Gatta stepped to the plate was that popular anthem of all weddings from the year 2003 onward:

“And I need you now tonight…I fuckin’ need you more than ever…”

This rally cry could be seen and felt in the pleading eyes of all 41,195 Gardeners' fans in attendance at the 41,195-seat ballpark in the heart of the Marina where, as usual, hella chicks swoon out of their windows on Tuesday nights when they hear the crack of Gardeners’ bats and taste a smell of the studs’ musk wafting amorously and lusciously in the evening air.

The Gardeners and their fans needed Gatta now tonight…fuckin’ needed him more than ever.

And – as expected – Gatta pulled through, launching a triple into left field to tie the ballgame at 15-15, keep the Gardeners’ quest for an undefeated season in sight, and make Paulina Slagter break off her engagement to Ryan Phillippe in hopes of luring Gatta into her web. [Thank you POPSUGAR (and thus indirectly Mrs. Ari Hersher) for the details on who that is. On a related note, we do miss “Cruel Intentions” and Sarah Michelle Gellar in her prime. Fuck, she was a good one to admire as a teenager.]

After Gatta’s epic knock, all 41,195 fans went nuts (there were no BSHU fans in attendance, because nobody cares about them) and the game was stopped for two minutes to calm down the stadium after thousands of fans rioted, throwing everything in their possession onto the field – beer cups, hats, t-shirts, bras, bowling balls, tandem bicycles – to name a few items the yellow-jacketed security guards had to collect off the field to allow the game to continue.

And continue the game did, when right after Gatta, left fielder Dan Ewbank punctuated his 5-for-5 night with a shot of a homer to left-center to score the go-ahead run in Gatta (and himself as well of course, it was a homer) for a 17-15 Gardeners’ lead which they never relinquished. As Ewbank crossed home plate, over the roar of the raucous half-naked drunk and delirious-with-excitement crowd, one could still hear the final echoes of the stadium speakers in the distance:

“…Forever’s gonna start tonight…Forfuckinever’s gonna start tonight.”

Yes – this is no coincidence because of Dan Gatta and Dan Ewbank – The Dan Band was in full effect.

The 20-16 victory propped the Gardeners into first place after one game, extending their winning streak over BSHU to three games, after losing their first four matchups against them.

Gatta’s hit easily earned him the Webster Slaughter Clutch Hit of the Game as well as the Kelly Evans CNBC Hot Drive of the Game Award. Ewbank – 5-for-5, 1.600 slugging percentage, five RBIs – also unanimously won the Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game Award, especially with his game-clinching, go-ahead, two-out homer in the seventh that catapulted the Gardeners to victory. To add on top of his batting, he had five putouts in left - more than the total number of fly balls hit to the other three outfielders combined - while also nailing quick relays to Dane Dobrinich at second to hold BSHU baserunners to singles throughout the game. His 1.000 fielding percentage easily leads the league.

In their minds, the Gardeners before the game accepted that they may be rusty both in the field and at the plate in the season opener, their first game since December 8th, 2015, a span of 84 days filled with daily team Body By Gatta workouts, twice a day, with no days off, mixed with 30 sets of Lyon Street Steps sprints twice daily. Thus, the Gardeners entered the spring season buffer than ever (they also made a Savage Gardeners 2016 Swimsuit Calendar, available for $29.99 at Books, Inc. and on Amazon), in the best shape of their lives, and bloodthirsty for their first championship in their history. As long as quasi-important things like kids (see: Norton, Chris; and Hersher, Ari; maybe an unexpected Zackler, Phil; or Donner, Alan incident as well) don’t get too much in the way, this is their year. Nay – their season.

They proved this is their season right from the start – the left center fielder Hersher leading off the game as usual, singling to start off the Gardeners’ at-bats. Fellow outfielder Tristan Besse singled him to third – a perfect 1-2 setup to start the game, Hersher’s getting on base, then taking advantage of his speed and Besse’s lefty swing to right to move him to third – to put two on for Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde batting in the third spot.

Edde – coming off a monster fall 2015 season, the 16th best hitting season of any Gardeners’ player in Gardeners’ history (153 total player seasons) – picked up where he left off by mashing a triple to right center to score Hersher and Besse and put the visiting team Gardeners up 2-0. Right center fielder J.J. Warren singled Edde in from third, and the Gardeners later scored one more on a Ewbank single, the first of his five RBIs (and hits) for the night.

The first inning shook some rust off early for the Gardeners; however, it still didn’t seem enough as it didn’t take them until the seventh inning to get back in the flow of hitting the ball consistently well. In innings two through six the Gardeners couldn't score more than two runs in any inning.

The Gardeners’ defense only allowed one run to BSHU in the bottom of the first, allowing newcomer shortstop Brian Williams to get his glove dirty early with a grounder then toss to Dobrinich at second for a force and the first out. Edde on the mound goaded an easy popup to himself then snagged a comebacker up the middle to close out the frame.

Edde also proved his magic as a Cy Young pitcher by allowing no walks all game. This is especially underappreciated because on three separate occasions Tuesday night, BSHU batters with a 3-1 count purposely didn’t swing at the next pitch, expecting ball four each time. Yet Edde nailed a strike on all three 3-1 no-swing pitches, proving to the opponent there wouldn’t be any easy at-bats when he’s on the mound.

BSHU capitalized on a Gardeners' lull to score four runs in the second. In the third, back-to-back-to-back singles by Dobrinich, Gatta, and Ewbank (the Dan[e] Band in fine succession) scored one (Dobrinich), and catcher Jim Mitchell added his first RBI as a Gardener with a sacrifice fly to score Gatta and push the score to 7-5.

The enemy took over in the bottom of the third by scoring three to make it 8-7. Dobrinich singled in Edde in the fourth to score one back, yet BSHU kept piling on by scooting around three more in their half to take an 11-8 lead after four.

The Gardeners kept falling short of getting sick and building momentum and only scored one in the fifth – Ewbank’s scoring on Double-A callup Jeff McCarthy’s two-out single – yet at least held BSHU to only one in the bottom half to keep the deficit at three, 12-9.

[For the uninitiated, “Get Sick” is the Gardeners’ rally cry – “Sick” loosely meaning having a contagious hitting streak and passing along the hitting momentum down the lineup like a virus.]

Ewbank and Williams produced two-out RBI singles in the sixth inning to bring the Gardeners within one at 12-11. However, BSHU – a good team who played in the upper B Division the season prior – proved their fortitude by scoring three more to keep their lead strong at 15-11 heading into the final inning, the seventh.

And that’s where the Dan Band blew the socks off the entire crowd with their late-game heroics.

Yet it didn’t come easily. McCarthy led off the inning with a double, Hersher walked, then Besse doubled in McCarthy to cut it to 15-12. With one out, Hersher and Besse then scored on Warren’s double that brought it to 15-14 with two outs when the heroic Gatta stepped to the plate looking to make a dent in both the ball, the score, and Mila Kunis’ heart (gotta have competition for Slagter above). Gatta’s first-pitch, two-out, clutch-as-fuck triple that tied the game then got the bats rolling hard. Ewbank’s two-run shot made it 17-15 and the Gardeners’ bats were still only heating up. The bottom then top of the lineup added a few insurance runs to push it to 20-15 heading into the last of the seventh.

Now with a comfortable lead, the Gardeners simply had to do what they do best – send their ace Edde back onto the hill to close it out in the bottom of the seventh.

After leadoff batter Devon White singled, Edde produced a wasted out by batter Kelly Gruber by getting him to pop out to himself on the mound. BSHU then loaded the bases before Hersher caught a sacrifice fly for out number two. Pitching from the stretch with runners at the corners, Edde and his inside slider proved too much for Pat Borders, who grounded to the agile Williams at short, allowing him to make the easy putout toss to Dobrinich at second to close out the victory.

Williams in his first game as a full member of the Gardeners played a stellar game at shortstop, making four putouts total on the tricky KKU Field infield. In the outfield, no balls flew over any Gardeners’ outfielders’ heads, and for much of the battle the Gardeners played a quality game in the field with their baseball mitts, which they wore on their hands.

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Stat of the Week:

One………Extra-base hits for the Gardeners before the seventh inning Tuesday night (Edde’s triple in the first). The Gardeners had eight extra-base hits alone in the seventh (five doubles, two triples, one home run).

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12/12/2015

After defensive letdowns in their season opener last week against Ace Wasabi, the Savage Gardeners turned their attitude and outlook around immediately after the loss by showing up for a polar bear swim at 5AM the next morning in the San Francisco Bay. They needed a toughening up – an cold awakening, per se – and the team polar bear swim did just that as the entire roster braved the choppy ice-cold waters that Wednesday morning in the swim from Aquatic Park to the Farallon Islands and back.

The swim had nothing to do with sharpening physical softball skills, yet what it did is sharpen the Gardeners' mental toughness and help the team form a stronger bond, exactly like when the “Remember the Titans” players did an early morning 3AM run through the woods to Gettysburg together.

After the 30 minute, 62-mile roundtrip swim, the Gardeners hit the gym on Union Street for Body By Gatta workouts both to get their muscles toned back for the winter season and to give eye candy to the aroused Marina girls in Lululemon pants doing their 30 minute sesh on the elliptical machines.

The preparation and hardening and motivational speech by Coach Denzel Washington paid off as the toughened up Gardeners played almost a flawless game defensively in their next outing, topping The Good Guys 17-9 Tuesday night at Stu Jackson Ballpark.

The brutal workouts kept the Gardeners tight defensively, as they played nearly impeccably in the field with each player's getting at least two putouts each, save for catcher, pitcher, and first base. (Triple-A callup Jamie Philliposian as catcher called a great game behind the plate, strategically calling outside fastballs most of the night, which Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde completed to perfection. Edde on the mound fielded the only grounder hit to him by scooping a hopper to him in the third inning, starting a 1-4-3 Edde-to-Matt Bou-to-Kyle Kretchmer double play. And Kretchmer at first base got one sole grounder hit to him, where he made an unassisted putout in the sixth inning. He also, obviously, was on the receiving end of any groundout throws to first, of which there were four total.)

So yeah, the defense played tight, and each player got his fair share of balls. Bou at second base got two groundouts. Dane Dobrinich at third caught a lineout and popup. David Huffman at shortstop cleaned up the fourth inning with all three putouts. Left fielder Tristan Besse and right fielder Dan Gatta each caught two flyouts; Ari Hersher in left center and Dave Watters in right center got three each.

Thus, the ball was spread around fairly evenly to all the Gardeners’ fielders, allowing them to redeem their defensive performance from the prior week and keep their gloves and arms warm for the 162 (divided by 20.25) game season.

After giving up an average of 24 – twenty-four! – runs in their last seven games, the Gardeners only gave up nine on Tuesday. This was highlighted even more by their doing it dirty to The Good Guys, who had beaten the Gardeners in their last four meetings.

As the away team, and after pregame backslaps from the crazy old pitcher with the “Back to the Future” Doc haircut, the Gardeners and the leadoff batter Hersher looked to start the game off hot, especially with legendary queen Garden Hoe Margot on hand and her sister Sophie in tow, only missing the first pitch because the concessions line at the wine station was hella long. [As a side note, Watters did not receive a backslap from Doc, only because Watters almost beheaded him twice last week in balls hit up the middle.] And Hersher, after walking up to a 2005 remix of “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It” blaring over the loudspeakers, got on base for the 30th time in his last 31 plate appearances, this one singling to right center with two strikes on him. Alas, in the seventh, Hersher hurt his phenomenal leadoff fortitude by grounding out to lead off the inning, ending his numbers at getting on base in 30 of his last 32 leadoff plate appearances, a still remarkable .938 on-base clip.

Yet in the first, he turned his single into the Gardeners’ first run, hustling to third on Besse’s single behind him then scoring on Watters’ deep sacrifice fly to left center.

The Good Guys scored one in the bottom half, yet Dobrinich’s stop of a screaming liner from batter Tim Biakabutuka for the third out ended any chance of a rally.

The second inning then saw Kretchmer lead off. After playing it safe in the first game by not trying to hit one over the only-one-homer-in-right fence, to save it for an opportune time, Kretchmer said “Fuck it” and launched the Kelly Evans CNBC Hot Drive of the Game high and deep over the fence in right center for a solo shot. Kretchmer once again earned the drive of the game award and a new Lexus not only because his ball flew off the bat like a Barry Bonds World Series Game Two against the Angels home run, yet also because it landed hard on a parked car with a huge “THUNK” that probably left an irreparable dent.

In essence, any ball that crushes a car will earn a drive of the game award.

That’s messed up you say? Don’t fucking park there! As Happy Gilmore sagely commented with a shrug of the shoulders after he hit that guy: “He shouldn’t have been standing there.”

After Kretchmer’s ninth homer in only his 11th game, Dobrinich later singled and with two outs, Philliposian in his first Gardeners’ at-bat proved his worth by tripling to left center to score Dobrinich.

The Gardeners ceded one to their opponent in the bottom of the second, put up a goose egg batting in the third, yet then turned it on their opponent by shutting them down, highlighted by the aforementioned Edde-to-Bou-to-Kretchmer double play, the Gardeners’ first double play of the season.

Up 3-2 after three, the Gardeners’ bats breathed a little more life in the top of the fourth, with Kretchmer, Gatta, and Dobrinich all singling to load the bases for Bou to sacrifice fly in Kretchmer to make it 4-2. Then with two outs, Hersher produced a clutch hit with a single to right center to score Gatta and a hustling Dobrinich and give the Gardeners breathing room at 6-2.

The Good Guys then scored three in the fourth on a three-run homer, then put a runner on first, still with no outs, threatening a huge rally.

That’s where Huffman’s defense at shortstop came into play. Because Huffman in the fourth saved the Gardeners’ game.

He flipped to Bou at second to get baserunner Leroy Hoard on a force on groundout number one. He then scooped a second grounder to get Wesley Walls at first for out number two. The Good Guys then put runners on second and third with two outs and looked to easily take the lead on a base hit next from batter Duane Bickett. Yet Philliposian behind the plate called for a nasty splitter inside, Edde nailed the location perfectly, and Bickett tried to place it in the hole between third and shortstop for a base hit and two runs scored.

Not so according to Huffman. He deftly made a backhanded stop then fired to Kretchmer at first to quash the rally, end the inning, and keep the Gardeners’ lead at 6-5 intact.

Thus, after The Good Guys got a runner on first with no outs, and with momentum on The Good Guys’ side, Huffman singlehandedly kept them from scoring. We at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) wish we had more statistics nerds working and charting so we could have defensive statistics like Defensive WAR, UZR, DRS, and other baseball statistical acronyms that we don’t understand, yet because of budget concerns and a lack of replay cameras we are limited. So we’ll simply state that Huffman’s play turned the tide for the Gardeners.

Because of this inspired play, the gates flooded open for the Gardeners. In the top of the fifth they caught fire, started by none other than Jeter Huffman himself. With one out, Huffman produced the second of his four singles for the night. Edde followed with a smart, on-base boosting walk, then Kretchmer singled in Huffman from second. Gatta gatta’d in Edde (a “gatta” hit is a low, uncatchable liner to left, classic of Gatta), Dorinich singled in Kretchmer, and just like that the Gardeners had put three runs up and were just gettin’ started, just like that Jason Aldean song that no one else probably knows.

With Gatta on second and Dobrinich on first, Bou hit a single to short. And as a runner on second base on infield singles, what does one do?

Score, of course. And that’s what Gatta did, after a wide throw to third, charging then sliding home past catcher Kevin Greene’s tag to put the Gardeners up 10-5. Philliposian then singled – scoring Dobrinich – and Hersher did as well, loading the bases for Besse, still with one out. Which Besse took advantage of, slicing the smoothest-hit ball of the game with a single to right to push two more across in Bou and Philliposian. At this point, the Gardeners had gotten really sick – their team motto – with the contagious hitting, getting nine straight batters on base.

Watters then ended the streak of Gardeners’ batters getting on base, ending his at-bat not on base.

Because he ended it in the dugout.

Because he cleared the bases, mashing his 61st homer, to tie Roger Maris, blasting it over the outfielders’ heads in left center – finally, on his fourth try, since the outfielders were playing him deep all game – to score three and push the Gardeners’ lead to 16-5.

Maris took 590 at-bats to hit 61 homers. Watters took only 401. Therefore, Dave Watters is better than Roger Maris.

Up by 11 now, the momentum was clearly owned by the Gardeners, and they proved this by Edde’s shutting down The Good Guys in the bottom of the fifth, Edde’s goading a groundout to Bou at second and easy flyouts to Besse in left and Watters in right center.

The Gardeners couldn’t score in their next at-bats, yet the damage had been done, not just to that car that Kretchmer crushed over the fence in right center, yet also to The Good Guys’ hopes, spirits, and dreams. They scored two to cut it to 16-7 through six, yet everyone knows the Gardeners don’t give a shit. With a comfortable lead, the Gardeners in their last at-bats tried to add some more, yet were cut short by two ballpark rules. After two-out singles by Watters and Huffman, and with wife Margot watching, Edde launched a perfectly placed shot to deep center. Watters easily scored from third, Huffman coasted in from first, and Edde easily found himself on third with a stand-up triple.

Yet at Stu Jackson Ballpark, in the field of play in center field – similar to the in-play monuments of Babe Ruth, Miller Huggins (who the fuck?), and Lou Gehrig at the old Yankee Stadium – there are three monuments as well, of the trio of Marshall Kratter, Chubbs Peterson, and Pocahontas. Thus, somehow the ball found itself behind the in-the-field monuments, and the play was deemed a ground-rule double.

Edde had to jog back to second, Huffman to third. Instead of two runs scored and Edde on third, the Gardeners only got one run and had to push the baserunners back one base. Then to add more rules that handicapped the Gardeners, Kretchmer launched another shot over the fence in right center. However, since there’s only one homer over the fence allowed, the umpires deemed the play an out and the Gardeners left the inning only scoring one run, versus the two (with Edde’s hit) or four (adding Kretchmer’s) they would’ve scored on a regular field.

Therefore, heading into the bottom of the seventh, the Gardeners held a 17-7 lead. The Good Guys then scored twice in their half (we at USASSY think it was only one run, the website says two for a final total of nine, so since the Internet is never wrong, we have to go with the nine listed). Which is how it ended, the Gardeners’ giving up the least amount of runs in their last eight games.

With their record now 1-1, the Gardeners according to AccuScore are predicted to go undefeated for the rest of the season, including the playoffs and championship. In 12 seasons, the Gardeners have never made the championship. When they do – and they win it – shit’s gonna get real, and Thee Parkside, then the Bus Stop (for the afterparty), will probably both be burned down in the rioting, going down for real like Flo Rida.

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Stat of the Week:

.900 (18-for-20)………Tristan Besse’s career batting average with runners in scoring position

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12/02/2015

Tuesday’s matchup against archrival Ace Wasabi at Stu Jackson Ballpark was unfamiliar ground for the Savage Gardeners: softball in December. For the first time in their history, the Gardeners played a ballgame in December, wearing warm gloves, hats, and Hello Kitty snuggies to stave off the icy cold winds floating in from Lake Michigan. And in this unchartered territory, the Gardeners showed their restlessness by dropping a bitter one to the Fall champion Wasabis, 27-19.

Despite the cold, however – which wasn’t that cold at all, and which had nothing to do with Lake Michigan, 2,133 miles away – the Gardeners commenced the game on fire, almost as hot (literally and figuratively) as Katniss Everdeen in the final installment of the “Hunger Games” series. Which we at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) haven’t seen yet, so don’t spoil the ending, where in a plot twist she marries Lloyd Christmas.

With their ace on the hill – Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde – and the almost fully familiar infield behind him of Kyle Kretchmer at first; newcomer Matt Bou at second; David Huffman at short; and Dan Gatta at third; the Gardeners and Edde stifled the Wasabis in the top of the first inning. Edde goaded two grounders to himself for the first two outs, then, after a hit, got cleanup batter Tony Boselli to fly out to Ari Hersher in left center for the third out.

Looking super hot after a hot inning in the field, not just in their looks and packages, which were admired by zero Garden Hoes (ahem, WTF…), yet also looking hot defensively, the Gardeners did what they did best to start off their turn batting – send Hersher to the plate. The move paid off, as Hersher stared down pitcher Natrone Means with a steely gaze to earn a walk and boost his game OBP to 1.000.

[And yes, USASSY is going to keep pointing out this stat, as long as Hersher keeps it up: Hersher got on base to lead off an inning for the 29th time in his last 30 plate appearances.]

After left fielder Tristan Besse’s fielder’s choice, right center fielder Dave Watters cranked a shot to right center that hit the trees above the fence, bouncing back into the field yet allowing Watters to easily score from home for a two-RBI homer, earning him the extremely coveted Kelly Evans CNBC Hot Drive of the Game Award.

With the bases empty after Watters’ homer, Kretchmer in the cleanup spot tripled to center, giving Edde an easy opportunity to single him in with a single to center. It was the first of Edde’s four RBIs for the night, where he finished 4-for-5 at the plate with two singles, a double, and a triple.

Up by a field goal after one inning, the Gardeners’ defense let up and the Wasabis took advantage, kicking three field goals in the second inning and taking a 9-3 lead. The Gardeners then produced the first of two four-batter innings for the game (bringing only four batters to the plate each inning, huge problems the Gardeners can’t seem to overcome. In three games last season, the Gardeners brought only three or four batters to the plate a total of six times. Not surprisingly, they lost each game where this happened. Other useless stat from last season – in their five wins, they averaged 10.7 batters an inning. In their four losses they averaged 6.4 batters an inning.).

Thus, after two innings and a crushing momentum-killing four-batter bottom of the second, the Gardeners faced a 9-3 deficit. The Wasabis scored two in the third, yet three outs by David Yanover defensively in right field stayed the onslaught. For the first out, he relayed to Bou at second, who then nailed a strike to Gatta at third to get baserunner James Stewart trying to foolishly leg out a triple. Outs two and three were fly balls that Yanover ran to easily, despite his limited mobility.

Down 11-3, the Gardeners finally roared back to life. Besse’s leadoff walk and Kretchmer’s single put two on with one out for Edde to lash a triple over the left fielder’s head to score them both. Huffman casually singled in Edde, Gatta moved him to second with a single of his own, then Bou in the eight spot crushed a three-run homer to deep center to pull the Gardeners within two at 11-9. A two-out solo shot to left by former Saint Mary’s stud and catcher/second baseman Dane Dobrinich cut the deficit to one, 11-10, after three.

Dobrinich, along with Edde, shared the co-Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game Award, with Edde’s going 4-for-5 with four RBIs, as stated, and Dobrinich’s batting 4-for-4 with two homers and a game 2.750 slugging percentage. Dobrinich also played superbly in three innings at second, making a diving stop to save extra bases while also adding two putouts in the sixth.

In the top of the fourth, Watters in right center made all three putouts for the Gardeners, making a great running catch by the fence especially for out number two on a Tony Brackens deep fly ball in the gap. Yet the Wasabis kept incrementally scoring, putting up three runs then holding the Gardeners to zero runs in four batters in the bottom half.

The Wasabis scored two more in the top of the fifth to take a 16-10 lead, only a touchdown ahead of the Gardeners. The Gardeners settled for a field goal in their half, scoring their three runs – all with two outs nonetheless – on a Hersher RBI single then a Besse two-RBI triple.

Despite the Gardeners’ closing the gap, the Wasabis still kept hitting, slashing around three more in the sixth to push it to 19-13. A two-RBI double by Huffman brought the Gardeners back within four at 19-15, yet that was the closest they would get to their opponent for the rest of the evening, including the joint teams postgame showers. The Wasabis smashed the ball around in the top of the seventh, scoring eight runs to put the game (almost) out of reach at 27-15.

The Gardeners showed their mettle and rallied in their last at-bats, with Dobrinich hitting a two run homer (Yanover scoring), then Hersher and Besse later scoring on RBIs by Kretchmer and Edde. Four runs was to be the max that final inning though, as the Gardeners stopped short at 19 runs and subsequently fell to 0-1 in the standings.

Despite the loss, the Gardeners could think of only positives heading into their week two matchup, especially with All-Star catcher Phil Zackler coming back as well as outfield mainstay Dan Ewbank. With the potential player losses of Eric Snow (trade to Los Angeles), David Price (free agency, absurd contract), Pat Reilly (temporary retirement), and Chris Norton (fatherhood), the Gardeners will have to claw their way to each victory this season. Or they can start mashing the ball like they did when they averaged over 31 runs a game in their five wins last season. Having the right field fence one-homer-per-game rule for all their games this season will be a handicap, yet they’ll find a way around it. According to the rules for Stu Jackson Ballpark, there’s no limit to the number of homers over the left field fence 700 feet away.

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Stat of the Week:

60………Career home runs by Dave Watters, including one on Tuesday. The next closest is retired Gardener Stu Jackson, with 22.

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11/19/2015

With their strongest team ever and a favorable seeding as the #2 seed in the fall playoffs, the Savage Gardeners entered their semifinal matchup Tuesday night prepared, confident, and primed like lions for victory.

And with that bitch History also wagging her finger Tuesday and saying, “Nah nah nah I don’t think so Gardeners, ain't nobody got time fo that, you’re losing again in the semifinals,” History won out over the Gardeners’ plans. As the final bell sounded, the Gardeners once again found themselves left off the championship podium after their 21-12 defeat to #3 seed Ace Wasabi at Steven Jackson Memorial Field.

Fuck, once again.

Maybe it was the three-week hiatus from playing that did them in. Maybe it was the missing presence of Gardeners’ mainstays Ari Hersher and Chris Norton. Maybe it was managing (probably). Whatever the reason, the Gardeners once again didn’t get over the hump of succeeding in the playoffs.

Yet what’s odd is that the game didn’t start off poorly; on the contrary, the Gardeners looked hot from the start, and we’re not talking about visions of them in the showers rinsing their hair with a full bottle of white soapy shampoo that all of the TV commercials portray in their shampoo ads. Seriously – every shampoo commercial has the dude with a pound of shampoo on his head. Do guys really use that much shampoo? Isn’t it usually just a simple squirt, one dollop that’s good enough for a hair washing? Maybe not for Dave Watters with his flowing locks, yet in general, a small dollop of shampoo does the trick in our opinion. Yet we at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) also are superstitious and don’t shower during the playoffs, so we actually have no clue what shampoo feels like these days.

Back to the Gardeners’ looking hot. As the home team, they took the field in the top of the first in lockdown mode. Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde pitched a 1-2-3 inning to start the game. Ace Wasabi leadoff batter Derek Bell grounded to Phil Zackler at second base before Zackler could even warm up, a testament to Zackler’s “Just throw me in the fire immediately and I’ll come out swinging” mentality, especially when it comes to leaving it all out on the field and pushing it to the very end on Halloween nights when you fall in love with a hot blonde named Julie in a leotard even though she has a boyfriend even if it means smoking cigarettes which you never do or staying out till 4am doing all kinds of weird yoga shit in a living room of a shady apartment.

Yet this is neither here nor there. Zackler cleanly fielded Bell’s grounder for the first out of the inning, right center fielder Eric Snow camped under Danny Darwin’s flyout for out number too, and Watters in left center chased down a ball in deep center to put out Shane Reynolds and end the inning.

With a shutdown top of the first in their pocket, the Gardeners whooped it up at the plate in their half. Right fielder Tristan Besse led off with a walk, shortstop David Huffman singled him to second, then Watters added the 305th RBI of his career with a single to score Besse. Lefty first baseman Kyle Kretchmer followed with a double to score Huffman and move Watters to third. Edde walked to load the bases and third baseman Dan Gatta added run number three of the inning with a sacrifice fly to left to score Watters.

Left center fielder Dan Ewbank then came through with the Kelly Evans CNBC Hot Drive of the Game with a triple that scored baserunners Kretchmer and Edde easily, pushing the Gardeners up 5-0. Snow sacrifice-flied in Ewbank, and after one, the Gardeners led 6-0 and were feeling groovy like Uncle Jesse every second of every day.

Nevertheless, the Wasabis came back by slashing around seven runs in the second to take the lead – ultimately for good fuck shit bitch cock balls – at 7-6.

And that’s when the Gardeners went cold at the plate.

In the next three innings they scored zero runs.

It hurt. The Wasabis scored 11 more in their next three times to the plate, making the score 18-6 as the Gardeners came up in the bottom of the fifth. So yeah………the culprit was the Gardeners’ inability to score runs in innings two through four. They batted 4-for-13 (.308) during that time, failing to do anything special except put a few runners on base and leave them stranded like Robinson Crusoe.

For the game, the Gardeners left ten runners on base, five times having two runners on with two outs and failing to capitalize. They batted 4-for-11 (.364) with two outs.

In addition, they had their worst game hitting as a team, setting season game lows for batting average (.514), slugging (.703), hits, and runs. They also failed to hit a homer in a game for the first time this season (they entered Tuesday's game averaging 3.75 homers per game as a team).

They finally got runs back on the board in the bottom of the fifth when Watters and Kretchmer led off with singles and scored later in the inning on Edde and Snow RBIs.

The Wasabis scored another in the sixth yet at least the Gardeners’ infielders all got some action, with groundouts going to Gatta at third, Huffman at short, and a liner to Watters at second making up the three outs. (After the second inning Watters moved from left center to second base to make room for Pat Reilly in the outfield, after Reilly finally made his way into the stadium after being stopped and harassed by thousands of autograph seekers in the parking lot, hindering his ability to make it into the game until the bottom of the second inning. Watters in left center did his duty though, making the aforementioned running catch in the first inning and doing the same in the second, that one with two runners on and two outs, saving a sure three-run home run by bedazzling the crowd with his athletic spin and run back catching ability in deep center, Ken Griffey Jr.-style.)

Reilly led off the sixth by singling, Besse moved him to third with a single as well, and Huffman sacrifice-flied him in to bring the Gardeners within ten, at 19-9. Kretchmer later tripled high off the right center field fence to score Besse to cut the deficit to nine.

Yet there wasn’t much gas left in the Gardeners’ tank. The Wasabis scored two in their half of the seventh and the Gardeners started a rally in their last hopes, with Ewbank’s leadoff single, Snow’s double, then Zackler’s two-RBI line drive single to left that put some momentum in the Gardeners’ sails.

Yet Mother Nature had other plans in mind and blew the wind back in the Gardeners’ faces, deflating their sails and leaving them runless and shirtless for the rest of the inning as the final horn sounded the 21-12 defeat. The shirtless part wasn’t complained about though by loyal Garden Hoes Margot and Sophie, who admired the sweaty men from their perch in the players’ wives and girlfriends’ section of the stadium, sipping red wine and rooting for their heroes until the bitter end. And can we comment real quick on how amazing those two are? One sister wisely married the Gardeners’ stud pitcher, and the other sister simply brings her cute self and shows up to cheer for her local team. Maybe it’s the garlic fries or maybe it’s the wine that flows like the salmon of Capistrano that brings the ladies to the ballpark almost week in and week out. Regardless of what it is, it doesn’t go unnoticed that they’re unbelievably loyal fans, and you can see that the Gardeners always play with a little more pep in their step when they’re present.

And speaking of steps, on a play that has gone viral on social media and has millions of hits already on YouTube, Reilly in left contributed the Ricky Bobby Defensive Play of the Game in the top of the seventh.

With one out and a runner on first, batter James Mouton lofted a deep fly ball to left that Reilly turned and ran back for.

Then he slipped.

Then he got up.

Then he slipped. Again.

Not giving up, and while lying on the ground for the second time on the play, Reilly then casually caught Mouton’s fly ball.

The stadium erupted – Gardeners’ players, Wasabi players, fans from both teams, even President Obama stopped his press conference to say, “Holy shit. What an amazing – amazing! – catch.” The ball was subsequently shipped off to Cooperstown.

Also adding a great defensive play in the seventh was the first base-to-pitcher combo of Kretchmer and Edde for the first out – Kretchmer’s making a great scoop on a ball to his left, then flipping to a hustling Edde covering first from the mound.

So yeah, the Gardeners have their fair share of defensive studs. It’s simply their bats that need to get a little more pop. Scoring zero runs in three straight innings won’t cut it. Eighteen-run innings, like they did twice this season? Yeah – that’s the shit we’re talking about. Winter season opponents are fucked.

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Stat of the Week:

0.........Semifinal playoff wins by the Gardeners in eight appearances.

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Fall Season Player of the Game Awards:

At the season ending team banquet Tuesday night at the four-star Thee Parkside Resort and Spa, where items on the price fixe menu included caviar (tater tots), filet mignon (cheeseburgers), and champagne (Bud Light), the Gardeners awarded game balls for the season’s games.

The Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game Awards are recapped below:

Game 1: Phil Zackler – 5/5, 4 Runs; 4 IP, W

Game 2: Dan Ewbank – 4/5, HR, 3B, 2 2B, 4 Runs, 5 RBI

Game 3:
Ari Hersher (co) – 4/4, HR, 3 1B, 2 BB, 4 Runs, 6 RBI, 1.000 OBP
David Huffman (co) – 3/5, Two 3-Run HRs, 8 RBI

Game 4: Kyle Kretchmer – 3/4, Two 2-Run HRs, 1B, 6 RBI, Kelly Evans CNBC Hot Drive of the Game (HR to deep right, set record for farthest homer ever at KKU Field)

Game 5: Kyle Kretchmer – 3/4, 2 HRs, 1B, 4 RBI

Game 6: Mike Edde – 5/5, Two 3-Run HRs, 3 1B, 4 Runs, 8 RBI; 5 IP, W, 2 Shutout Innings

Game 7: Dave Watters – 4/4, Two HRs, 3B, 1B, BB, 5 Runs, 7 RBI

Game 8: Pat Reilly – 4/4, HR, 3 1B, 2 Runs, 3 RBI

Playoffs Semifinals: Kyle Kretchmer – 3/4, 3B, 2B, 1B, 2 Runs, 2 RBI

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Statistics from the Fall Season – New Entries to the Gardeners’ Single Season Leaderboard (Through 12 Total Gardeners Seasons):

TEAM SEASON RECORDS
Runs (216)
Hits (274)
1B (186)
HR (30)
OBP (.662)

INDIVIDUAL
Batting Average
2nd in Gardeners’ history – Chris Norton (.826)
6th – Tristan Besse (.784)

On-Base Percentage (OBP)
1st – Chris Norton (.826)
2nd – Ari Hersher (.811)
9th – Tristan Besse (.756)

On-Base Plus Slugging (OPS)
9th – Dave Watters (2.170)

Hits
2nd (tie) – Dave Watters (29) and Tristan Besse (29)

Singles
3rd – Tristan Besse (23)

Doubles
4th (tie) – Dave Watters (8)

Home Runs
3rd – Kyle Kretchmer (8)
7th (tie) – Dave Watters (6)

Walks
1st – Ari Hersher (9)
3rd (tie) – Dave Watters (6)
6th (tie) – Mike Edde (5)

Runs
2nd (tie) – Ari Hersher (23)
5th – Tristan Besse (22)
6th – Dave Watters (21)

RBI
3rd (tie) – Dave Watters (30)
6th – Kyle Kretchmer (29)

RBI per plate appearance – Average number of RBI contributed per plate appearance
9th – David Huffman (.77 – 23 RBI in 30 plate appearances)

Runs per plate appearance
3rd – Ari Hersher (.62, or scoring on 62% of his plate appearances)

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10/28/2015

After scoring three runs total in the final five innings Tuesday night, the Gardeners were a bit shocked when the game ended so quickly. Yet they shouldn’t have been surprised that it ended so sharply – their bats simply went cold after the second inning. Which clearly didn’t help them in the 15-14 loss in the regular season finale to the Flatliners at Stu Jackson Ballpark.

With the #2 or #3 seed locked in heading into the game, the Gardeners breezed into Tuesday’s matchup looking to clamp down on the #2 seed and keep up their momentum from the past two games (69 total runs scored) heading into the playoffs. However, their opponent knocked the ball around more consistently than the Gardeners; thus, the Gardeners were left walking away from the ballpark in defeat, scratching their heads at what happened.

And what happened was simply – as stated above – their bats going silent. Scoring three runs in five innings – an average of 0.6 runs per inning – and 14 runs total isn’t enough in the CC Division. If this were a game against the 49ers or a WNBA game then yes, 14 runs or points would be enough for a victory. Yet when you’re playing in the most elite, highest level of softball ever, you’ve got to be scoring at least 50, maybe 60 runs a game.

Those numbers might be a bit exaggerated, yet you get the point – scoring is fun, be it on the softball field or with that sailor you met at TGI Friday’s who never did call you back yet finally did call you back drunk late at 1am on a Saturday night. What?

Since it was late in the season, the Gardeners were able to expand to the 40-man roster to let the minor league callups get some big league experience. And much to the delight of the female fans – even though he is not single, ladies, sorry to tell you – catcher Matt Todd was back in the lineup. Todd had touched the big league grass for a game in the summer 2014 season, going 2-for-4 in the game and calling a masterful seven-inning, seven-run game behind the plate.

(His CERA, or Catcher’s ERA, was 1.00 for the game, or an average of one run allowed per inning, at the time the Gardeners’ leader in CERA for players who qualified. Since the stat was introduced in the spring 2014 season, the Gardeners’ catchers have a CERA of 2.39 – 2.39 runs allowed per inning, or an average of 16.73 runs allowed per game. So Todd was catching below [better than] the team average.

Also, nobody cares about this stupid stat anyway. We at USA Softball Statistics Yearly [USASSY] do though. Because we're curious if there IS a correlation between the catcher, or type of catcher, and the number of runs scored, or if we can spot favorable relationships between pitcher and catcher. And also because our whole staff at USASSY is a bunch of fucking nerds who play chess and do physics textbook problems during their lunch breaks.)

Also called up for the regular season finale was Double-A stud Matt Bou, who added a nice two-RBI single in his first career at-bat as a Gardener.

After losing the coin toss by calling “tails,” and therefore deemed the away team, and after Bette Midler’s National Anthem where she forgot “gave proof through the night” in the lyrics (who does that anyway?: “The bombs bursting in air, that our flag was still there.” That was fucking stupid), the Gardeners and leadoff batter Ari Hersher got their groove back. And like Stella, the Gardeners’ left center fielder grooved a double to lead off the game, extending his stats to getting on base in 28 of his last 29 leadoff plate appearances. We also keep pointing out this stat because 1.) It’s quite a remarkable stat; and 2.) We at USASSY would forget if we didn’t keep updating and mentioning the numbers in the write-ups, because it’s not logged on a computer or written down, simply straight read by going through the official scorer’s scorebooks. Again, more pointless numbers shit.

With Hersher on second, third baseman Dan Gatta sacrificed him home with a grounder to shortstop. Gatta’s jacked presence around first base spooked Flatliners’ first baseman Todd Hollandsworth into throwing the ball away when Hersher wisely darted for third on shortstop Chan Ho Park’s throw to first, allowing Hersher to cross the plate for the Gardeners’ first run.

Gardeners’ cleanup batter Pat Reilly then launched the Kelly Evans CNBC Hot Drive of the Game by blasting a solo shot over the fence in right to make it 2-0. First baseman Kyle Kretchmer’s double followed by Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde’s single to score Kretchmer put the Gardeners up three after the top of the first.

Edde goaded two groundouts to shortstop Dave Watters in the bottom of the first, yet the Flatliners scored two to make it 3-2 after one. Then the Gardeners settled into their usual routine – scoring hella runs.

Leading off the top of the second, second baseman Chris Norton singled to bring his season average up to .900 (18-for-20). Looking at it now – since Norton will be unavailable to play in the playoffs – Norton could’ve taken himself out of the game so he could have finished the season batting .900, the first time a Gardeners’ player would’ve done such a feat. However, he isn’t like Jose Reyes in 2011 who got a hit in his first at-bat in the final game of the season then pulled himself so he could win the batting title like a cheapskate. No, Norton was more like Ted Williams in 1941, who was going to play out the final day, regardless of where his average stood at the end of the day, above .400 or below .400 be damned (he finished at .406 of course). Norton ended up 2-for-4 for the night, finishing with a still remarkably high season average of .826, currently third in Gardeners’ history to Watters’ .848 average in the spring 2014 season. (The outfielder Reilly is second, currently with an .842 average heading into next week’s game(s).)

After Norton’s single to start the second, right fielder Jason Friedman doubled to put two on for the callup Bou, who, as stated, singled, to score Norton and Friedman. The catcher Todd batting in the eleventh spot singled and Hersher followed with a single as well to score Bou and make it 6-2. Gatta’s line drive single to left scored Todd, Reilly singled in Hersher to push it to 8-2, then with two outs Edde came to the plate.

And with wife Garden Hoe Margot “watching” from the stands, Edde socked a three-run homer to left center to push the Gardeners up 11-2. We also write “watching” in quotation marks because it is debatable if Margot saw her husband knock this homer or if the Whole Foods salad or whatever delectable thing that was that she was eating was attracting her attention more. A similar “watching” episode happened in the third when Edde caught a screaming laser shot back at him on the mound for the third out. Yet “watching” or not, we’ll let this one go – at least she was in the stands. (Margot’s sister, Garden Hoe Sophie, also showed up later to watch the Gardeners. And Garden Hoe Leah was also on hand to watch Dan Ewbank play a flawless defensive game in left field. All three Garden Hoes in attendance also vowed to come to the playoff game(s) next Tuesday, rally towels, eye black, and foam fingers and all.)

Up 11-2, the Gardeners ceded three runs in the bottom of the second, then turned it around and put up zero runs at the plate in the third.

Shit.

The Flatliners capitalized on this momentum shift and added four more in the bottom of the third to close the gap to 11-9, Gardeners.

The Gardeners slashed two around in the fourth, with Gatta’s leading off with a single, Watters’ doubling down the line in left to score him, then Watters’ scoring on Reilly’s single behind him, the third of Reilly’s four hits for the night.

Up 13-9, the Gardeners and Edde on the mound locked it down in the field with Edde's pitching two straight shutout innings. The fourth inning saw three flyouts while the fifth inning saw a groundout to Watters at short then two to Norton at second for a quick 1-2-3 inning.

Thus, after five innings, the Gardeners looked in control, yet they still needed to get their bats going again. They got one going in the top of the sixth when Watters doubled home Hersher, yet that was all they could muster for the rest of the night. Now leading 14-9, they let the Flatliners score six runs in the bottom of the sixth and thus entered the seventh and final inning down one at 15-14. Which is where it sadly ended, capping the Gardeners’ regular season at a 5-3 record.

As the rest of the league’s Tuesday games rounded out later in the evening, the loss ended up not hurting the Gardeners in the standings – they still finished as the #2 seed when their nemesis The Good Guys lost (they would’ve jumped the Gardeners in the standings due to their head-to-head victory). Regardless, the Gardeners finished the regular season with the largest run differential in the division, 46 runs, averaging out to their outscoring their opponents by 5.75 runs per game. Quite daunting for any team that faces the Gardeners in the four-team playoffs.

So start filling out your brackets, it’s November Madness time. Doesn’t have quite the ring as March Madness, yet it’s essentially the same – teams competing in a bracket tournament for the championship and the obligatory “One Shining Moment” video montage of the tournament on CBS at the end. If the Gardeners win the championship they’ll replace “One Shining Moment” in the montage with “Truly Madly Deeply” per their team’s namesake. Because anyone would want to stand with the Gardeners on a mountain. And bathe with them in the sea. Especially hot babes, who'd like to bathe with them in the sea. Like Hannah Davis. Or Mila Kunis. Or Scarlett Johansson. Or Olivia Wilde. Or Jenny Dell. Or sportscaster Tracy Wolfson. Who’s keeping it together pretty damn well at 40 years old. Right up Gatta’s alley.

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Stat of the Week:

7.1………Plate appearances per home run for the three Gardeners’ newcomers combined this season (Besse, Huffman, Kretchmer). Essentially, a lineup full of the three would hit a homer every seventh batter.

They also combined for a 1.284 slugging percentage and .684 batting average. Pretty damn good rookie Gardeners performances.

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10/22/2015

If there were a perfect time for a team to get hot, now is that time for the Savage Gardeners. Of course, attractive females around the globe would counter that statement and say that the Gardeners players have been hot since 1979-1985, the period of years where the team members were born. So yes, they’ve been hot for 30-36 years. Yet in terms of the San Francisco Tuesday Night Marina and Potrero Neighborhood Fields-Only Slow-Pitch Men’s CC Division – essentially the highest level of softball in the United States – now is the right time for the Gardeners to be on fire.

After last week’s high in runs scored in the 34-18 domination of Winter Warrior, the Gardeners one-upped themselves Tuesday night by thrashing around The Legends 35-23 at Steven Jackson Memorial Field.

With the win, the Gardeners clinched a playoff spot – either the #2 or #3 seed, no better, no worse. We’re guessing the #2 seed means being the home team in the first round playoff matchup against the #3 seed, so a win for the Gardeners next Tuesday would be nice. Doesn’t really matter though if they’re home or visitors – they win regardless.

[As of this writing as well, the Gardeners have the largest score differential in their division, at 47 runs. The next team is way behind, at 31 runs.]

With the 35-run output, the Gardeners upped their average run total to 27 runs this season. Which is a lot of runs. Essentially each batter scoring 2-3 times per game. Or Phil Zackler scoring 27 times. Which sounds like the results of a month of Tinder dates for Zackler.

With their ace on the hill – Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde – the home team Gardeners locked it down early in the top of the first inning. Edde pitched a four-batter first inning, ending with Legends’ cleanup batter Dave Magadan flying out to way deep in left where outfielder Pat Reilly had smartly positioned himself, camping under the ball for the third out of the inning. His film study with Jon Gruden during the week easily came in handy in this instance - "Spider 2 Y Banana" wouldn't work against the Gardeners.

Shortly the Legends came up again in the top of the second inning down 18-0.

Wait………………what?

Eighteen-to-zero?

Yep – the Gardeners in the bottom of the first scored 18 runs, tying their team high for runs in an inning, which they had tied last week as well. They scored eight runs with one out, then scored ten more with two outs. In short, it was fucking amazing. Kind of like Jennifer Love Hewitt in “Can’t Hardly Wait.”

Left center fielder Ari Hersher had led off the inning as he always does, by getting on base – singling – to extend his numbers to getting on base in 27 of his last 28 leadoff plate appearances.

Then with one out, the Gardeners got the bats rolling. Yet, first, right center fielder Dave Watters had to walk. For the fifth time in his last seven plate appearances no less. (He now has a 1.000 OBP in his last 11 plate appearances, after Tuesday’s game.)

With Hersher and Watters on base, Reilly hit the first of his two RBI doubles for the inning – both off the fence in right center – and scored Hersher. Shortstop David Huffman batting in the fifth spot cleaned in the baserunners with a double of his own to center. First baseman Kyle Kretchmer – warming up his swing for later in the inning – singled, then third baseman Dan Gatta singled behind him to score Huffman from third. Left fielder Dan Ewbank and second baseman Chris Norton both produced RBI singles as well, then Edde changed it up by doubling, this one scoring Ewbank. Zackler walked, then soon Hersher was up again for the second time in the inning, this one with the bases loaded. With the Gardeners already up 7-0, Hersher produced another run, this time in wild fashion with a hit-by-pitch. Actually it was a walk, yet taking a fastball square in the back sounds much sexier, so we’ll go with that.

With the bases still loaded, right fielder Tristan Besse sacrifice-flied in Edde from third to make it 9-0. Watters singled in Zackler for the first of his seven RBIs for the night, then Reilly doubled again off the fence as mentioned to score another. Huffman singled in two again to give him four RBIs for the inning, bringing Kretchmer up.

And giving the 41,072 fans in attendance what they came to see, the lefty slugger Kretchmer launched a homer over the tall fence in right center. Only his seventh homer in the last four games, no big deal. Now 15-0, Gardeners.

It wasn’t the last homer of the inning though – Ewbank hit a two-run shot that screamed past the left center fielder two batters later after Gatta had singled. Zackler singled in Norton later in the inning to cap the inning off at 18 runs.

So yes, another ho-hum inning with a shitload of runs. At the time, going back to the previous week, the Gardeners had scored 44 runs total in three straight innings, an average of almost 15 runs an inning. They’ve also scored 69 runs in their last ten innings – essentially an average of seven runs an inning. We only state these meaningless stats because we at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) love numbers and love mentioning pointless statistics. Especially when you keep some dumbass database in the cloud that contains every statistic imaginable for every Gardeners player in every situation going back five years. Second inning one out runners on first and second 3rd-down-and-4 singles by Hersher at Moscone 1 with four seconds left on the shot clock? Yeah, USASSY has that.

Regardless, despite the 18-run lead, the Gardeners let their opponent back in the game. Or, more accurately, their opponent hit the ball very well and climbed back into contention. The Legends scored five in the second inning, six in the third, then 11 in the fourth to take the lead(!) briefly at 22-21 after the top of the fourth. The Gardeners had scored three runs during that timeframe – Watters with a two-run homer to left center in the second and Besse with a two-out RBI double in the third – yet yes, after the top of the fourth, the 18-run lead was completely erased and the Gardeners were facing a one-run deficit.

Which is essentially nothing. And the Gardeners proved this in the bottom of the fourth.

Down one at 22-21, Watters leading off the inning decided to end all…………all…………all…………what’s the name of that restaurant with all the goofy shit on the walls and the mozzarella sticks?

Ah yes – Shenanigans. Watters ended all shenanigans.

He blasted his second straight homer – this one over the fence in right center – to tie the game. And after that the Legends were toast, like toast that has been sitting in the toaster for too long and is completely black and now there’s smoke coming out and ah damn it the stupid fire alarm is going off now this is annoying and now I don’t even want to make a second piece of toast because I’m annoyed now that I forgot to take it out of the toaster and it’s all burnt now fuck it I’ll eat this rotten banana still sitting on my shelf from a week ago when it was green when I bought it because I thought okay I’ll eat this in two or three days then I forgot about it so great now it’s all brown and mushy but I’m hungry so fuck it I’ll eat it.

After Watters tied the game, Reilly walked, then Huffman produced the Gardeners’ fifth homer of the game with one to center to give the Gardeners the lead (for good) at 24-22. However, as seen with the Legends’ ability to hit the ball and come back, a two-run lead wasn’t enough for the Gardeners. And they had to grind it out, as they soon were facing two outs and only were still up two. Ewbank changed the outs train with a single, Norton doubled for the fourth of his five hits for the night (.895 season batting average now, by the way), then Edde came through with the So Fetch Clutch Hit of the Game by doubling to center to score Ewbank and Norton.

Whew. Now they were up four runs. And that hit was fucking clutch. Two outs. Two on. Only with a two-run lead. Could've been only up two going into the fifth, versus now - after Edde's hit - up four and keeping the inning going. Yeah, Edde’s hit in that situation was real.

Zackler and Hersher singled behind Edde (Edde scored on Hersher’s single, 27-22 now), then Besse walked to load the bases.

Where Watters then locked down for himself the Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game Award. Already 3-for-3 with two homers and four RBIs for the night, Watters still wasn’t done. He then tripled off the fence in right center (producing a final 3.000 game slugging percentage) to clear the bases, push the Gardeners up to 30 runs, and breathe all sighs of relief into the Gardeners’ diehard fans (even though no Garden Hoes showed up once again…………maybe they can’t control themselves when they smell and feel the aura of masculinity and dominance the Gardeners have shown in their last two games?).

Reilly singled in Watters to make it 31-22 and after four your local heroes were sitting pretty.

Edde then shut down the Legends hard in the top of the fifth with a three-up, three-down inning. Which Zackler made look easy when he made the I Hate Uncle Jaime Defensive Play of the Game with no outs and batter Scott Servais at the plate.

After Servais fouled one over the catcher Zackler’s head off the backstop, Zackler felt down and out because he missed his chance at glory. Yet Servais served a better one up for him on the next pitch. He popped a short one up about one-third of the way between Zackler and the pitcher’s mound. And with the dexterity of Dominique Moceanu and the speed of a jackal, Zackler jumped up from behind home plate, threw his catcher’s mask into the stands, ran INTO Servais standing in the way, then still made the shoestring catch 15 feet in front of home plate. The crowd went fucking nuts. Hella chicks in the stands threw their handkerchiefs towards him (“Pick me! Pick me!”). It probably was the greatest catcher catch one will ever see. Even better than Dottie Hinson catching the ball while doing the splits.

The best part too was when Zackler was pushing Servais out of the way to get to the ball, doing it exactly like Will Ferrell in “Old School” pushing kids out of the way with the fucking dart in his neck.

Flyouts to Hersher in left center and Reilly in left ended the inning. For the game, the Legends flew out 16 times and only grounded out twice, one to Huffman at short and another to Kretchmer at first.

The Gardeners tacked on four more in the bottom of the fifth to set a new team-high in runs scored: Norton singled in one, Zackler doubled in another, and Hersher cleaned in two with a single.

Sitting pretty at 35-22, the Gardeners ceded one run in the top of the sixth – the last inning – yet Edde closed it out with a flyout to Ewbank in right to end it. The website says the Legends scored 22 runs, we think they scored one in the sixth to make it 23, yet truly it doesn’t matter much, because they are terrible and the Gardeners won. In truth they’re not terrible – they were a pretty solid team. We at USASSY are simply slightly biased towards the Gardeners and derogatory towards their opponents, that’s all. Only slightly biased though. Nah maybe super biased. Fuck the Gardeners’ opponents. Nah they’re all actually good guys. Fuck them though. Nah just kidding they’re nice. Except when they beat the Gardeners, which has been rare this year, and won’t happen again in the next three games either.

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Stat of the Week:

18………Games in their history in which the Gardeners have batted .700 or better, including five this season. They’ve averaged 27 runs in those games. No surprise – they’ve won them all.

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10/15/2015

After shortstop Joey Faber went down in the second inning with a baserunning injury, the Savage Gardeners’ situation against Winter Warrior looked bleak. Now with only nine fielders, and as the away team on their home KKU Field, the Gardeners seemed destined to fall apart with their shorthanded team and three-man outfield.

This looked true in the bottom of the second when Winter Warrior put up 11 runs to take a 13-3 lead after two. They produced hit after hit, taking advantage of the brief open space in the outfield to build an impossibly surmountable lead. Yet the Gardeners didn’t quit or get despondent. No – they decided to use their shortened lineup to gain momentum at the plate and get some runs back. And the three-person outfield of Dan Gatta in left, Pat Reilly in center, and Tristan Besse in right answered the call by handily covering more ground than God to help lift the handicapped Gardeners to a 34-18 victory.

In the third inning first baseman Kyle Kretchmer at the plate soon set the tone for the rest of the game: the Gardeners were going to punch back no matter what it took.

With his team down 13-3, Kretchmer led off the inning with a deep solo shot to right for one run. Thirteen to four now. Three singles in a row by third baseman Chris Norton, second baseman Alan Donner, and catcher J.J. Warren then loaded the bases for Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde to single in Norton. Besse sacrifice-flied in Donner and later in the inning Reilly singled in two more with two outs and the bases loaded to bring the Gardeners closer, now only down 13-8.

Nevertheless, Winter Warrior put back five of their own in the bottom half, pushing the lead back to ten, 18-8. This looked like it was going to be an uphill battle all night.

Which no one in the Gardeners’ dugout gave a shit about.

Because in the top of the fourth the Gardeners then scored 18 runs.

Yes, you read that right. The Gardeners scored 18 runs in the fourth inning to take a commanding 26-18 lead and end all talk of a possible loss.

What happened in that inning:

- Twenty-four batters came to the plate (13 singles, two doubles, two homers, four walks, and three fielder’s choice plays for outs – an .850 team batting average and .875 on-base percentage for the inning).
- Six players batted three times in the inning (Norton, Donner, Warren, Edde, Besse, Gatta). Yes, not just twice. THREE times.
- Eight of the nine Gardeners scored twice in the inning.
- The Gardeners had a runner in scoring position in 19 of the 24 plate appearances.
- Winter Warrior’s pitcher Al Leiter was afraid of shortstop Dave Watters, walking him twice.
- Kretchmer hit a grand slam.

In short, they crushed it.

Heading into the fourth and down ten at 18-8, the leadoff batter Norton told his teammates before his at-bat, “Alright folks, time to get this shit going. YOLO.” Which he lived up to by singling to lead off the inning, contributing to his 5-for-6 night at the plate. Donner (6-for-6) then followed with a single, and Warren did the same, scoring Norton and putting two on for Edde.

[Side note: Donner in the fifth inning hit a grounder that hit a Gardeners baserunner, which is an out for the baserunner. Yet which, we at USASSY (USA Softball Statistics Yearly) just learned, is credited as a hit for the batter (Rule 10.05).]

With two runners on, Edde finally got what he was looking for by launching a three-run shot to deep right – his first career home run as a Gardener. The Gardeners were just getting started.

A double by Besse then back-to-back walks by former roommates Gatta and Watters loaded the bases for Reilly who produced the second of his three bases loaded singles for the evening. The lefty finished 6-for-7 for the night with six RBIs. His single scored Besse and the bases were kept loaded for Kretchmer. Who had already exhausted his homers for the evening, right?

Yet, if you recall, Kretchmer has hit two homers in each of the previous two games.

So he kept up the streak.

His second homer of the night was a blast – a grand slam, the Gardeners’ first of the year, which earned Kretchmer his second straight Kelly Evans CNBC Hot Drive of the Game Award – that brought the Gardeners within one at 18-17. This led to a familiar situation in the inning – Norton coming to the plate again with nobody on base, like he did to lead off the inning only two minutes before, since the Gardeners were peppering hits around so rapidly.

And he started it off the second time around the lineup, singling to center. Donner singled behind him, Warren didn’t like Donner on base so he fielder’s choiced to second to get him off the basepaths, then Edde singled next to score Norton. Besse and Gatta followed with RBI singles, then Watters was walked again to load the bases again for Reilly. Walk the #3 hitter to get to the cleanup batter with the bases loaded? Yeah, that’s really smart.

And with déjà vu and to punish Leiter on the mound for his second walk to load the bases with himself coming to the plate, Reilly singled in two more in Besse and Gatta. At this point, the Gardeners were now up 22-18. Which still wasn’t enough. Kretchmer singled in Watters, then later with two outs, Donner doubled in two more. Donner later scored on a bases loaded Besse single to cap the Gardeners at 18 runs for the inning.

Whew.

That was a shitload of hits. Eleven batters got on base before the first out was made (by Warren, fucking idiot).

In the game, Watters filled in at shortstop marvelously, making a few key tough groundout putouts. He also finished the game 2-for-3 in seven plate appearances.

What?

Yes – that’s because Leiter walked him four times, setting a new Gardeners’ single-game record. He’s now only 37 walks behind team career walk leader Ari Hersher.

The Gardeners – with their now unstoppable confidence that made their manly musk glisten off themselves and drift down the streets of the Marina to permeate every female’s lusting souls for these Godlike figures – then turned it around defensively in the bottom of the fourth by helping Edde pitch a shutout inning. Which was basically a shutdown inning, as Winter Warrior only brought four batters to the plate in the frame.

Then in the top of the fifth, the Gardeners – aiming to break their game-record for runs scored – did just so, starting with Watters’ finally getting a pitch to hit to double to lead off the inning. Reilly smoked a triple behind him and Kretchmer sac-flied Reilly in for his seventh RBI of the night. Donner later got on base by hitting his fellow teammate with the ball, Warren walked, and Edde came to the plate once again with runners on first and second.

Which we saw happen in the fourth inning.

The fifth was no different.

Edde hit his second three-run homer of the night to make it 31-18 and make his RBI total eight while also helping the Gardeners surpass 30 runs for the first time in their history. He finished 5-for-5 with the two homers, three singles, a walk, the eight RBIs, and four runs scored. Add in his two shutout innings to close out the game and Edde walked away with the Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game Award and the keys to a new Tesla.

Not to put their bats down yet, Besse singled, Gatta doubled, then Watters blasted a three-run shot to deep left for his 57th career homer to push the Gardeners to 34 runs.

For the evening, seven Gardeners batted .800 or better, with the team batting .800 overall (40-for-50). Which is insane. Also, five Gardeners batters had SEVEN plate appearances each. In their 111-game history before Tuesday, six plate appearances in a game was only reached 15 TOTAL times. Each of the nine Gardeners had at least six plate appearances on Tuesday; five of the Gardeners had seven.

Edde’s shutout fifth inning closed out the victory as he goaded an easy flyout to Gatta in left then two to a well-positioned Reilly in center to end the 16-run slaughter.

The outfield trio of Gatta, Reilly, and Besse did a phenomenal job covering the extra outfield space due to the missing fourth outfielder. Yet the Gardeners might be on to something, and next week they may experiment with only two outfielders, or even only one - maybe Phil Zackler positioned down the line in right field to stop any triples headed into the corner.

On second thought, it’d be best to position the sole outfielder in dead center, to cover more ground. Yeah, that makes more sense. Zackler’s up to it. It still wouldn’t cover the same amount of ground he covers when he plays catcher though. He averages about two miles running when he plays catcher, backing up throws to first, second, third, backing himself up at home, backing his backup self at home, and sometimes even running down balls in the outfield. He simply likes to run. He’s like a gazelle. Just a loping, graceful, speed demon gazelle. We just like that image.

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Stat of the Week:

26………Unanswered runs the Gardeners scored Tuesday. In two innings, they went from down 18-8 to leading 34-18.

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10/08/2015

With the most formidable team in their storied history, with the best odds of winning a division championship, home-field advantage, then cruising through the NLDS, NLCS, and World Series – with all of this in their favor, the Savage Gardeners blew up and gave up the most runs in their 111-game history.

The 34-19 loss to El Nino hurt bad like an owie boo boo on your finger then a blindsided sledgehammer to your skull and put the Gardeners at a mediocre 3-2 record for the season.

Which is shit.

This team was supposed to ride their sluggers and upgraded defense to an undefeated season, a trip to the White House, then enshrinement in Cooperstown with busts and speeches and shit as the best ballclub in Major League history. However, on Tuesday night at Stu Jackson Ballpark, the Gardeners simply couldn’t get it together.

It all started one hour before first pitch when starting second baseman Phil Zackler scratched himself from the lineup and went from “Obviously Playing” to “Doubtful” to “Out” very fast. Fantasy baseball owners and DraftKings bettors barely had time enough to adjust their lineups with the rapid news of Zackler’s playing status. The Gardeners then replaced Zackler with Brooks Conrad, who proceeded to live up to his legend by making seventeen errors at second, allowing the Gardeners’ opponent El Nino to earn Extra Runs (Softball Winning Rule #1), also leading to Extra Bases (Softball Winning Rule #2), and contributing to Momentum (Softball Winning Rule #3).

[When sure outs turn into errors and thus extra baserunners, the batting team can capitalize on the defense’s mistakes. Then they can take extra bases, putting them in better position to score. This momentum builds upon itself and it leaves the fielding team demoralized. These are the three rules of winning softball. This happened to the Gardeners Tuesday. That’s why they lost. It’s science. Just like how women have brains a third the size as men and are smelly pirate hookers who should go back to their homes on Whore Island.]

Some of the Gardeners’ hitters though proved their might and didn’t let down easily. Catcher/first baseman Kyle Kretchmer went 3-for-4 and knocked two homers. Shortstop David Huffman batted 4-for-5 with two singles, a double, and a triple. Third baseman/catcher Chris Norton kept his easy swing going by batting 3-for-4, contributing to his .714 batting average over his last six games. Right fielder Tristan Besse kept up his hot bat by going 3-for-4 with four runs and a three-run homer, only falling a triple short of the cycle. Despite these stats, Besse dropped his season average down to .870. What the fuck? In the last three games, Besse’s average has fallen from .933 to .896 to .870, which is a complete outrage. At the least he should keep his average over .900 and try to become the first person to bat over 1.000 for the year. Yet at this pace we’re not sure where he’ll end up. PECOTA though has him projected to finish the last three games going 15-for-15 with 14 home runs and a bunt single.

In addition, left center fielder Ari Hersher kept up his hot leadoff stats, extending his record to getting on base in 26 of his last 27 leadoff plate appearances.

With Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde back on the mound after tying the knot to loyal Garden Hoe Margot, the Gardeners felt at home with their ace on the hill once again. They looked sharp in the first inning, holding El Nino to one run with Edde’s goading a classic groundout to himself then toss to Dan Gatta at first base to end the inning. With the play, Edde passed Greg Maddux for most groundouts to a pitcher in a career. The ball from the play was subsequently shipped off to the Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Once again, the Postal Service realized their error of shipping a ball to the wrong sport’s hall of fame and had to find the package then ship it to the correct hall of fame in Cooperstown. This happened two weeks ago as well.

Down 1-0 after the top of the first, the Gardeners tied it up after Hersher’s single, tag to second on right fielder Eric Snow’s half-sacrifice fly, then score on right center fielder Dave Watters’ hot double to third.

Watters also added a great defensive play in right center in the third inning by gunning down runner Quinton McCracken trying to score from second. The throw on the fly hit papa-to-be Norton playing catcher right on the money for him to tag McCracken.

El Nino scored three in the second yet the Gardeners one-upped them in the bottom half, adding four runs in the inning. Singles by Gatta and Besse put two on for Norton to single Gatta in. A fielder’s choice scored Besse, and Edde and second baseman J.J. Warren scored later in the inning to make it 5-4 after two.

Then El Nino warmly rained down eight runs in El Nino weather fashion in the third to take a 12-5 lead. This was solely the tip of the El Nino monsoon. At the time, the Gardeners weren’t too affected, as they fought back in their half. An RBI single by Gatta scored one, then later with two outs and runners on first and third, the lefty slugger Kretchmer came to the plate.

After teasing and hustling El Nino with a short popup in his first at-bat, Kretchmer then brought out his full worth to produce the Kelly Evans CNBC Hot Drive of the Game. Pitcher Vinny Castilla tried screaming a fastball down the pipe. Kretchmer didn’t care. He launched a shot over the right center fence that went so high, and so far, no one could guesstimate at all where it landed. Some postulated that it landed on a car across the street from the ballpark. Others believed it landed on the roof of the building opposite. Even more others think it landed at the Marina Safeway on the other side of the city, where chicks were buying fresh salad mix, one avocado, then two bottles of pink rose wine then ohhh hey girllll wanna go get fro-yo, today is like such a fat day. Wherever Kretchmer’s homer went, it made a huge “THUNK” when it finally landed after its 20-second flight. If it landed on a car or building or a zebra’s skull nobody knows. All USASSY (USA Softball Statistics Yearly) knows is that it was the farthest hit ball ever recorded at Stu Jackson Ballpark.

This is only one week after he produced the farthest hit ball at KKU Field at the Moscone Complex.

Thus, in the history of the four fields that SF softball teams play on (two Moscone fields, two Jackson fields), Kretchmer owns the league record for the farthest hit ball on half of the fields. The Gardeners play a game later this season at Steven Jackson Memorial Field (the field opposite Stu Jackson Ballpark), which is another opportunity for Kretchmer to set a long-ball record. Three of four field records wouldn’t be bad. He simply needs an opportunity to play at Lance Harbor Moscone Field to nail all four fields. Kind of like collecting the railroads in Monopoly. Reading Railroad and B&O are in the bag, Pennsylvania and Short Line are left to be conquered.

These four runs in the third inning brought the Gardeners back, only down three at 12-9. Yet El Nino was just getting started. They scored 11 runs in the next two innings (the Gardeners scored a measly three), and after five, a 23-12 deficit didn’t sit pretty with the Gardeners and their fans. Which the latter, we will note, were nonexistent. Are the Garden Hoes boycotting the Gardeners’ games? What is going on? All we know is that a theme is developing: in games one through three, Garden Hoes were present. Games four and five? None in attendance. The Gardeners’ records? Yep – 3-0, then 0-2. Somebody start dating someone – anyone – and bring her to next week’s game so the Gardeners can get their swag back. Just get anyone. It could be an Alan Donner Tinder date. It could be a dude from the Castro. It could be that sailor someone met at TGI Fridays a couple months ago. Who never did call us back but did leave us with a little something called herpes...which we then gave to the dog. Simply put, the Gardeners need Garden Hoes present, straight fact.

El Nino then “only” scored two runs in the sixth inning. We say “only” because relative to the other innings, two runs was a relief. Yet this holding their opponent to “only” two runs did put the Gardeners in an uplifted state at the plate. In the bottom of the sixth – with two outs nonetheless – the Gardeners rallied back. A Huffman double and single by left fielder Dan Ewbank put two on for Gatta. Gatta then lasered a double to left to score Huffman and bring up Besse to the plate. And the consistent Besse pulled through – in a three-RBI way this time – by slashing a three-run home run to right center.

Then casually, Kretchmer launched another homer – this one to deep left center since he was handicapped by the only-one-homer-over-the-fence-in-right-rule.

This also was the second game in a row in which Kretchmer hit two homers in a game. And seriously we’re getting giddy thinking about the Gardeners’ game soon at Steven Jackson Memorial Field where Kretchmer can hit unlimited homers over the fence in right. Add in the other lefties Besse, Snow, and Pat Reilly, as well as opposite-field hitters Hersher, Huffman, Warren, and anyone else who wants to hit to right in that game. What that equates to will essentially be a home run derby for the Gardeners. Seriously – any fan who loves the long bomb should come to that game. Children should stay away from the playground and nobody ought to play basketball on the court behind the right field fence. It’ll be a fucking home run show, balls raining down everywhere. Current Garden Hoes and future Garden Hoes/blond Georgia girls should come watch their men that evening. If only to get super aroused for hump time later.

El Nino in the seventh put a sharp medieval spike through the Gardeners’ heart by scoring nine more runs to reach a total of 34. A sacrifice fly by Watters and a triple by Huffman scored two more for the Gardeners in their bottom half. They put up 19 runs – which normally would be enough. Yet this simply wasn’t the Gardeners’ night – a couple errors that could’ve been outs would’ve changed the story. El Nino did hit the ball well; however, if the Gardeners and their shitty second baseman get back to their quality defensive prowess, they’ll be unstoppable. An unstoppable that 16 freight trains couldn’t stop (yet 17 could, we did the math two weeks ago).

In short, it was a sad night in the Gardeners’ legendary history. Yet sad nights are good sometimes because it forces one to see the bottom of the barrel, see the bottom of the abyss, see the lowest of low points, as there’s only one way to go from there: downward.

No that’s wrong, it’s upward. You can only go upward if you’re at the bottom of the bottom. We don’t know who wrote that. He’s drunk, or bitter about that TGI Fridays sailor.

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Stat of the Week:

5.........Times, in seven innings, that Gardeners’ batters hit momentum-killing back-to-back outs

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9/23/2015

The Don Shula-esque quest for perfection for the Savage Gardeners got ruined Tuesday night. Big time. A 27-15 disastrous loss to the Gardeners’ nemesis The Good Guys put an end to all plans for an undefeated season for the Gardeners and the subsequent victory parade down Market Street, celebration at the Civic Center, keys to the city, and sex with hella groupies and models and celebrities that all come with fame and status. Thus, the Gardeners will have to wait until next season to have sex. Or Thursday if you’re third baseman Dan Gatta with his orbiters.

Tuesday’s crushing 12-run loss at KKU Field turned completely on its head in the sixth inning. Until that point the Gardeners had held a comfortable lead and seemed ready to coast easily to victory, albeit not to the extent of their 28-29-30-run games of late. However, The Good Guys – who have beaten the Gardeners in their last four matchups – had plans of their own in their top half of the sixth.

They had started building a case in the fourth when they rolled off four runs to cut the deficit to seven runs. Because until this point, the Gardeners had played solidly and seemed destined to repeat another onslaught victory.

Defensively, pitcher Phil Zackler in the first three innings had held the opponent to two runs total – one in the first inning, one in the third, and a shutout inning in between. Behind the plate, catcher Eric Snow was calling a masterpiece, using both hands somehow to signal the nine different pitches Zackler has in his arsenal. One sequence of hand signals looked like Snow was the sign language person at the front of the stage during a speech, signaling with hands what the speaker was saying. (The pitch in this instance happened to be a ball just outside to make the count 2-2 to batter Brent Mayne.)

Even though The Good Guys scored four in the fourth to cut it to 13-6, Gardeners ahead, Zackler turned it around in the top of the fifth and shut them down again. Thus, heading into the sixth, the Gardeners seemed in control with their 13-6 lead.

Then shit blew up.

Hard.

The Good Guys – who up until then had batted 9-for-24 (.375) – then went 14-for-16 in the inning and put up 15 – FIFTEEN – runs to completely demolish the Gardeners. They scored nine runs before making a single out, then scored six more with one out before the Gardeners ended it with a 6-4-3 David Huffman-to-Alan Donner-to-Snow double play.

Yet the damage had been done. Up 13-6 to down 21-13 crushed the Gardeners’ spirits. Even more so than no Garden Hoes’ showing up for the game. Except for Stacy and new Garden Hoe Mandi sort of showing up in the seventh inning. Yet the lack of female presence truly hurt the Gardeners – they are 3-0 this season when Garden Hoes are present (for the majority of the game) and 0-1 otherwise. This is called perfect correlation. It’s math.

The Good Guys piled on six more runs in the top of the seventh to even further beat down on your local heroes.

Yet the Gardeners really didn’t have any answers at the plate in the latter half of the game anyways. The first three innings they scored 13 runs. The last four? Two total – coming off a two-out two-run home run by first baseman/catcher Kyle Kretchmer.

In the final four innings their bats went almost dead silent. This represented a major flip-flop from the first inning and a half, when the Gardeners were on fire like their usual selves.

After Zackler pitched a one-run first inning, the Gardeners came to their first at-bat calm, confident, and colloquial. The third “C” word doesn’t really fit in there – we simply needed another adjective and “colloquial” was all that came to mind. We’re not really sure what it means either. Something like “informal” or “in modern day conversation”? Who cares, it’s grammar, and nobody cares about that shit anymore. We at USASSY actually do, and thus attempt to keep our writing spell-check free and respectable. Someone has to. Who appreciates reading shitty grammar? No 1 duz. lol. rotflmao. rotflmaotrtdsotfaahhnsytwaditrotf.

(For the uneducated, that last one was “rolling on the floor laughing my ass off then realizing there’s dog shit on the floor and also homeless heroin needles so yeah that was a dumb idea to roll on the floor.”)

In the first inning, left center fielder Ari Hersher kept up his leadoff prowess-ness by getting on base for the 23rd time in his last 24 tries leading off an inning (see Stat of the Week, Game 3). Snow’s single following set the table for right fielder Dave Watters to double Hersher in and put two on for the cleanup hitter and shortstop Huffman. Huffman’s easy double scored Snow and Watters, then Gatta and left fielder Tristan Besse both kept the doubles going with ones of their own to score two more. This brought up Kretchmer, who thus easily produced the Kelly Evans CNBC Hot Drive of the Game by LAUNCHING a two-run shot so deep in right that it almost cleared the Marina Safeway. And remember that the Gardeners were playing on KKU Field, the field adjacent to Chestnut Street, where Marina girls sharing the Marina Girl Salad and spicy margaritas sitting at the outside tables of Tacolicious heard and felt Kretchmer’s blast reverberate under their feet and through their vapid souls since all they do is have dinner with each other every night using daddy’s money while providing no value to society except for looking attractive sometimes on the outside only thanks to heavy makeup and clothes bought (once again with daddy’s money) from Anthropologie or Ambiance or Alex and Ani’s or whatever retail shop on Union Street they frequent after their 20-minute elliptical sesh then ten minutes on the stair climber then 12 minutes walking on the treadmill while talking nonsense shit on the phone then ten minutes of arm exercises with the purple three-pound dumbbells i so want to tone my arms then ten minutes of stretching on the yoga mats oh gross those are like so disgusting i don’t even want to think of how much sweat is embedded in those mats i like hate going to the gym sometimes but like i think i sweat today i should just go buy another pair of lululemon pants i could use some mauve light pink ones i should totally do pilates i heard jillian michaels does pilates maybe ugh this guy keeps texting me should i text him back he’s like so turning me off what should i say but he like works in tech so he’s like super smart so i don’t know i’ll just keep playing games because i have no fucking clue what i want i just wander aimlessly through the world and up and down union street with my headphones in always texting, talking on the phone, tweeting, checking Facebook, tweeting again, checking Facebook again, checking Facebook again, omg is ne1 going to post a new status update maybe i should take a selfie shopping on union street love my life hashtag blessed i hope people like it and don’t know that i’m shallow and seeking validation omg she’s engaged nice instagram photo what a bitch i’ll like her photo though ugh what’s kyle doing with that hoe in that picture what a skank omg mena suvari was on jimmy kimmel last night what has she been up to oh hey kristie whats up girlll love that dress want to go get fro-yo?

After Kretchmer’s bomb – the farthest ball ever hit at the Moscone complex – right center fielder Jason Friedman singled then later scored on Snow’s second single of the inning. Eight runs after one inning – the epic Gardeners of the fall season were in full form.

After Zackler’s shutout second inning, punctuated by Kretchmer’s sharp snag of a liner at first then a Huffman-to-Kretchmer groundout to end the inning, the Gardeners got right back on track scoring runs. Three singles in a row by Huffman, Gatta, and Besse loaded the bases for the slugger Kretchmer, who delivered by singling in two in Huffman and Gatta.

Kretchmer finished the night with six RBIs.

Friedman’s sacrifice fly scored Besse and after two the Gardeners led healthily, 11-1.

[As a side note, Besse got out on Tuesday. Which shocked everyone at the ballpark. Besse doesn’t get out. It dropped his batting average from .933 to a sub-.900 number of .895 for the season. C’mon. Pick it up.]

The Good Guys scored on a leadoff homer in the third, yet the left side of the Gardeners’ infield held firm, with Huffman and Gatta making the plays on groundouts to them, then Gatta closing out the inning by catching a popout for the third out.

Watters then added two more for the Gardeners in their half of the third with a two-run homer to left center to put the Gardeners up 13-2. After his smash though, the Gardeners did nothing much else at the plate for the rest of the game – save for Kretchmer’s two-run homer in the sixth. This drop-off closed all hope for the Gardeners – scoring two runs in four innings simply wasn’t enough.

Maybe they needed this wakeup call though. Sometimes it’s humbling to lose. Not everyone can crush life like Derek Jeter, Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski, LeBron James, or any other celebrity we admire yet secretly are envious of because their lives are amazing compared to our worthless selves wondering if the ETA number on the screen at the bus stop is accurate or if this chick in her Tinder profile is as cute in real life as her pictures portray her to be (spoiler alert!: she’s not).

Regardless, The Good Guys have the Gardeners’ number, as they have had for the last four meetings between the two teams. We’re predicting they’ll meet in the playoffs. And it’ll be different next time around. Oh yes it’ll be. Like a 30-0 score different. The Gardeners will be back. As the late great Yogi Berra once said, “Just think while you been getting down and out about the liars and the dirty dirty cheats of the world you could’ve been getting down to this.........sick.........beat.”

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Stat of the Week:

.714 vs. .350………Gardeners batting’ average (.714, 15-for-21) up through Watters’ homer in the third. They batted .350 (7-for-20) for the rest of the game.

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9/17/2015

Nah just kidding. The Savage Gardeners crushed Blue Light, 30-9.

This shit is getting ridiculous. After the first three games of the season, the Gardeners have scored 29, 28, and 30 runs, respectively. That’s an average of 29 runs per game.

Thus, with the bases 65 feet apart, and at four bases per run equaling 260 feet (65 feet x 4 bases = 260 feet), multiplied by 29 (average runs per game), we get the Gardeners’ running an average of 7,540 feet per game as a team. Which translates to over 1.4 miles. So each game, the Gardeners combined run over 1.4 miles.

Which is super far.

Think about it – when you were in P.E. class in junior high and had to do the mile run, it was horribly daunting when you were at the starting line, right? “Fuck............mile run day. This day sucks. Can’t we just go do sitting hurdle stretches then go play knockout.” That’s how it was. The Gardeners are doing 1.4 of those mile runs each game. That’s a shitload of running.

And it’s because these Gardeners can’t be stopped. At all. Even if a freight train came barreling down on them. Even if two freight trains came barreling down on them. Even if three freight trains came barreling down on them. Even if four freight trains came barreling down on them. It if were five freight trains they might be stopped. Yet at six freight trains they wouldn’t be stopped again. Nor with seven. Probably with eight. Maybe nine too. Yet ten couldn’t stop them. Maybe 11. Probably not 12 though. Thirteen would be an iffy call. Fourteen – maybe. Fifteen – definitely not. Sixteen is a sure no way – there’s no stopping the Gardeners with 16 freight trains. Seventeen might do it though.

In their Tuesday night matchup at KKU Field against Blue Light, the Gardeners batted a bunch, like a bunch of bananas. Because they come in bunches. Which has no relevance whatsoever to softball or to anything. Someone here is simply delirious or hungry.

Left center fielder Ari Hersher, first baseman Eric Snow, and third baseman Dave Watters all came to the plate six times in the game. Every other batter got five plate appearances. And this was only in five innings. In innings one through five, the Gardeners brought the following number of players to the plate: 10, 9, 15, 11, and 8. That’s an average of 10.6 batters an inning.

In short – and with lovely Garden Hoes Leah and Sarah on hand, taking breaks from grading papers, eating hot soup, and wearing beanies – the Gardeners crushed the ball. Batters one, two, and three (Hersher, Snow, Watters) went a combined 13-for-15 (.867) while adding three walks to produce a game OBP. of .889. Cleanup hitter – shortstop David Huffman – had two three-run home runs and eight RBIs for the evening, over 1/4th of the Gardeners’ total. Number five batter and left fielder Dan Ewbank almost hit for the cycle for the second game in a row, going 4-for-5 and just missing the elusive triple for the cycle (last week he needed the single). And number six batter – right fielder Tristan Besse – only went 5-for-5 to raise his season batting average to .933. At this pace, he’ll be batting 1.000 by Week Five and 1.500 by Week Seven.

Even pitcher Phil Zackler, batting at the bottom of the lineup, got in on the action, throwing his meat around in preparation for Las Vegas next weekend and going 4-for-5 with two doubles and four runs. As a team, the Gardeners went 35-for-50, batting .700 or above for the third straight game. They also batted .727 (8-for-11) with two outs and runners in scoring position.

The Gardeners are hitting at a torrid pace this year. To illustrate this point, Huffman – who, as a side note, leads the team in slugging (1.800) – is batting .700 this season (7-for-10), which is a remarkable pace. Yet that’s only the NINTH best average on the team. (Granted, some of those top nine have only played one game, yet it’s still eye-popping how hot the Gardeners are hitting.)

The Gardeners as the away team put together five runs in both the first and second inning, both started by Hersher’s leading off and getting on base each time. In the first, Snow followed Hersher with a two-run homer to right to put the first two runs on the board. Ewbank singled in Watters (who doubled) for a third run, Besse singled to put two on, and catcher Kyle Kretchmer doubled to score a fourth in Ewbank. Right center fielder Jason Friedman singled in Besse for the fifth run of the first.

Zackler took the mound in the bottom of the first and held Blue Light to one run in the frame – helped out by a Ewbank-to-Huffman-to-Kretchmer left-to-short-to-catcher relay that nailed batter Andujar Cedeno trying to score an inside-the-park home run. Watters at third stayed in a front of a grounder hockey-chest style for the third out, and after one inning the Gardeners led 5-1.

Hersher got on base to lead off the second, as stated, and Snow and Watters jointly singled him in. With two on now, Huffman launched the first of his two three-run homers for the game, easily blasting the rock past right fielder Andy Ashby to put the Gardeners up 9-1. Ewbank’s double and Besse’s second single of the night added the tenth run.

The bottom of the second saw the same dirtiness from Zackler on the mound as he mowed down the opponent, only allowing one run and goading two force plays to roommate (for both home games, when the team stays at the Cow Hollow Motor Inn, and on road trips) second baseman Alan Donner, who easily made both plays and throws to the shortstop Huffman covering second.

Up 10-2 after two innings, the Gardeners decided to put the game out of reach like a cookie jar to a blind midget. Three homers in the inning easily did the damage: Huffman smashed his second three-run homer, Ewbank hit a solo shot to deep left, and Hersher added a three-run bomb in his second at-bat of the inning. Snow, Friedman, Zackler, and Watters all added RBIs as well to cap the 11-run third inning that put the Gardeners up 21-2. Which in football would be like three touchdowns to a safety. Or nine safeties and a field goal to a safety. Whichever is more likely.

And Zackler cruised through the defensive half of the third, producing a lineout to Huffman at short, an easy fly ball to Hersher in left center, then fooling batter Dustin Hermanson hard with a splitter for a called-looking strike three, the first strikeout of the season for the Gardeners and the first of Zackler’s career. The ball was subsequently encased and shipped off to Canton, Ohio, for display in the Hall of Fame.

Then the Postal Service realized it was a baseball, so they had to track it down (thank you shipping tracking technology with bar codes and those long tracking numbers) and had it shipped to the correct sport’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Where a big dog behind a fence slobbered all over it.

And this shutout inning by Zackler completely demoralized Blue Light.

Take that back actually – Blue Light had already been demoralized when the season schedules came out in August and they saw they had to play the Gardeners in Week Three. So going into the game they were already fucked – the Gardeners’ legend was too much for them. They had heard about the 29- and 28-run games. They had heard about the 2-0 record against Ball So Hard University in the summer season. They had heard about the barrel chests, bulging forearms, and make-ladies-faint muskiness that are characteristics of every Gardeners player. Yes – the Gardeners were too much for them. The Gardeners are even too much for us here sometimes at the offices of USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) – we can’t even write three sentences about the Gardeners without getting turned on and distracted with unclean thoughts.

Up 21-2 after three, the Gardeners didn’t let up. Back-to-back-to-back singles by Ewbank, Besse, and Kretchmer scored one (Ewbank), then later with two outs and the bases loaded, Hersher came to the plate. Hersher was looking to hit – yet Blue Light’s pitcher John Flaherty was struggling and couldn’t find the plate, walking Hersher on three straight terrible pitches, then doing the same to Snow.

Whatever. Hella RBIs and not even a swing of the bat. Watters with the bases loaded finally got a pitch to hit and singled in one, then Huffman behind him singled in two to push the Gardeners ahead 27-2.

Which is a fucking monster lead. Twenty-five runs.

The Gardeners felt pity and let Blue Light score four runs in the bottom of the fourth and three in the fifth to let them have nine total, yet that was enough. To make Blue Light feel even worse about themselves, the Gardeners scored three more in the fifth – one on a Donner single and two on a Hersher single. These last two pushed the Gardeners to 30 runs for only the second time in their history, the only other time happening in the spring 2014 season. They also matched the second-largest margin of victory in their storied history with their 21-run margin.

In essence, it was a nice night of puppies and rainbows and a shitload of runs and hits for the Gardeners on Tuesday. They should keep this shit up. Especially the puppies and rainbows. Everybody likes puppies and rainbows. Say it: Puppies and rainbows............ ...Puppies and rainbows...............Puppies and rainbows...............Puppies and rainbows...............

Those are just pleasant. Just like eating razor blades and pig intestines.

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Stat of the Week:

22 of 23………In his last 23 times leading off an inning (either to start the game or during the game), Ari Hersher has gotten on base 22 of those times (.956 OBP). That’s insane.

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9/06/2015

The Savage Gardeners are stacked.

With their first ever season championship easily in their sights, plus their being the odds-on favorite to win the Super Bowl, the Gardeners rolled out 13 players Tuesday night against Ace Wasabi in their Week Two matchup to kick off the month of September. (They would’ve had 14 players, yet baller shortstop/outfielder David Huffman last minute couldn’t make the trip.)

At KKU Field, for the second game in a row, the Gardeners scored at least 28 runs, outlasting Ace Wasabi 28-24 to push their record to 2-0 for the season. After averaging 14 runs a game in the summer season, the Gardeners have scored 29 and 28 runs, respectively, in their first two games. That pushes their average to............28 plus 29............seven............carry the one............57. Okay, 57 divided by two............okay 57 is close to 60............60 divided by two is 30............so the average is close to 30............okay............28 times two is 56............yes, eight touchdowns, 56............okay yet we want 57............so what’s 29 times two............50............8. Yes............58............Okay, so 57 is between 56 and 58............both twice of 28 and 29............so they must be averaging............28.5 runs a game! Yes. Got it finally.

Or as left center fielder Ari Hersher said after the game, “We’re averaging 28.5 runs a game. The math isn’t that hard.”

After we at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) put away our abacus trying to do math, our official scorer looked over the stats from Tuesday’s victory and saw a clear theme:

This team is unstoppable.

Led by the Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game – left fielder Dan Ewbank – the Gardeners torched the ball around despite falling down 11-4 after the first two-and-a-half innings. Nevertheless, the home team Gardeners’ bottom of the third inning turned everything around when they launched 14 runs across the plate.

They had to work their way gradually there, showing solid promise in the first by scoring four to take a 4-1 first inning lead. A typical Hersher leadoff hit, Eric Snow single, and Pat Reilly double easily scored two, Snow on Reilly’s double diving Rickey Henderson-like headfirst into home plate to avoid the tag from catcher Pete Incaviglia. Third baseman Dan Gatta tripled in Reilly, and the first of right fielder Tristan Besse’s five hits added the other RBI of the inning.

Despite this hot start for the Gardeners, their opponent lashed back in the second, putting up eight runs to take a 9-4 lead. They squashed the Gardeners’ bats in their half, then added two more to make it 11-4 after two-and-a-half innings, as mentioned above.

That’s when the Gardeners’ third inning blew the game apart.

In the inning, right center fielder Dave Watters batting in the third spot led off with a lined solo homer to left, hitting the ball just low enough to stay out of the wind yet high enough to clear the invisible fences at KKU Field.

[As an aside, the wind did play a factor in a few Gardeners’ at-bats with the left fielder Reilly and catcher/first baseman Kyle Kretchmer, both lefties, falling prey to the wind’s holding up shots to deep right in the game. Both blasts ended up being deep deep sacrifice flies, yet without the wind slowing the balls’ flights, they both would’ve been easy round-trippers.]

After Watters’ solo shot and with one out, the Gardeners scored ten runs in a row, with 12 straight batters reaching base. Gatta led off the one-out hit party with a single, Ewbank followed with a double, and Besse easily added an RBI by singling to right to score Gatta.

The newly married Besse, with the smoothest swing in the lineup, cleanly went 5-for-5 for the night and is only batting .900 (9-for-10) for the season.

After Besse’s single brought the Gardeners closer at 11-6, Kretchmer doubled to center to score Ewbank. Second baseman Alan Donner and pitcher/catcher Phil Zackler followed with singles to score two more (Besse and Kretchmer), putting two on for third baseman/relief pitcher Chris Norton with the Gardeners down two, 11-9.

After missing the summer season due to failures with contract negotiations, Norton finally threw back on the Gardeners jersey for the first time since early May. He picked up his Gardeners play effortlessly, going 4-for-4 for the night at the plate and earning the win on the mound. And in the third, he contributed one of his four hits, this one a triple to center that scored roommates (do they share a bed?) Donner and Zackler to tie the game at 11-11.

Shortstop Joey Faber – also back in a Gardeners’ uniform for the first time since the 2014 spring season, and with sole Garden Hoe Kellen watching in the players’ girlfriends and wives seats in the field club section behind the dugout – then singled Norton in. Hersher singled Faber to third, and Snow cleaned him in with another classic Snow single to center. Watters, batting for the second time in the inning, added the eighth walk of his career, loading the bases for the slugger Reilly, who sweeped in Hersher and Snow with a single to put the Gardeners ahead farther, 14-11. After missing the summer season, Reilly came back to the Gardeners on fire as he usually is, contributing six RBIs for the night.

Later with two outs, Ewbank bombed a triple to right center to add two more RBIs. And this blast was one of his four extra-base hits of the night. He only fell short of reaching the cycle, finishing with two doubles, a triple, and a homer while missing the elusive single that would’ve done it. Which really doesn’t matter, because four extra-base hits and a game slugging percentage of 2.200 isn’t shabby at all, and the cycle is just a fancy term. That’s part of the reason he earned the player of the game award – one of the other reasons was his nail-in-the-coffin homer in the sixth.

To close out the third, Besse singled again to score Ewbank. Now up 18-11, the Gardeners had this shit in the bag. Which is a weird saying – what does it even mean? Like a Billy Madison-like shit in a bag? Then it would be poop in a bag. Cause they call the shit poop. Just don’t put it out with your boots Ted.

Once they had an 18-11 lead, the Gardeners simply had to maintain it and keep their hitting and defense up like a blue pill.

Ace Wasabi clawed six back in the top of the fourth, to bring the game to 18-17. Yet the Gardeners pushed back on an array of singles by Donner, Norton, Faber, Hersher, Snow, and Watters to score three. A deep bases loaded sacrifice fly by Reilly scored a fourth to make it 22-17 after four.

Reilly’s shot very easily should’ve been a grand slam; somehow, Ace Wasabi’s right center fielder Mark Whiten spun around twice in disarray yet still luckily found the ball dropping into his glove. ESPN’s Sports Science is doing a segment on the catch – nobody really knows how Whiten caught that. Pretty much the same thing happened the following inning on a Kretchmer sacrifice fly to Whiten – Whiten’s getting disoriented yet still somehow finding the ball in a God knows how manner.

Ace Wasabi kept pestering the Gardeners though – in the fifth scoring four more runs to cut it to 22-21. A Ewbank RBI double and Kretchmer’s sac-fly extended the lead to 24-21, yet still this game was too close after five. Norton on the mound shut down the sushi team in the sixth with a shutout inning, bringing a bit of relief to the on-edge Gardeners fans.

Looking at a slim 24-21 lead in the bottom of the sixth, the Gardeners and POTG Ewbank finally decided to put their foot down and give themselves a bigger cushion heading into the seventh. With Hersher and Snow on base after a walk and single, respectively, Watters assist-sacrifice-flied them to second and third, letting Reilly single both of them in to make it 26-21.

Yet later with two outs, the Gardeners still didn’t feel their five run lead was enough. Up stepped Ewbank to end all the tension. And capping off his Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game Award, Ewbank blasted the CNBC Kelly Evans Hot Drive of the Game with a monster crushed home run down the line in left.

This ball fucking sailed; Terry Mulholland playing left had no chance whatsoever to run it down. This pushed the Gardeners’ lead to 28-21 – a seven-run lead that, without Ewbank’s shot, would’ve only been five and possibly changed the outcome of the opponent’s seventh. Because in the seventh, Ace Wasabi scored three runs (now 28-24) and put two runners on with two outs. So without Ewbank’s insurance runs blast, it would’ve been the go-ahead run at the plate (at 26-24 Gardeners, instead of 28-24). Yet with the insurance runs, Norton on the mound was able to pitch much calmer, goading a soft groundout to himself by batter Darren Daulton to end the game and earn him the win in his five relief innings.

Norton had taken over on the mound after the starting pitcher Zackler had thrown out his arm chucking fastballs the first two innings. Nevertheless, the Zackler-Norton pitching combo did the job, helping contribute to the 28-24 victory. The duo also proved ruthless when Zackler went behind the plate to catch Norton in the third and sixth inning. In these two innings, the opponent only scored two runs total against the Norton-Zackler pitcher-catcher combo.

Johnny Moran and Watters shared right center field duties throughout the game and both provided essential running catches during tense moments to cut off attempted Ace Wasabi rallies.

The way things are going, the Gardeners are on pace to break all team season records for runs scored, slugging, and celebrity tweet references. During and after the game, hella major celebrities could not stop tweeting about the Gardeners:

“Go Gardeners” (@oprah)
“Savage Gardeners undefeated? Very likely. There goes our accomplishment.” (@donshula)
“These Gardeners might be the best ballclub of all time” (@kengriffeyjr)
“Gardeners – u rock” (@jimmykimmel)
“Gardeners – fuckin’ studs” (@bradleycooper)
“Those guys are real men” (@beargrylls)
“I can’t believe out of all the interns I chose Monica Lewinsky. Shit, is this tweet public” (@billclinton)
“Savage Gardeners deliciously served on a platter with whipped cream and strawberries? Yes please” (@milakunis)
“n e 1 have coke?” (@mileycyrus)
“i wud have sex with any gardner, please tweet back (especially you mr donner)” @scarlettjohansson
“num num num num num num num num num num num” (@cookiemonster)

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Stat of the Week:

.800.........Batting average with the bases loaded for all past and present Gardeners lefties

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8/27/2015

This may be the greatest team in Savage Gardeners’ history.

Five homers, a ten-run first inning, and 29 runs later, the virile Gardeners in their season opener had already established themselves as the force not to be fucked with in the CC Division for the Fall Season. Their opponent SF Seals – truthfully a bunch of good guys (who are also cops, so the Gardeners should stay on their good side) – had to throw in the white flag in surrender after the Gardeners had built a 29-9 lead during the top of the fifth inning. At this point – after first baseman Eric Snow’s two-RBI single that pushed the Gardeners’ lead to 20 runs – umpire Ed Hochuli called “shenanigans” and broke out the mercy rule, thus cutting short the team's quest for a dirty 30 runs at their home KKU Field.

This output tied for the Gardeners’ second largest run total in their history; they had notched a 30-spot in a 30-10 win in the Spring 2014 season.

With Dave Watters acting as player-scout during the latest offseason, the Gardeners consolidated and brought their scouting in-house in an attempt to recruit new talent, like injured list player J.J. Warren does for his dating life outside the local high school at 3pm on Fridays when the final bell rings and the girls scamper out.

The Gardeners recently had been in turmoil, last season constructing a disastrous 3-5 record during what the team called a “rebuilding year.” And by “rebuilding year,” we think management is hiding the fact that their coaching was terrible, and, simply put, the team did not play up to their ability. Thus, last season’s midseason trade deadline saw players turning down Gardeners’ offers and taking more lucrative contracts with other teams, leaving the Gardeners in the dust to keep working on their farm system. Nevertheless, despite the 1-5 start, the Gardeners closed out the Summer season with doubleheader victories, showing their fans and potential draftees hope for a new future.

Right fielder Tristan Besse – who tasted the majors for the Gardeners in a game last season – jumped on board the Gardeners’ train in the offseason by signing a five-year, $100 million contract, quoting at the time, “Let’s turn this shit around, I’m here to stay and make the Gardeners champions.”

With Besse locked in, Watters hit the scouting road with a road map of the United States, beef jerky, red bull, Trident gum, two $1.99 taquitos from the heat rollers, a $9.99 dusty Raiders hat, that weird Sour Patch Kids Watermelon Slurpee, and some $1 scratchers, and ended up scouting the country well and bringing in newcomers David Huffman and Kyle Kretchmer to help spice up the Gardeners’ bats and defense.

And did that they did, with Huffman and Kretchmer in their first game in Gardeners’ uniforms batting a combined 8-for-10 (.800) with two homers, three doubles, three singles, nine RBIs, and eight runs between them.

So this is working.

The other recruit Besse worked his bat as well, hitting three singles and a two-run homer while dishing in five RBIs and scoring four times.

Thus, according to our math, the three new Gardeners – slotted in the 8-9-10 spots in the lineup – combined went 12-for-15 with 14 RBIs. That was kinda good.

As a reference point, the Gardeners averaged 14 runs per game as a ten-man team last season. Three players easily crushed that number.

What’s interesting is that the 14 RBIs – quite a shitload – didn’t even reach half the Gardeners’ run total for the game of 29 runs. This monstrous run total can be attributed to the Gardeners’ batting around the order in the first, second, and fourth inning. And as the away team, with only a three-week hiatus from the Summer Season, the Gardeners came back to life quickly.

Left center fielder Ari Hersher – slated in the leadoff position for Tuesday night’s game, to mix it up a bit – led off the Gardeners’ batting by wearing down SF Seals’ pitcher Mel Rojas and taking a walk. This strategery by Hersher allowed the Gardeners watching in the dugout to get an eye for Rojas’ pitches, adjust their swings in the downstairs clubhouse batting cages, and prepare better for the hit parade to ensue.

Snow’s single to center moved Hersher to second, bringing up the right center fielder Watters, who laid down a sacrifice bunt to advance the runners. The bunt went a little haywire though, landing over the right center fielder’s head, and instead of a sacrifice bunt with runners on second and third now with one out, Hersher and Snow both scored, with Watters trotting in behind them for the first ever sacrifice bunt home run. After this fortuitous fortune, the Gardeners went on a roll. All with one out, seven straight Gardeners soon scored. Left fielder Dan Ewbank and second baseman Alan Donner both singled to put two on for pitcher Phil Zackler. What no one but Zackler knew was that Zackler had told himself before the game, “You know what? I’m going 5-for-5 tonight.” He wrote it on an index card as well. One of the 3” x 5” ones; 4” x 6” was too large to fit in his pocket.

And he did thus so, contributing his first of the five hits with a single to score Ewbank. Besse’s hard-hit single to right next scored Donner, and the shortstop Huffman followed with a double to scoot Zackler across and move Besse to third.

Two on, one out, Gardeners already up 6-0. Kretchmer in his first Gardeners’ at-bat decided to change that. He walloped a blast to deep deep deep deep deep right field for a three-run shot to make it 9-0.

Did we mention it was deep too. Cause it went deep. Okay, yeah, we did mention the deep part. Sometimes we at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) forget things. Like that time we confused the public urinal trough for the sitting toilet.

Watters singled in Hersher later for the Gardeners’ tenth run of the inning, and after half an inning, the Gardeners’ opponent already had peed their pants and wanted to forfeit. However, Hochuli made the game go on, and the Seals tried to put up a fight by scoring four runs in their half. Nevertheless, the middle infielder duo of Huffman and Donner (similar to Uribe and Thompson) staunched all further run possibilities – first on a Ewbank-to-Huffman-to-Donner relay to nab runner Lenny Webster trying to stretch a single into a double, then ending the inning with a 6-4 force out of Rondell White at second.

Thus, up 10-4 after one, the Gardeners hit the sheets again. Donner, Zackler, and Besse singles scored one, then Huffman came up and scored three more with a three-run goner to left center. Doubles by Kretchmer, Hersher, and Snow scored two (Kretchmer and Hersher), and a single by Watters scored another (Snow). Watters then scored later in the inning to close out an eight-run second.

In the bottom half, with a runner on, defensively Donner found Huffman covering second for the first out of the second inning, and after the Seals squeaked in two runs, they still were looking at 18-6, Gardeners. The Gardeners pulled back in the third to tease the Seals, only scoring one run in the inning, on a Watters RBI single that scored Kretchmer.

Up 19-8 in the fourth, the Gardeners piled on more by lashing six runs across with Ewbank’s starting it off with a solo homer to left. At this time, a Garden Hoe had finally shown up in the form of Sarah Besse, on hand to watch her new husband play and who has committed ardently to coming to every single Gardeners’ game this season. And with his new wife on hand, Besse decided to turn it up a notch and show a little sumpin’ sumpin’ by blasting a two-run home run to right.

Huffman’s second double of the night kept the rally going, Kretchmer knocked him, and Kretchmer and Hersher (who had singled) both later scored to move the Gardeners’ score to 25-8. The Seals then scored one yet flew out to left center (Hersher), left (Ewbank), and right center (Watters) in the bottom of the fourth, leaving Snow in right high and dry with no chance to make any outs. Didn’t matter much to Snow though, as at the plate he finished 5-for-6, ending with the game-ending two-RBI single in the fifth that pushed the Gardeners’ lead to 20 runs over the Seals, the mercy rule number.

With Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde out until October, the All-Star catcher and second baseman Zackler traded in his fielder’s glove for a pitcher’s glove and pitched solidly all night. He was going to wear his hunter’s glasses – glasses one uses when hunting or shooting skeet – yet apparently according to 75-year old crazy man Doc from “Back to the Future” watching in the stands, there is “NO DECEPTION!” Which he kindly screamed at Zackler from his safe perch in the nosebleeds. Didn’t matter though – the Gardeners’ defense played solid, watching the tape we can’t find a single error, and Zackler’s pitching was enough to stymie the Gardeners’ opponent.

In essence, the Gardeners crushed it, with guys’ going 5-for-5 (Watters, Zackler), 4-for-5 (Besse, Huffman, Kretchmer), and 5-for-6 (Snow). This season the Gardeners are looking hot. And not just on the softball field. We are talking about their looks. We are talking about chiseled jaws. We are talking about manly beards. We are talking about flowing locks of hair. We are talking about finely shaped calves. We are talking about V-shaped torsos. We are talking about rippling abs. We are talking about firm buttocks. This is getting really strange.

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Stat of the Week:

3-for-5………Alan Donner’s stats on Tuesday. Also third baseman Dan Gatta’s stats last week (three girls, five nights)

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8/05/2015

'Tis appropriate to start with a motivational poem from the great philosopher Nicholas Carter:

“Everybody
Rock your body
Everybody
Rock your body
Right
Gard-eners back
Alright”

Yes, the Savage Gardeners – your local stud muffin swanky danky Jon Hamm James Bond Walker Texas Ranger William Wallace heroic heroes – are back in business. They had been mired in disaster, losing seven of their last eight games going back to last season.

Yet now they’re back.

The gods of all carnal events swept both games of a doubleheader Tuesday night at their home KKU field, beating nemesis Ball So Hard University 16-11 in the first game and sliding past SF Seals 17-10 in the nightcap. And by nightcap we do not mean Dan Gatta’s move of brining a girl back home for wine and a push-ups competition and body fat composition testing. By nightcap in this context, we mean the later game of the doubleheader.

The sun shone brightly on KKU Field Tuesday evening as the Gardeners took the field for the final two games of the season wearing Hawaiian shirts, board shorts, and Tevas in the warm sun while first base coach Alan Donner casually sipped pina coladas throughout the game and continually pointed out the sunset to any Gardeners’ batters who dared to reach first base. In fact, pointing out the sunset was all Donner did while coaching first. There were no bunt signals given, no talk of baseball strategy or the defense’s positioning coming from Donner – only sunset talk. Even overheard at one time during one of the games was this interaction between Donner and a Gardeners’ runner on first.

Donner: “Check out that sunset. It’s absolutely stunning. You should appreciate it.”
Gardeners’ Runner: “How many outs are there?”
Donner: “Humbug. Not important. That sunset – marvelous!”
Gardeners’ Runner: “Seriously, how many outs. Am I tagging on fly balls?”
Donner: “…(humming) cheeseburger in paradise, par-ah-DIYEESSSSSE.”
Gardeners’ Runner: “Huh?”
Donner: “Heaven on earth, with an onion slice.”
Gardeners’ Runner: “Are you singing Jimmy Buffett instead of coaching first?”
Donner: “Your mom goes to college.”

When he wasn’t coaching first though, Donner mixed it up defensively, playing second base and catcher, calling a great final four innings of the first game, where, while he was behind the plate, the Gardeners’ opponent scored only four runs total. Four innings caught, four runs total – a Catcher’s ERA (similar to pitcher's ERA, yet this one for catchers - runs scored against while catching, abbreviated CERA) of 1.00, a pretty impressive statistic. His stat for the night was only topped by Dane Dobrinich’s catching in the second game against SF Seals, where, in three innings with Dobrinich behind the plate, the Gardeners’ opponent scored zero runs, giving Dobrinich a CERA of 0.00. Both of their pitch-calling for Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde kept the opponents on their toes all night – keys to both of the Gardeners’ victories.

Dobrinich also spiced it up at the plate, batting 6-for-8 combined in the two games – hitting the most consistent and well-hit hits all night for the Gardeners, tons of liners to left and left center – while scoring five runs as well. He finished the season with a team second-best batting average of .692. He can hit, field, and call pitches remarkably after a month off from playing for the Gardeners. Thus, it’s no surprise the Houston Astros called him up to the majors for that interim.

So what was the true secret to the Gardeners’ success Tuesday night?

Yep, you guessed it – major cocaine party beforehand.

No – in actuality, the Gardeners’ success can only be attributed to one thing. Or, technically, one major presence: the Garden Hoes.

Tuesday’s games saw a teeming slew of Garden Hoes on hand to watch their men (either romantically or not) slash their balls around. The ringleader Margot led the charge by arriving on time in full support and Gardeners’ fan gear as always. Following in her footsteps came the always-has-something-intriguing-to-say Sophie and then new Garden Hoe saucy member Alyson. Who kept telling the media that her name was one word – Alyson – not Aly Son like they kept fucking up when they were writing it down. Next to arrive was new member Leah to watch her beau Dan Ewbank defensively stop everything in sight in left field throughout both games. With this quartet firmly mentally implanting the seeds of success into the Gardeners’ players’ minds, benchmark Garden Hoes Meredith and Stacy showed up just after to add to the luster. Last in tow with Stacy came the Hoes’ maid, or driver, or nanny, or whatever that tan dot-dot Indian servant was with the name made up of two initials.

Thus, with the men looking to impress the ladies, the Gardeners started off hot, kind of like left center fielder Ari Hersher started his life off hot when he was born in January ‘82 with his handsome good looks coming out of the womb. Hersher’s and Edde’s walks put two on in the top of the first for right fielder Dave Watters to single in Hersher and the third baseman Gatta afterwards to strategically fielder’s choice in Edde to put the away team Gardeners up 2-0.

Ball So Hard University (BSHU) scored two in their half of the first, yet the Gardeners pounced four more on the scoreboard with Donner and Dobrinich singling to put two on for Triple-A callup David Mitchell. And the lefty rookie in his first at-bat lasered a double to right to start his Gardeners career off 1-for-1 with an RBI, the same stats Will Clark had to start his career.

Hersher following had had enough walking after his first inning base on balls, so he switched it up next and produced a single to score Dobrinich.

This was the first of Hersher’s NINE singles for the night. Yes – after his first at-bat walk, Hersher hit nine consecutive singles to finish the doubleheader, yes, 9-for-9 with a 1.000 batting average as well as slugging percentage for the evening. Despite what he thought, this raised his career slugging from .952 all the way up to .953. He also raised his season batting average 143 points (!) from .588 to a team-leading .731.

After Hersher’s first single, Edde followed with an RBI single as well that moved Hersher to third, then Watters pulled the ‘ol line drive infield sacrifice-fly to shortstop to score the Gardeners’ left center fielder from third.

Up 6-2, the Gardeners dropped their guard in the bottom of the second and let BSHU score five runs to take the lead at 7-6.

A scoreless third by both teams – BSHU held in check by two Watters catches in right – kept the score at 7-6 going into the fourth. Which is when the Gardeners decided to put an end to the dilly-dallying and lock this shit down. And guess who started the rally? Yep, none other than the chillin’ on the beach decked in flowery leis around his neck Donner, who casually put down his fifth pina colada and took his eyes off the glorious sunset before singling to lead off the inning. And as we know when the Gardeners’ lead runner gets on base, good shit happens, like chicks getting super turned on and things and stuff.

Dobrinich’s and Mitchell’s back-to-back singles then loaded the bases for Hersher. Which, now you should know, meant that Hersher hit a single, because that’s what he did for the rest of the night.

His single scored Donner and kept the bases loaded for Edde, whose sacrifice bunt to the pitcher scored Dobrinich even though the pitcher got the force at second. With two on, Watters then smashed the ever elusive triple to score Mitchell and Edde and push the Gardeners up 10-7. They scored three more to close out the inning and at 13-7 looked breathtakingly hot like Liam Hemsworth, steamrolling on a path towards their way to victory.

BSHU clawed back four in their half of the fourth to bring it to 13-11, yet that was all for them against the brawnly lumberjack musk Gardeners’ defense.

The Gardeners added an insurance run in the fifth on Watters’ fifth RBI of the game to score Dobrinich as well as two more in the sixth on fellow Miramonte batterymate Donner’s two-RBI double that scored Ewbank and right center fielder Jason Friedman to give the team a 16-11 lead.

And let us point out that in the final three innings – five through seven – Edde slaughtered BSHU at the plate, allowing no runs to close out the win. Gatta at third made a huge two-runners-on two-out grab of a grounder in the sixth to end the inning, then turned it around in the seventh by snagging a liner for the first out to crush BSHU’s last hopes.

BSHU walked off the field with a regular season-ending first place 6-2 record; both of those losses came at the hands of the Gardeners. And this win over the (likely) champs put the Gardeners in a very confident state of mind heading into their second game. They did have a 12-minute break between games, so a few players took this opportunity to bask in the warm weather and take their shirts off and tan on the bleachers, much to the delight of the females. Donner sitting solo in a lawn chair in the first base coach’s box was naturally doing so as well, casually sipping on pina colada number 14 while mumbling more and more about the pink and orange tints of the sunset.

The Gardeners took no time in keeping their momentum going in the nightcap – first with Edde's shutting down the visiting SF Seals for no runs in the first two innings with Mitchell's calling hella knucklers behind the plate. Meanwhile at the plate they peppered in a few runs – Hersher's singling both in the first and second – adding an RBI on one – while later scoring both times, Watters’ producing both RBIs, the second on a double that brought him only a home run short of the cycle for the evening. Edde produced another RBI and after two innings the Gardeners held a 4-0 lead.

So, the opponent scored no runs through the first two innings. Which infers that Edde pitched five straight shutout innings, going back to the last three innings of game one. Talk of his surpassing Madison Bumgarner’s World Series performance soon started rumbling around the media press box.

Dobrinich at first made a key unassisted putout to close out the second – emblematic of the Gardeners’ sturdy defense for the evening.

The Seals somehow scored one in the top of the third yet Dobrinich put one back for the Gardeners with an RBI to make it 5-1 after three.

Then the Gardeners’ classic Achilles’ Heel happened – the opponent blew up for a huge inning. The Seals in the top of the fourth smashed the ball around for nine runs to take a 10-5 lead.

Not…this…shit…again.

As pointed out before, in the first six games this season the Gardeners had given up at least nine runs in an inning in each game – helping to contribute to their losing five of those six games. Yet something in the air tonight was different. Something would stop that trend. And that something was the lovely group of ladies in the stands devoutly and fixedly watching their men play softball, keenly staying attuned to every pitch and hit. Or they were not watching and were talking about the most recent episode of “The Bachelor” or shoes or shampoo or jewelry or People Magazine or yoga or salad or bridal showers or whatever else is in the top ten subjects females all around the globe talk about.

So even though the Gardeners’ men were misled into believing that their women were watching their every move – and thus were motivated into impressing them – this was not the case, because, let’s be honest, that probably was not happening. Fuck watching softball – Jessica Alba’s newest hair conditioner is so much more interesting to talk about. Just the way it, like, feels, like, is so smooth. She’s, like, so cute.

Which also turned out to be the main subject Gardeners’ regular Phil Zackler was engaging in during his I’d-rather-not-play-softball-with-friends-and-would-rather-spend-the-night-cupcaking-in-my-apartment evening.

[Side note disclosure: We at USASSY apologize for the length of this newspaper summary. We’re under a tight deadline to get this out Wednesday evening so it’s simply a smorgasbord of ramblings and recaps and bullshit. Be on the lookout though in the next week or two for in-depth statistics to hit the presses. There will be no writing as long as this – simply a bunch of stupid charts and numbers that our interns at USASSY – who have way too much time on their hands – have been working on until they go back to college for their junior fall semesters. You’ll understand then why we’re so stupidly anal at USASSY with the stats. There’s so many fucking statistics dorks that work here at USASSY.]

Anyhow, down 10-5 in the fourth, the Gardeners looked at the females in the stands and got their inspiration from within to battle back like the U.S. Revolutionaries, save the muskets and weird triangle hats. In addition, Donner’s “exclusive” girlfriend and a crazy 33-year old Georgia chick and some hungry 24-year old Marina girls trying to get a glimpse of the rookie Mitchell were probably creepily watching from somewhere like a bush or something in hopes of hopelessly romantically winning their respective men over for procreation activities.

Four singles by the top of the lineup – Hersher, Edde, Watters, and Gatta – scored two runs, then Watters scored from second on a sacrifice fly to right for another to cut the deficit to 10-8.

Then the fifth inning hit. And we know what happened for the Gardeners’ opponent starting in the fifth inning of game one – Edde locked down and pitched three straight shutout innings. And now we know what happened starting in the fifth inning of game two – Edde pitched another three straight shutout innings. The fifth had its share of defensive highlights too – Mitchell's making an over-the-shoulder basket catch in foul territory near first base, Donner's snagging a dangerous two-hopper at second, and Watters' closing it out with a clutch well-positioned two-out catch. And with these displays of prowess in the Gardeners’ minds, they felt they should do the same at the plate and lay their feet down when it was their turn to hit. Which they did. One out singles scored one run to make it 10-9 before Watters came to the plate with two on and two outs. And this is where he provided the CNBC Kelly Evans Hot Drive of the Game with a blast to left center to score Mitchell, Hersher, and himself (for, yes, a home run, which gave him the cycle for the combined two games). Gardeners up 12-10 and breathing room in their sights.

Still with two outs, they didn’t stop there. A couple singles pushed another run in before Friedman doubled to left center for two more to put the Gardeners up 15-10 after five.

Edde shut down the Seals in the sixth, the Gardeners added two more in their half, then once again the Cy Younger shut down the enemy in the seventh to close out the 17-10 victory and two-game sweep for the evening. Five shutout innings in game two, four in game one – nine shutout innings of 14 total for Edde.

On. Fucking. Point.

All in all, the Gardeners played remarkably all around – batting, fielding, pitching, catching, baserunning, sexting – you name it. It was a good night. And as Nicholas Carter penned at the beginning – the Gardeners are back alright.

In this café next to our office at USASSY there’s a tranny sitting nearby. Someone here just made eye contact with it. This is getting weird.

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Stat of the Week (pointed out by one of the Gardeners’ slugger right fielders who lives in the East Bay and got married recently):

.500: Gardeners’ win percentage in the Summer Seasons (six seasons total)
.739: Gardeners’ win percentage in the Spring Seasons (five seasons total)

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7/23/2015

The Savage Gardeners entered their bout against The Good Guys on Tuesday evening with low expectations albeit a confident and relaxed attitude. Playing with nine men, the playoffs out of reach, and a three-game losing streak on their haunches, the Gardeners climbed into the game at KKU field with nothing to lose except their shirts when hella chicks clawed at them to take them off. This gave them a loose and carefree outlook towards the game which benefitted them in all aspects of play – from hitting to defense to pitching to baserunning to endorsements to female fan attraction.

Sadly, The Good Guys currently own the Gardeners. The Gardeners won the first two games in their head-to-head history, yet The Good Guys have taken the last two (now three, after Tuesday's loss), including an eerily similar most recent matchup. In Week One this season, The Good Guys used the fifth inning (like they did on Tuesday) to put up their huge run total when they scored 12 runs to distance themselves from your local heroes. They did the same Tuesday by scoring nine runs in the fifth that pretty much did the same.

Yet with the odds against them, the Gardeners played admirably, actually possessing a better chance of winning than they thought, according to in-game betting odds provided by Bovada. Despite the 15-11 ultimate loss on the scoreboard, the Gardeners were in competition the whole game, holding a lead through four innings - shutting out The Good Guys in three of those innings.

The Gardeners were up 1-0 through two innings, 4-3 through four innings, and held an 8-3 lead heading into The Good Guys’ batting bottom half of the fifth. However – as has been a major theme in Gardeners’ losses, especially this season – the Gardeners’ Achilles heel came up and bit them in the foot – nay, heel – as the opponent as mentioned erupted for nine runs in the fifth to take a 12-8 lead which they never relinquished. The inning was highlighted by a bonehead dived-for fly ball by the Gardeners’ center fielder that turned into a three-run home run, followed by a solo shot to kick off the scoring for The Good Guys.

It’s now time to do a quick aside (some weird Shakespeare term) and look at two hypotheticals:

1. Scenario One: Say that the Gardeners’ center fielder doesn’t dive for the ball with two runners on. The batter is held to, let’s say, a double, and only one run scores – runners on second and third with no outs. This changes the inning and every action that happens afterwards. Attitudes, fielding placements, pitches, winds, crotch scratches – everything is different. The game completely changes, maybe for the worse, maybe for the better. Butterfly effect. Yes, in this alternate universe The Good Guys could’ve erupted for 60 runs or the Gardeners could’ve shut them down for no more runs in the inning – there’s no way to tell. However, playing the less-risk hold them to a double versus going for the much riskier diving catch likely hurt the Gardeners’ momentum.

2. Scenario Two: Say in another universe that the three-run home run and solo shot immediately after never occurred, yet everything after that in the inning did. Then The Good Guys only score five runs in the inning (instead of nine) - four less runs. The Gardeners lost by four - that same difference. So this hypothetical universe could’ve happened as well.

Stephen Hawking understands what we’re talking about. Alternative universes and shit.

What we at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) mean to point out in these hypothetical scenarios is how, if you changed one little twist or eliminated a couple minor events, things turn out completely differently. Of course, all of this is hypothetical and none of it actually happened and the Gardeners lost, so there’s no excuse. Yet it does provide some sort of silver lining or maybe some consolation? The game wasn’t so disastrous after all? I’m Ron Burgundy?

Anywhoosers, the reality is that the Gardeners played fucking well for only nine guys and the season disaster of a slump and losing streak hanging over their heads. Having only three outfielders really didn’t affect the team much if you look at it, except for that gapper for the three-run home run which would’ve been straight to the fourth outfielder in the right center fielder had the Gardeners’ had one. Yet otherwise, no other balls were hit in the gaps that a right or left center fielder could’ve got to – all other hits were mainly straight to left, center, or right. And the corner outfield combo of Dan Ewbank in left field and Triple-A callup Tristan Besse in right field played superbly.

As an example, to end the bleeding fifth inning and with two runners on, Ewbank made a feet-first sliding catch into the foul wall in left to end the inning and breathe a sigh of relief for the Gardeners.

And Besse in right had his fair share of flyballs with at least four finding his glove. In addition, in the second inning, with runner Craig Lefferts on second and two outs, Good Guys’ batter Andy Benes roped a single to right. Lefferts rounded third and tried to score on Besse, testing the right fielder’s lefty gun. However, the former Northeastern ballplayer Besse nailed a one-hopper to catcher J.J. Young at the plate right in time for Young to nab Lefferts and end the inning. This closed out the second of Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde’s three shutout innings for the night, the first occurring in the first inning and the third shutout inning happening in the fourth, where Besse once again contributed the final out defensively by making a running, stretching, over-the-head catch to save a homer.

Young slated in the leadoff position did his duty in filling in for the given-a-day-off-since-he’s-played-in-16-straight-Gardeners-games-not-counting-the-tourney Ari Hersher by getting on base four out of the five times he came to the plate. In the first he led the game off with a single, moved around the bases on a few singles, then scored on Ewbank’s bases loaded single to put the Gardeners on the board, 1-0. ‘Twas the first of Ewbank’s three RBIs for the night.

In fact, the one-two Young-Dan Gatta top of the lineup punch proved very worthwhile, as the duo combined to get on base eight times out of ten while scoring six of the team’s 11 runs between them.

After Young’s score in the first, the score stayed here until the bottom of the third when The Good Guys scored three runs before batter Mike Maddux ended the inning by lining straight to Phil Zackler’s well-positioned self and glove at second base.

The Gardeners earned three back in the top of the fourth to take a 4-3 lead, Edde pitched a shutout bottom half, then the Gardeners kept up their momentum in the fifth with the bottom of the lineup starting the damage. First baseman Ryan Hester’s one-out single, Besse’s single, and shortstop Brian Williams’ fielder’s choice (that unfortunately got Hester at third) put two on and two outs for the top of the lineup in Young. Young decided to give the RBIs to the third baseman Gatta batting after him, so he singled to move each runner up one and, yes, make the bases loaded for Gatta.

And Gatta came through big big time with a single to left to bring Besse in and a hustling Williams around from second for two runs. Center fielder J.J. Warren singled in Young and Edde behind him singled in Gatta to push the Gardeners up 8-3. They would’ve scored more, yet Warren’s greediness in trying to score from second on Ewbank’s single after Edde's hit caught him staring at the catcher’s easily tagging him out to end the inning and the Gardeners’ rally.

Edde and Gatta both finished hitting 4-for-5 for the night. Gatta’s three RBIs for the evening put him at a team second-best ten RBIs for the season, while Edde’s four hits raised his season average to .684.

[Side note: The pitcher Edde’s season batting averages in his three seasons are .600, .657, and .684 (current season), for a .640 career number. What pitcher has ever put up those numbers at the plate?!?!?! For comparison, the top lifetime batting average for an MLB pitcher is .298, by some guy named Jack Stivetts who played from 1889-1899 with the St. Louis Browns, Boston Beaneaters, and Cleveland Spiders.
As another comparison, Madison Bumgarner – who is a great hitting pitcher, we all know – is batting .244 this year. So yeah, Edde crushes them.]

[Side note 2: Damn, these 1890s teams had sweet names – Boston Beaneaters, St. Paul Apostles, Milwaukee Creams, and – the best – the Brooklyn Bridegrooms. Yes, that’s the Dodgers. Explains a lot.]

After the Gardeners’ four-run top of the fifth, The Good Guys as mentioned slammed their bats around for nine runs to take the 12-8 lead.

Yet the Gardeners didn’t give up. At least not in the seventh inning, as they unfortunately couldn’t put anything together in the sixth. The Good Guys had scored three in their half of the sixth to push their lead (and Gardeners’ deficit) to 15-8 heading into the final inning.

Nevertheless, as the fearless tigers they are at their core, the Gardeners prowled and rallied. Williams’ leadoff triple set the table for his easily scoring on Gatta’s RBI single. And later with the bases loaded and one out, Ewbank singled in two more to cut the deficit to 15-11. Sadly and cryingingly, the Gardeners topped out at 11 runs and left the field in defeat.

Defeat on the scoreboard, at the most. They walked off the field with their heads high, feeling content with their nine-player, underdog performance where, if a few more things went their way or they didn’t give up so many runs in that one inning, the scoreboard might have looked different. Regardless, the evening ended successfully for a few Gardeners players, as Gatta went home to a waiting Mila Kunis while Hester got mouth-raped voraciously in an alleyway on the way home by Jessica Alba. Typical Tuesday.

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Stat of the Week:

6…………Games this season (out of six) in which the Gardeners’ defense has given up nine or more runs in an inning. They’ve lost all but one of those games.

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7/15/2015

The Savage Gardeners, the local heroes of San Francisco, holders of the keys to the city, the cream of the crop, the alphas of the alphas, the Channing Tatums of dancing, the sultans of swat, the kings of crash, the colossuses of clout - the colossuses of clout! - are watching their season fall apart like a crumbling warm muffin. The 18-8 defeat to TopThat! on Tuesday at Lance Harbor Moscone Field successfully put the Gardeners in a deep funk.

Playoffs are out of reach. This will be their first non-playoffs season in history. The team at best can reach .500. They may fire the manager. The cheerleaders are asking to be traded. Season ticket holders are requesting their money back. Confidence is at an all-time low, the team is deflated, and attendance is tailing off as fans are choosing to go watch the line at Nick’s Crispy Tacos on Tuesdays versus going to watch the Gardeners. Yes – people are not going INTO Nick’s – they’re paying and going to simply watch the line outside. That’s how shitty the Gardeners are playing right now.

In short – there’s nothing to say. The Gardeners could give up for their final three games. They could play even more motivated than usual. No one knows.

What happened to the gunslingin’ rootin’ tootin’ ballbustin’ Gardeners of yore? What happened to the men who used to not care and play with their dicks out and crushed balls around the outfield while the females swooned in a dead heat? What happened to those Spartans?

As could be seen after the game, the Gardeners’ locker room was a solemn and melancholy environment. Heads were down, music was off, and no words were spoken as the players contemplated how far they had fallen. The only sounds came from the drip drip of the communal shower where one of the faucets hadn’t been turned completely off, which is an incredilbly annoying sound. In addition, one of the toilets continually kept making the filling-up sound, as the valve inside the back of the toilet hadn't completely covered the hole and all one had to do was jigger the flush handle to get the stopper to cover the hole and let the water fill up for good.

On top of that, the Gardeners' PR guy didn't allow media into the premises for postgame comments from the players. In truth, no media were even around as none of them wanted to talk to fallen heroes anyways.

The Gardeners had this one – they had beaten TopThat! twice already in their history, the last one a 16-6 easy victory last season. Events seemed headed into that same pattern as after two innings the score was knotted at 2-2. At the time, the Gardeners could clearly feel in their bones that they were the superior team on the field. Third baseman Dave Watters (four RBIs – half the team’s total) had demonstrated this by displaying his domination by blasting a two-run homer to deep left in the first, the 52nd round-tripper of his career.

Then, in the top of the third with a TopThat! runner on first and one out, the Gardeners’ shortstop decided to field a grounder and make the force play at second by throwing very low to the second baseman, at his ankles. The ball scooted away, and instead of two outs and a runner on first, there was only one out and runners on first and second.

TopThat! immediately capitalized and scored ten runs.

Ten fucking runs.

Could’ve been zero, maybe one or two. Yet they scored ten. The game was, in a nutshell, over after that. The Gardeners had been hit by a wrecking ball. They’d never been hit so hard in love, and all they wanted was to break your walls.

The inning bled on and on, the Gardeners couldn’t stop the bleeding from going on and on, and this clearly exposed the glaring Achilles’ heel of the Gardeners – the one big inning by the opponent every game that crushes the team’s spirits.

Regardless, despite the ten-run disaster that put the Gardeners behind 12-2, the team tried to climb out of the abyss like Batman’s Bane, bit by bit. In the bottom of the third the Gardeners put up a small rally with two outs, with left fielder Dan Ewbank, first baseman Dan Gatta, and shortstop J.J. Warren producing RBI singles. Second baseman Alan Donner and Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde both scored on two of these hits (Ewbank scoring on the final single), and after three the Gardeners only looked at a 12-5 deficit.

Yet in the top of the fourth, TopThat! scored four more to make it 16-5. Yet still the Gardeners showed some glimpses of their past champion-heart selves by gaining a few runs back. Right fielder J.J. Young’s leadoff single and left center fielder Ari Hersher’s single behind him put two on for Watters to smash another shot, this one way up high in deep center for a stand-up, two-RBI triple. Donner behind him sacrifice-flied Watters in and the Gardeners kept breathing life into themselves, grittily baring their teeth at only a 16-8 deficit with three innings to go – plenty of time to do the Macarena and close the gap.

Didn’t happen. In the final three innings the Gardeners managed two hits total, batting 2-for-11 (.182) and adding a walk to make their on-base-percentage (OBP) in those three innings a little better than their average at .273.

At least they upped their defense in the final three innings, only allowing two runs total while turning their first infield double play of the season (6-4-3). In addition, Edde added to his lore by furnishing another strikeout to his pitching total, catching batter Heathcliff Slocumb staring at a strike-three splitter in the seventh inning.

We at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) ran the math and there is an outside chance the Gardeners can be one of the top four teams and make the playoffs. This scenario likely involves forfeits, cheating, steroids, bribes to the SF Softball Department, drugging other players, kidnapping other players, throwing hot coffee in other players’ faces, untying their shoelaces, lacing the field with banana peels so the opponent slips, tickle fights, utilizing the N64 Mario Kart lightning bolt to make other players shrink, and lots of magic tricks and circus acts like disappearing tigers and trapezes and shit.

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Stat of the Week:

21-14………Average score by the opponent (21) and the Gardeners (14) in the last seven games, one win and six losses.

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7/10/2015

Tuesday’s 23-16 loss to I’d Tap That by the Savage Gardeners fully put a stop to the Gardeners’ momentum from last week’s quality victory over league champion Ball So Hard University. In the seven-run loss at Stu Jackson Ballpark, I’d Tap That outhit and outplayed the Gardeners easily, much to the team’s dismay and sexual frustration.

“We felt confident going into the game,” J.J. Warren quoted in the locker room as he shared a naked ice bath with Alan Donner while they watched “Daria” on MTV on the locker room TV. “Yet my idol Ben Affleck is getting a divorce, which is both incredibly disheartening and distracting, and our shortstop can’t make a simple throw to first.”

No shit Sherlock. Reminds us at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) of the catcher in “Major League 2,” Rube Baker, who can’t make the simple throw back to the pitcher. And who also penned the thought-provoking line, “Women: you can’t live with them, and they can’t pee standing up.”

This is the first time the Gardeners have started with a 1-3 record in their history, going back to 1884 when the team was formed in a masonry by Chesterton Willington Haversham III as the Providence Township Woodmaking Quaker Mayors. In addition, sadly the Gardeners have gone 1-5 in their last six games dating to last season. So despite last week’s epic win, a recession has fallen upon the Gardeners.

Or, in other words, they’re in a slump. Which means they need a slumpbuster to break out of it. Which is easy to find in the San Francisco land of sevens, if one is willing to embrace the next-morning shame of a seven. Which isn’t really much shame at all, because if anyone sees you two publicly, they’ll think, “Oh, there’s another girl outkicking her coverage and a guy using her as a slumpbuster. Standard San Francisco.”

As the away team, the Gardeners batted first, because, in softball, and in baseball, as a fact, that is how the rules go. And in a lineup switch, left center fielder Ari Hersher this time was slated in the leadoff position, the first time he’s batted leadoff since 600,600 seconds before - or the previous week - in simpler terms. Hersher got on base as usual, singling to right to let center outfield battery mate Eric Snow single behind him. Hersher scored on the first of first baseman Dan Gatta’s two sacrifice flies for the night, and Snow later scored on a single to put the Gardeners up 2-0.

I’d Tap That tried in the first to do anything yet they only put up one measly run against the STAUNCH GARDENERS’ DEFENSE and brilliant pitching once again by Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde.

Unfortunately, the STAUNCH GARDENERS’ DEFENSE (why the fuck are you yelling?!?!?!) was short-lived as their opponent put up multiple-run innings in the rest of the innings save for one.

The Gardeners’ bats went cold in the second inning and their enemy took this opportunity to grab momentum, swing it over their shoulder like a Mongol carrying a damsel away after raping and pillaging a village, and score four runs to take the lead at 5-2. However, the village Gardeners would not let the pillagers run away with their booty and thus they fired back, slashing around five runs in the top of the third to grab the lead back at 7-5. Everything was a straight slew of on-base plays by the Gardeners supplemented by RBIs to close it out. Right fielder Alan Donner doubled, Gatta and Edde walked, Warren singled for some RBIs, second baseman Phil Zackler walked, then the rest of the RBIs poured in like teenage girls at a sold-out Taylor Swift concert in a small venue like the Independent: with the bases loaded, left fielder Dan Ewbank sacrifice-flied in Edde, catcher J.J. Young got his swing going with an RBI single, and third baseman Dane Dobrinich finished out the RBIs with a sacrifice fly to left center to aid Zackler’s scoring.

Up 7-5, the Gardeners felt confident and bonalicious. Which isn’t a word, yet can be whatever you want it to mean. We at USASSY have a feeling that Alan Donner will have the most creative interpretation of bonalicious. No idea why – we just have that feeling, that old-fashioned romantic feeling where you’d do anything to bone her. That’s a special feeling.

The Gardeners toughened up defensively in the third, where, after a throwing error by the shortstop Warren to allow leadoff batter Dave Magadan to get on base, the team shut it down afterwards and didn’t allow Magadan to move past second in the inning, helping earn a shutout inning for Edde.

Alas (this word again? Really? What the fuck? Seriously Brits. Get some teeth whitening), the shutout inning carried over to the Gardeners’ hitting in the fourth, where the Gardeners decided it would be a good idea to not score runs in the inning. Just throw the other team off the scent, if you know what we mean, keep ‘em guessing.

The Tap Thats then pushed four runs across in the bottom of the fourth to take the lead for good at 9-7. (USASSY is shortening their name to their mascot name – the “Tap Thats” – as is common in team names, where the first word is the city or state [e.g. Philadelphia] and the following words(s) is the mascot name [Phillies]. We’re not really sure what city or state the “I’d” is though, in “I’d Tap That.” Maybe short for Idaho? Sounded by a redneck? As in, “Imma gunna vay-cay-shee-un in I’d this wunter to doo sum hunntun”?)

So after the Tap Thats scored four runs, the Gardeners decided it would be wise to not score any runs once again, as Zackler was the lone player to get on base with a saucy single. Which means a single covered in barbecue sauce. Like seeing Veronica Corningstone and putting some bar-bee-que sauce on that butt and just buh buh buh buh buh buh buh [wolf noises]...

Zackler’s single turned out to be the final high point for the Gardeners until the seventh inning, as from that point forward, the Tap Thats took over and punished the Gardeners like they were Anastasia Steele in the red room.

[Side note: If you don’t know who Anastasia Steele is, shame on you and pick up on your classic literature knowledge.]

Down 9-7, the Gardeners took the field in the bottom of the fifth still confident and looking for a shutdown time. Yet ‘twas not to be the case, just like ‘twas the night before Christmas. Which it wasn’t, since it was July 7th. The Tap Thats scored one run…………and then eight more to move to a comfortable 18-7 lead. This inning simply got weird – the Tap Thats' scoring a bunch of runs with two outs with the Gardeners' being unable stop the bleeding.

Dobrinich and Hersher each got on base in the sixth to allow Donner to score both of them on a sacrifice fly to left to grab two runs back for the local heroes. And yes – the Gardeners scored TWO runs on the sacrifice fly thanks to Hersher’s McClatchy-trained wheels that allowed him to score all the way from second base on the play. Always is nice when you only think you’re getting to second base, then next thing you know you’re bypassing third base and more foreplay and going straight for the score. Especially when it’s Pride weekend and you’re watching pretty floats pass by then next thing you know you’re in the bathroom of a Subway in Duboce Triangle getting double-teamed by two spray-tanned dudes with nice muscles.

What?

The Tap Thats poured more on in the bottom of the sixth, adding five more runs to go up 23-9. And with one at-bat left, the Gardeners felt like toast. Yet they didn’t play like it. They clawed back like a 45-year old cougar at Balboa with Botox pawing at young studs like Gatta and clinging to last attempts at beauty.

In their last at-bat in the bottom of the seventh, the Gardeners finally pulled it together, pulling hits and walks together like a string of Christmas lights. The first eight batters all got on base, putting up a rally like the pep rallies Donner used to lead at Miramonte in high school to get the females all riled up. A mix of walks and singles put the Gardeners on base after base after base – Edde and Warren singled, Zackler walked saucily, Ewbank and Young singled, Dobrinich and Hersher walked, Snow singled. In this walks/singles montage, the Gardeners scored six times, the final two coming in on Snow’s rip to right center. Gatta’s second sacrifice fly of the game later scored a seventh run. So the Gardeners fought back valiantly. They couldn't add any more, and as the buzzer sounded, they gazed longingly at the 23-16 loss numbers on the scoreboard, wondering what could’ve been and what it’d be like to eat a scrumptious sliced baloney and cream cheese sandwich.

For the game, the Gardeners walked eight times and hit five sacrifice flies – 13 total plate appearances that didn’t hurt any batter’s average. Both stats reached second place all-time in the Gardeners’ single-game record list (the Gardeners walked nine times in a game in the 2015 Spring Season and hit six sacrifice flies once in a 2013 game).

They also had only one extra-base hit in the game – Donner’s double.

Defensively, Zackler made a saucy grab (he’s getting a lot of “saucy” adjective references) of a grounder in the hole between second and first base then spin and throw to second for a force in the second inning to earn second place on Tuesday's SportsCenter's Web Gems. There was a lot of the word “second” in that last sentence. Nobody cares though. Dobrinich displayed perfect form – squat, field, step, throw – on a grounder to him to close out the sixth, and Edde threw a wicked heater past batter Mickey Sasser in the fifth that Sasser whiffed at majorly, falling down onto the batter’s box dirt in the whiffing process in an utterly beautiful (for Edde) yet disastrous (for Sasser) strikeout.

Edde now has three strikeouts for the year, or an average of 0.75 per game this season. Which in softball is a pretty solid rate. (As a comparison, in 102 games the Gardeners as a team have struck out a total of 35 times – a rate of 0.34 per game – or in other words, an average of about once every three games.) At Edde’s strikeout rate, he will catch Nolan Ryan’s career record of 5,714 strikeouts in game number 7,619. Which will likely occur in 2017, only two years out, at about the same time Mila Kunis will discover that her then-three-year old baby is Dan Gatta’s, not Ashton Kutcher’s.

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Stat of the Week:

12……….Straight games in which Ari Hersher has led off the game for the Gardeners by getting on base

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7/03/2015

The Savage Gardeners entered Tuesday night’s game against Ball So Hard University (BSHU) with an 0-2 record for the season, predicted to face an 0-3 start according to idiot ESPN pundits who all unanimously picked BSHU to win the matchup.

In addition, the Gardeners had never yet won a game against their opponent, having gone 0-4 thus far against BSHU in their series history.

Las Vegas odds also reflected the public’s perception with the money line at -450 in favor of BSHU. (On the opposite side, odds were at +380 for the Gardeners – hence, whoever put a $100 bet on the Gardeners would have won $380. And whoever actually did place that whopping entire life savings $40,260,887 bet on the Gardeners won big as well [$152,991,370.60 to be exact].) Sources say it was some anonymous Asian rich guy from Hong Kong. Who is apparently obsessed with the Gardeners (“I wuv da Sowidge Gawdnohs!”), very similar to how Japanese fans and media get obsessed with Japanese ballplayers like Ichiro, snapping thousands of photos and following their every sound and step.

In short, everyone had their eyes on the mired-in-a-losing-streak Gardeners’ losing on Tuesday. Except for that $40 million anonymous Asian bettor. Who is probably on some yacht in the Caribbean somewhere having sex with Margot Robbie.

Yet despite the monetary gain this bettor experienced, nothing could top the satisfaction the Gardeners players felt when they walked off of KKU Field with a great 20-18 victory over last season’s league champions.

A few keys contributed to the Gardeners’ victory Tuesday evening:

Key #1: The bottom of the lineup/Triple-A callups performed exceptionally, exceeding expectations in the field and at the plate. Catcher Tyler Humphrey, right fielder Ryan Hester, left fielder Dan Ewbank, and third baseman Casey Keenum combined to go 10-for-15 (.667) with eight runs among them. In the field, all four provided their value in their own ways. Hester in right intimidated BSHU’s batters enough that they didn’t hit a single fly ball to him all night. Ewbank in left rifled relay throws into the infield quickly to hold runners from taking extra bases. Keenum at third made two solid putouts on grounders, and Humphrey behind the plate kept BSHU’s batters off balance and on their toes with his mix of calling all seven types of pitches in Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde’s arsenal. BSHU didn’t know what was coming at any time; the mix of fastballs, splitters, curves, cutters, knucklers, changeups, and screwballs baffled BSHU’s batters all evening.

Key #2: Defense. The Gardeners’ defense played on point, performing almost flawlessly in the field and making crucial outs when needed. First baseman Dan Gatta exemplified this high-quality play of the Gardeners’ defense perfectly in the fourth when there was one out and a runner on first. Lefty batter Ray Lankford pulled a screamer to the right side of the infield that Gatta quickly scooped in a nanosecond. And with the clear brains from a Bulletproof diet and the dexterity from the Body By Gatta lifestyle, Gatta made a heads-up play by tagging runner Bernard Gilkey from first then stepping on first for the unassisted double play, to both close out the inning and send the Gardeners whooping and hollering into the dugout. Gatta also made unassisted stops in the first and fifth to end both innings.

And Key #3: The Gardeners finally fucking hit the ball. They batted at a .641 clip with seven players each getting at least three hits apiece. They did so by keeping it simple by hitting singles all night - singles accounting for 20 of their 25 hits. This thus proved that peppering the ball around and moving runners from base to base provides consistency and a solid formula for winning.

Enough said.

The Gardeners beat their nemesis fair and square, putting teamwork together combined with their unbridled enthusiasm for the team-bonding trip to see “Magic Mike XXL” Saturday evening at the Kabuki Theater, reserving five love seats total for the ten of them. Bust out the pink rose (“rohs-ay”) wine and watermelon cranberry strawberry daiquiri cosmos and they’ll be happier than a rabbit at the Rabbit Folsom Street Fair.

After the typical leadoff batter raping of Ari Hersher by a voracious female (this time Naomi from “Van Wilder” – that’s “I moan” backwards; apparently she got this idea from a now-jailed Tara Reid who pulled this stunt last week), Hersher brushed off the expected distraction and slapped a double to right to get the Gardeners on the hit board (a.k.a. the second entry on the R/H/E basic scoreboard – Runs/Hits/Errors – putting the numbers at 0/1/0. And that last zero was a key factor for the night as the Gardeners produced few errors in the field, errors in a softball sense meaning missed grounders, fly balls, or overthrows. In reality, it truly is hard not to make errors in softball - it’s tricky at times in the field and we’re not experts. Yet LIMITING errors becomes a huge factor in winning, and the Gardeners played this option to a tee.

Gatta’s one-out single moved Hersher to third, bringing cleanup batter Edde to the plate. And when is the last time a pitcher batted cleanup – Babe Ruth? When was that – nineteen-fucking-twenty? Well there’s a reason Edde batted there – he crushed the ball, going 3-for-3 for the night with a single, double, triple, walk, and a sacrifice fly as well, supplying four RBIs total, two of them on a clutch two-out triple to left center in the fifth that at the time extended the Gardeners’ lead to 13-9.

Yet that was in the future. The first inning was still going on and Edde produced his first RBI for the night with a single to score Hersher.

Edde’s performance earned him the Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game Award – a 1.000 batting night, two runs on top of the four RBIs, and on the mound pitching three shutout innings, culminating with the shutdown seventh and final inning where, with a runner on third and the tying run on first with one out, he shut down the final two batters to earn the victory.

He also added his second strikeout of the season – the first looking – with the nastiest of nastiest pitches in the fifth inning, catching batter Bob Tewksbury stunned as the ball dropped on the very back inside corner of home plate for strike three. That shit was sick.

After Edde’s RBI single in the first, shortstop J.J. Warren followed with an RBI double to center that – in a scary moment – almost conked an unsuspecting outfielder in the opposite game straight in the skull. Fortunately, disaster and injury were avoided and the inning kept going for second baseman Phil Zackler and Humphrey to add RBIs to bring the Gardeners’ run total to four.

BSHU had scored four runs in the top half of the first, yet in the second they didn’t do shit, getting shut down in four batters by Edde (with a hit in peppered in there), Edde goading a groundout to Keenum at third and two flyouts to Hersher in left center.

Edde’s second RBI of the evening came in the second on a sacrifice fly, followed by a Warren RBI single to score right center fielder Eric Snow and put the Gardeners up 6-4. The opponent got back one in the third then shut down the Gardeners in the bottom half, yet the Gardeners turned it back on the enemy in the fourth by holding them to no runs, highlighted by the aforementioned unassisted double play and Uncle Jesse Defensive Play of the Game by Gatta.

The Gardeners added two more in the fourth to push the lead to 8-5 yet in the top of the fifth BSHU captured their first lead by putting up four runs to go up 9-8.

Yet on Tuesday they were facing the Gardeners. And the Gardeners don’t give a shit what the score is. They score. Hard. And they score on the softball field too.

In the fifth, the bottom of the lineup got the bats rolling hardcore like Gardeners’ legend Matt Mason at Burning Man. Humphrey led off with a single to right, the second of his three hits for the night. Hester’s smooth lefty swing produced a single as well, and after Keenum’s walk, the bases were loaded for the left fielder Ewbank. And Ewbank came through big time, lasering a single to left center to score Humphrey and Hester and put the Gardeners ahead at 10-9. Hersher’s walk loaded the bases again, and Snow up next strategically hit a sacrifice fly to the shortstop in short left field to allow Keenum to hustle home for the Gardeners’ third run of the inning.

Later with two outs and runners on second and third, none other than the player of the game Edde came up. And as briefly mentioned above, he slashed a key triple to left center to score Ewbank and Hersher and push the lead to 13-9 with two innings to play.

Nonetheless, in the sixth inning, the Gardeners’ opponent showed why they compete in the CC Division. They walloped the ball around for nine runs to briefly scare the Gardeners and take the lead at 18-13.

Yet these are the Savage Gardeners we’re talking about. Not some pansy-ass apron-and-Crocs wearing petunia-smelling gardeners with limp water hoses. These are the 300 Spartans and William Wallace and Zeus and Batman combined – a mesh of brains and brawn and brutality that bash apart any barrier in their way.

Many times when the Gardeners have a bleeding defensive inning and give up a multitude of runs, the team gets down, gets negative, and loses confidence. Not so Tuesday night. And the stud Zackler made sure the team rebounded.

Zackler by the way played an impeccable game at second base all seven innings, scooping two grounders for force plays at second and catching the force at second in the seventh inning for the third out that sealed the victory.

Yet on the batting side, in the bottom of the sixth with his team down five runs, Zackler produced the key hit of the game – a simple single to left to start off the inning. And we have observed statistically that when the Gardeners’ leadoff batter of an inning gets on base, the Gardeners score in greater than 86% of those innings. When the leadoff batter gets out, the Gardeners only score roughly 50% of the time.

Thus the crucial-ness of Zackler’s leadoff single. One runner on. Confidence rises. And the team started to get sick. The contagion spread through the bottom of the lineup as Humphrey up next singled to right to push a hustling Zackler to third. Hester then laced an RBI single to right to score Zackler, Humphrey’s moving to third on the hit. Keenum singled to left center to score Humphrey and cut it to 18-15 and Ewbank behind him singled to left to load the bases for the top of the lineup in Hersher.

Five straight hits, all singles, no outs – perfect getting-on-base softball that builds momentum and puts the pressure on the defense.

Hersher’s fifth plate appearance resulted in a beautiful single to right to score Hester and Keenum, Keenum’s sliding into home and knocking the ball out of catcher Tom Pagnozzi’s glove to bring the Gardeners within one at 18-17.

Wendell Kim coaching third caused a baserunning gaffe next on Snow’s single to center, costing the Gardeners an out, yet with one out now, Gatta tied the game with a fielder’s choice that allowed Hersher to score. Doesn’t matter that an out occurred – the Gardeners had tied it at 18-18 and still had the seventh inning and last at-bats as the home team in their favor.

With Gatta on first and two outs, Edde’s third hit of the night formed a beauty – a two-out double to keep the inning alive. Warren following Edde somehow slipped a triple past the right fielder’s glove, Gatta and Edde scored, and the Gardeners headed into the seventh with a comfortable yet narrow 20-18 lead. All they needed to do was close it out like Hester does at the bars.

With the two-run lead in the seventh, Edde goaded a flyout to Snow in right center by leadoff batter Jose Oquendo for the first out. The next two batters – Luis Alicea and Todd Zeile – then both singled, putting runners at the corners with one out.

Yet BSHU didn’t realize they were facing the shutdown Edde on the mound, despite his reaching 127 pitches on the pitch count. He looked as fresh on pitch 128 as he did on pitch one. Edde got Brian Jordan to pop out to himself on the mound for out number two and shit looked real now. Lee Smith for BSHU tried to keep the inning going, yet Edde’s 94-mph inside splitter was too much for him. Smith grounded to short for the easy force to Zackler at second and this shit was ovah, Gardeners’ victory by two.

This proved to be one of the most satisfying wins in Gardeners’ recent history – ending their losing streak, breaking their 0-4 record against BSHU, and the overall solid defense and clutch hitting all contributing to a well-earned win to get over the hump of poor recent play.

And speaking of humps, camels are stupid. Yeah – let’s spend our lives walking across thousands of miles of the hot Saharan Desert carrying people on our backs. Nice career choice dumbasses.

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Stat of the Week:

4…………Unassisted putouts by Dan Gatta defensively at first base on Tuesday. In the first two games combined, the Gardeners had made only one out total at first base, an Edde-to-Gatta groundout last week.

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6/25/2015

The Savage Gardeners currently look at an 0-2 start to the season. At this pace they’re predicted to go undefeated for the rest of the year.

Yes – undefeated. We could say defeated, yet that’s super confidence crushing. So fuck that.

Yet as of right now, they are like the Cleveland Browns and their fans – a team and fan base with high hopes that get easily shattered as the team underperforms as always.

Playing in the late 1:30am game at KKU Field Tuesday night, the Gardeners fell to their cheesy carb-heavy crust-stuffed opponent Pizza Joint SF by two touchdowns, 28-14.

The game looked as hot as Jennifer Love Hewitt in “Can’t Hardly Wait” in the first inning as the Gardeners poured some sugar on home plate with seven runs to start off. Nevertheless, after that they tailed off dramatically and went limp, scoring only two runs in the next three innings. They put up five final runs in the game-shortened fifth inning to make it to a respectable double digits, yet the damage had been done as Pizza Joint doubled the Gardeners’ run total.

“The sentiment shifted tonight when we in the dugout overheard that Garden Hoes Margot and Holly wouldn’t be staying for the whole game,” left fielder J.J. Warren observed postgame in the locker room as he toweled off himself then teammate Phil Zackler. “We lost all faith and hope after that. We thought – what are we playing for? There are no women or pride to play for. And seriously – who leaves an event in the middle of it? Did I leave the theater halfway through 'Magic Mike'? Heck no. If you’re paying to go see one of the greatest movies of all time in the theater, you don’t leave halfway through. I’ll guarantee you that on June 29th I’ll be the first in line for 'Magic Mike XXL' [release date: July 1st] and I’ll happily watch that entire instant classic movie, sipping a cosmo and wearing a onesie. Such a Samantha move. Yet looking back, we need some inspiration, and Garden Hoes peacing out doesn’t help. Maybe we need like three kids or something to come watch the Gardeners, maybe to watch their uncle or something, I don’t know, something to get this team pepped up besides Phil’s [Zackler’s] chiseled body.”

Most of the positives Tuesday night against Pizza Joint occurred in the Gardeners’ seven-run top half of the first inning. As expected, left center fielder Ari Hersher led off by getting on base with a walk (after being sexually harassed as usual by a screaming female fan, this one actually being Tara Reid, looking like she did in “Van Wilder” in that final scene by the pool at the party. “What kind of underwear did you choose?” “None.”). Right center fielder Eric Snow (3-for-4) singled and shortstop and number-three batter Dave Watters then singled in Hersher for the Gardeners’ first run. First baseman Dan Gatta followed former KKU mate Watters with an RBI single to score Snow, and after Warren added zero value to the team by flying out to produce an out, Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde stepped up with two on. After finishing second on the team in batting average last season, Edde kept up his hot bat by doubling to center to score both Watters and Gatta and push the Gardeners up to 4-0.

Second baseman Zackler then doubled to RBI in Edde and his roommate right fielder Alan Donner singled behind him to put two on again. Third baseman Dane Dobrinich (3-for-3), in his first game this season after training in Houston all offseason, next lined a double to left to score Zackler and Donner and put the Gardeners up 7-0 to close out their hitting.

Alas (what the fuck kind of word is “alas” anyway? Fucking British), the Gardeners’ opponent had some tricks of their own planned as they scored eight runs in the bottom half of the inning to take the lead at 8-7 after one.

What frustrated the Gardeners players, their fans, and critics most about this game was the Gardeners’ inability to take advantage of their superiority over their opponent as well as their not taking advantage of the fact that despite Pizza Joint's having some speedy players on their team, the other half of the guys were bigger slower guys – batters whose extra bases could easily be limited due to their lack of quickness. Regardless of their speed or not, Pizza Joint hit the ball, the Gardeners didn’t, Hoes departed in the middle of the game, our pets' heads are falling off, and all went downhill after the first inning.

Edde sacrifice-flied in a run in the third and Hersher scored after a leadoff single in the fourth to add two runs to the Gardeners’ total. However, what happened in between was Pizza Joint’s scoring 20 runs in those three innings (the Gardeners had a scoreless second inning) to dwarf those Gardeners’ two runs en route to Pizza Joint’s 28-9 lead heading into the fifth.

Fortunately, the Gardeners got a Garden Hoe presence back when the newly married Meredith Watters showed up and the team gained their motivation back. They displayed this by scoring five runs in the fifth to give themselves momentum heading into their game next week. And it was Edde again leading the charge, leading off the inning with a walk, moving to second on Zackler’s single, then scoring on Dobrinich’s single, Dobrinich’s third RBI of the night. Rookie J.J. Young got on the RBI board by pushing Zackler across the plate with a single of his own, and Snow provided some late game pep by tripling in two runs with two outs despite a massive cut on his chin.

Gatta added a third RBI with another single – to score Snow – for the Gardeners’ 14th run. Pizza Joint’s 28 runs though were too much for the local Gardeners heroes as the defense simply couldn’t play their A-game all night. Edde and Zackler led the charge though, as their combined four runs and 3-for-4 night (a walk and a sac-fly thrown in there) added to their making 50% of the Gardeners’ defensive putouts for the night. Granted, since the game was shortened, Pizza Joint only had four hitting innings – 12 outs total – yet Edde and Zackler combined for six of those putouts. Zackler in the second caught a flyout then later flipped a force to Watters at second for outs two and three, respectively, in the inning. And Edde goaded two groundouts to himself in the fourth – one for a force to Young at home and another with a flip to Gatta at first – the Gardeners’ first defensive out at first base in their first two games. In the first as well, Edde closed out the eight-run disaster by getting batter Mickey Morandini to foul out on Edde’s signature curve; Edde also finished the third inning by blowing a fastball by a whiffing John Kruk to earn his first strikeout for the season.

Despite this disaster, the Gardeners look to have an exorbitant number of Garden Hoes present for their battle next week. We at USASSY (USA Softball Statistics Yearly) ran the numbers and have no way to back up this statement, yet what we and the Gardeners and the world know is that there is a direct relationship between the number of Garden Hoes present and the number of Gardeners’ runs scored. A.K.A. in general terms, the more Hoes present, the more runs scored. It’s science. Just like the fact that the Gardeners are men who discovered the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal......and brawn. It’s science.

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Stat of the Week:

25-12………Savage Gardeners’ record immediately following a loss

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6/05/2015

After a quality start to the year 2015 (MMXV) in the Spring Season by proving they belonged in the elite CC Division, the Savage Gardeners entered the Summer Season opener with grand ambitions and brimming confidence despite their devastating semifinals loss last playoffs. (Their opponent in the semifinals, Ball So Hard University, ended up winning the championship.) All the same, fate turned against the Gardeners’ favor Tuesday night at KKU Field as they dropped their home opener 24-10 to bitter rival The Good Guys.

[Side Note 1: In the 2015 Spring Season, The Good Guys upset the Gardeners in the final game of the regular season, knocking them down from the #2 seed to the #3 seed, where, instead of playing #15 seed small-school Hampton State Northwest in the opening round, they were forced to play a tougher team in mid-major #14 seed Northern Kansas.]

[Side Note 2: The title of this newspaper summary has nothing to do with the Gardeners. Would be a highly stimulating essay to read however.]

Through four innings the duel existed on the mound between two-time Cy Young winner (and two-time Gold Glove winner) Mike Edde and The Good Guys’ Denny Neagle. After three innings the score was low-scoring at 2-1, Gardeners; after the fourth it was 4-3, Good Guys. Nobody was hitting shit. In fact, The Good Guys were dumb as shit – in the first two innings flying out to Eric Snow in right field for four of the six outs. Edde’s two shutout innings – in the second and third – kept the Gardeners’ fielding percentages’ up and the defense on the field for only short periods (a positive – as in football, less defensive time on the field means more offensive time and opportunities to score). The second inning lasted a total of 4.6 seconds (we timed it) as Edde pitched a total of three pitches in the inning – first-pitch flyouts to Snow twice then a liner to the newly-married Dave Watters at third for the final out.

[Notable marriage stats for Gardeners players:

Players’ batting average in their last game before marriage: 15-for-24 (.625)
Players’ batting average in their first game after marriage: 11-for-23 (.478)]

Despite this stellar pitching and quality defense in the early innings Tuesday, the Gardeners’ bats weren’t working well. This easily could be attributed to their lying in the storage closet at KKU, collecting dust and rust since the Gardeners hadn’t played for almost a month’s time, last playing on May 5th. Which according to our calculations and free English-to-Spanish translation through Google, means “Cinco de Mayo.” Not sure how they get the words “Cinco de Mayo” from “May the Fifth” though. Very confusing.

And apparently people party on that day. Usually it’s white people pretending to be Mexican and drinking Corona and Tecate and denying that they’re racist (c’mon, everybody still is to some extent) and screeching “Arriba! Arriba!” and other nonsensical Spanish shit.

[Disclosure: We at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) actually love Spanish stuff (sometimes) and are not making fun of their culture: the girls have sexier accents than dumb American girls, have darker hair, and have you ever had a bad burrito that wasn’t amazing and succulent with every huge bite? Didn’t think so. Vamanos a la biblioteca para estudiar.]

Despite the beefed up security Tuesday night – due to its being the sold-out home opener and the precautions needed after last season’s slew of “molest Ari Hersher” females running onto the field – the extra uniformed men couldn’t stop recent history from happening. And by recent history, we mean, yes, again, Hersher leading off was once again attacked by ravenous females (twins this time). He let them kiss him simultaneously on both cheeks, yet by that time Paul Blart had finally shown up on his Segway to drag both screeching and biting ladies away from Hersher so he could bat and get the Gardeners’ hitting off to a promising start. And the pre-at-bat activities helped, as the Gardeners’ consistent left center fielder led off with a homer to right to put the Gardeners on the board. First baseman Dan Gatta’s double and then score later in the inning added the second run for the Gardeners and after one they led 2-1.

As mentioned, the score stayed this way through three innings before the Gardeners’ opponent scored three in the fourth to go up 4-2. Yet to start the inning one of the Gardeners added to his 9,618 Web Gems to keep his control of the all-time lead in spectacularly spectacular outfield plays. The play occurred when Good Guys’ batter Orland Merced led off and tried to get his team going with a smash down the line in deep left field.

Little did he realize that speedster Johnny Moran was playing in left. Moran soon covered 70 yards in four seconds to make a sex-worthy sliding catch of Merced’s fly ball, making it look as easy as breathing. Ho hum, one more Web Gem for Moran.

Throughout the game Moran showed his gun as well, throwing on-target rifles to second and third base to keep runners from daring to take any extra bases in the evening.

After the top of the fourth, the Gardeners clawed one back on Edde’s single to center to score Gatta from second, after Gatta’s second of three hits for the night.

Then the fifth inning happened.

The Good Guys erupted for 12 disastrous runs, making their lead 16-3. This inning fucking hurt. Real bad. Like a shitload of Band-Aids being ripped off your skin all at once. Then being clubbed across the face with a large frying pan. Then being clubbed across the face with a large frying pan a second time. Then having a screaming blowtorch blow fire in your face from two feet away. Then getting run over on the runway by a speeding airplane taking off. Then getting a mosquito bite, simply as the cherry on top.

Down 16-3, the Gardeners never fully recovered. Yet they fought back, incrementally, keeping their gritty hopes alive. In the bottom of the inning, with two outs nonetheless, Snow doubled to right to score second baseman Phil Zackler and Hersher. Zackler easily scooted across home plate shirtless and wearing his Glide Memorial hat, abs rippling in the night wind. Hersher crossed home seconds behind him, abs glistening off the stadium lights as well to the delight of the female fans.

On a related note, finally a Garden Hoe – Margot – was in attendance Tuesday night, baring the wind and cold like a true champ.

After Snow’s double, third baseman Dave Watters doubled him in from second and the Gardeners had cut it to 16-6.

The Good Guys swooped three more back in the sixth, yet the highlight of the inning was Edde’s snag on the mound of a bangbang screaming knee-high liner up the middle. Did we say he was a two-time Gold Glove winner already? Yeah, we did. We’re simply reiterating the fact.

Despite the now 13-run deficit at 19-6, the Gardeners kept their bats held high. In the Gardeners’ half, with Edde on second and right center fielder Jason Friedman on first, Zackler came to the plate. Facing a full count, Zackler saw ball four from the pitcher Neagle dropping two feet in front of him.

Yet - “Fuck walking" - Zackler thought in his mind in the half-second he had when deciding to swing or not as the fastball hurtled towards the plate. Leaning forward, Zackler swung and scooped a fly ball to left center. Yet this was no easy fly ball. This ball was soaring over the head of outfielder Jose Lind’s head. Zackler hustled to third for a standup triple – Edde and Friedman easily scoring on the play – and taking the team lead in triples by one, with the team’s first. Zackler also tied for the team lead in RBIs along with Snow for the night with two.

Moran up next beat out an infield single to score Zackler and bring it to 19-9.

The Gardeners’ opponent slashed their bats around again in the seventh, scoring five more to make it an ugly 24-9. Friedman RBI singled in Watters for a Gardeners’ run in the bottom of the seventh, yet that was all E.L. James wrote and the Gardeners saw their record go to 0-1 to start the season.

Despite the loss, some highlights can be taken away from Tuesday’s game. The Gardeners clutch-hit and scored half their runs (five) with two outs. Zackler has his power back and is projected by Baseball Prospectus to hit only RBI triples for the rest of his at-bats this season. And the pressure of an undefeated season is no longer hanging over the Gardeners’ heads.

Thank goodness for that last one. The quest for an undefeated season would’ve led to way too much media attention for the team and therefore major celebrity status, leading to swarming female groupies and an overabundance of sex with dozens of swimsuit models, Channing Tatum thrown in there as well to spice it up.

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Stat of the Week:

1.........Number of groundouts by The Good Guys against the Gardeners, a force play at second. A total of zero outs went to first base; the other 20 outs were all flyouts.

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5/07/2015

Tuesday’s Final Four matchup against Ball So Hard University (BSHU) tragically ended the Savage Gardeners’ Spring Season, cutting short their championship hopes once again.

As the #3 seed at KKU Field, the away team Gardeners faced two away games in their efforts to be crowned league champs for the first time. Alas, this was not to be the case as BSHU walloped the ball to an early lead that they never relinquished. The opponent’s seven-run first inning and five-run second set the tone for their confidence throughout the night. However, after this blowup, the Gardeners' defense settled down and only allowed three more runs over the next four innings with Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde on the mound.

With two Garden Hoes in attendance – the less-than-two-weeks-away Meredith as well as Ms. Margot – the good luck charms were present and ready for a Gardeners victory. Yet the Gardeners’ three-run rally in the seventh inning while down five runs fell short, and the Gardeners walked away in defeat, 15-13.

Showing up finally for a Gardeners game was All-Star catcher Phil Zackler, whose solid OBP of 1.000 for the game (3-for-3, one walk) led the team.

“I have a feeling that batting Phil ninth will work out,” Manager Chris Norton quoted before the game (an actual quote, as opposed to the supposed “made-up” quotes that USA Softball Statistics Yearly [USASSY] has been accused of creating).

And it worked out, as shown in Zackler’s three hits after an intermittent season of showing up to play then taking a game or two off, then showing up again. Yet Tuesday he was back in full Producers Dairy hat force, calling pitches behind the plate and Buster Posey-like playing some innings in the infield to rest his knees.

His hustle in the catcher position is beyond comparison let us note. On one play, he came to cover second base. Yes: SECOND BASE. From the catcher's position. Because of Zackler's hustle on the play, the runner on first at the time didn't try for second. If he had, the play could've ended in the classic 9-6-2 right field-to-shortstop-to-catcher tag at second for an out.

The visiting team Gardeners easily scored two runs in the first on left fielder Pat Reilly’s two-run home run to right with left center fielder Ari Hersher on base. Then BSHU whomped around seven in their half as this game initially portended to be a blowout disaster after one inning.

As the best team in the division – despite their #2 seeding in the playoffs – BSHU always threatened to dominate any team they faced. They hit well and they field well – let’s state it: they were the best team in the division.

Nevertheless, the Gardeners represented a force to be reckoned with as well. Playing in the CC Division for the first time, the team responded admirably above expectations, finishing the regular season with a 6-2 record and proving their belonging in the upper tier of teams.

Despite the quick 7-2 hole the Gardeners found themselves in after one inning, they recognized the urgency of the game and its place in playoffs, where stakes and female arousal levels are heightened dramatically. They pushed one back across the plate in the second, spearheaded by two-out back-to-back-to-back singles by right center fielder Jason Friedman, Zackler, and Norton – Norton’s hit scoring Friedman to cut it to 7-3.

Let us also note that Norton may have been given the opportunity the night before to attend the Golden State Warriors’ Game Two Playoffs matchup. Yet as the honorable manager he is, Norton laid his loyalty with the Gardeners, and he cemented himself in the lineup at third base for the evening instead of in Row 124 at Oracle Arena. His faithfulness was true dedication - an example to be met as someone who follows through on his word. The Warriors lost anyway, so the game would’ve likely been more moot than enjoyable, and the Gardeners would’ve been lost organizationally and managerially, looking at a gaping hole in their lineup Tuesday night without Norton’s presence. Once the Warriors win two straight in Memphis, surely Norton will get a redemption chance to attend the Game Five clincher.

Despite gaining a run back in the top of the second, the Gardeners couldn’t stop their opponent from pouring it on. BSHU scored five more in the bottom half to push it to 12-3 after two, even more of a disaster than 7-2.

Yet the Gardeners have heart. And Liam Hemsworth good looks on top of that. And strong glutei maximi and buttocks from doing squats and deadlifts twice weekly with five plates on each side.

The third proved a turning point for the Gardeners’ bats as the heart of the lineup cleaned up for four runs. Right fielder Eric Snow’s leadoff single followed by Reilly’s and shortstop J.J. Warren’s singles scored one (Snow), and first baseman Dave Watters added to his 256 career RBIs at the time with a laser sacrifice fly to left to score Reilly. Second baseman Alan Donner – who showed up right at game time, suitcase in tow, Hudson News newspaper in hand, after landing at SFO from Chicago only an hour earlier (Tuesday's transportation route: Chicago taxi to flight then tram in SFO then BART then 30X bus then cable car then Ride the Ducks bus then walk to the field to make it in time) – then walked to put two on. With two outs, Friedman hit his second two-out single of the evening, this one scoring Warren to cut the deficit to 12-6. Zackler then did the same, producing his second two-out hit as well – a clutch RBI single to left to score Donner from second – that brought the Gardeners within five at 12-7.

For the night, the Gardeners scored almost half (six) of their 13 runs with two outs.

Edde buckled down BSHU in the third, only allowing one run and capping off the inning by getting batter Danny Tartabull to ground out weakly to himself on the mound for the third out. After the game Edde was presented with his second straight Gold Glove Award in as many seasons. After 16 more seasons, he is sure to tie Greg Maddux for most Gold Gloves of all-time.

The fourth inning saw the Gardeners’ bats maintain their hitting consistency, with more two-out RBI hits by the team’s studs. With Hersher on third and Snow on second with two outs, Watters singled to left for his second RBI of the night, then Donner and Edde did the same – scoring two more to cut the lead to 13-10. BSHU pushed two across in their half of the fourth to extend the lead to 15-10, yet that was it for their scoring for the evening, sexually and on the softball field. Edde pitched two shutout innings in the fifth and sixth. This streak of two consecutive shutout innings provides perfect momentum heading into the upcoming Summer Season.

Despite the shutdown pitching and defense in the tail end of the game for the Gardeners, their bats froze up and they couldn’t score in either the fifth or the sixth. Thus, they entered their last at-bat in the seventh inning still down five at 15-10, looking for some last legs to keep their season alive. And the bottom half of the lineup answered the call by loading the bases with solid clutch hits and baserunning led by Donner and Edde.

Donner led off the inning with a key single to center. (Reminder: the odds of the Gardeners’ scoring in an inning where the leadoff batter got on base this season was 87%.) Knowing he didn’t need to push his luck on the basepaths, on Edde’s single to left, Donner rounded second and drew a throw to third from left fielder Scott Kamieniecki. Third baseman Randy Velarde tried to throw back to second to get Donner – yet the ball tailed left and into the outfield and Donner moved to third. Edde wisely moved to second on the play for his team-leading sixth double of the season, raising his OBP to .684 for the season, which also led the team. Two on, no outs, and one smart baserunning move in the books.

Friedman’s easy single to left (his third of the night) scored Donner, and Zackler’s walk next loaded the bases for Norton. And despite going against all baseball strategy, the Gardeners called for the suicide squeeze which Norton and Edde on third pulled off brilliantly. BSHU’s defense was caught off guard, Edde scored, and Norton coasted to first to keep the bases loaded.

Alas, the Gardeners could only muster one more run in the inning as the buzzer ticked to zero on their season. Despite the 15-13 loss, the Gardeners walked off the field with their heads high – albeit with frustration. Regardless, the past is the past, and the next morning at 6am as usual on the first day of the offseason, the entire Gardeners’ roster was back in the weight room performing Body By Gatta workouts in preparation for the Summer Season and their quest for immortality.

They enter the 2015 Summer Season with Vegas futures odds of 1:4 to win the championship – a gimme bet if you ask anyone (yes, that’s lay $400 to win $100, also known as -400 odds). Initially the futures odds were at 1:8 (-800), yet after ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian leaked the news that slugger Pat Reilly would be unavailable for the summer (respectfully so), Vegas bookmakers quickly priced in his absence and readjusted their lines.

Reilly has proved a huge addition for the Gardeners, as this season he led the team in four categories – slugging, OPS, RBIs, and home runs. It’s notable to note as well that Reilly averaged a homer each game - seven home runs in seven games.

Speaking of seven, seven really is a San Francisco number come to think of it. The city is seven miles long by seven miles wide, there are seven hills, Alamo Park has the Seven Sisters, the 49 in 49ers is seven-squared, QB Colin Kaepernick wears number seven, the local news is ABC7 News, the girls are sevens, both softball fields have seven letters (Moscone, Jackson), as does the Gardeners’ bar (Bus Stop), and the last name of the city's future mayor (Zackler), District Attorney (Hersher), converted A’s-to-Giants fan (Watters), and the most well-known and classiest establishment (Condor Club).

That last one might be more than seven letters. Still the classiest joint though.

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Stat of the Week:

.333………Savage Gardeners’ win percentage in the playoffs at Moscone 1 (2-4 record)
.824………Savage Gardeners’ win percentage in the regular season at Moscone 1 (28-6 record)

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Body by Jake Useless Sports Trivia Question of the Week to Help You Fill the Time at Work/Home/On the Bus/During Intercourse:

Fourteen professional sports teams in the NFL, MLB, and NBA combined use the color orange in their logo or uniform. Name them.

(As much as we like those old jerseys, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers do not currently have orange on their uniform. Actually technically the football on the flag is orange. Yet name the other 14 teams.)

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4/30/2015

In the regular season finale at Lance Harbor Moscone Field against The Good Guys Tuesday night, the Savage Gardeners finally displayed brief bouts of vulnerability in the 22-19 loss. Yet these hiccups were only temporary; it was an anomaly that the Gardeners didn’t win. They always win. Tuesday was simply that one in a million talk where they didn’t take home the gold.

The fact that the Gardeners had already clinched a playoff spot could possibly have contributed to the missing do-or-die must-win attitude that the Gardeners always demonstrate, be it in softball, Pac-Man, crushing the Bus Stop, or in life in general. Nevertheless, The Good Guys, the Gardeners’ bad guys opponent, found some chinks in the home team Gardeners’ armor and snuck away with the victory.

After an in-depth postgame analysis by the NSA, it was determined that the true cause of the loss was the lack of Garden Hoes present. Which means zero were at the game. There were more fans at the Baltimore Orioles-Chicago White Sox game on Wednesday.

The seedings and matchups for the playoffs are still to be concretely determined. Regardless, if you had the Gardeners in the Final Four in your bracket, you are looking pretty damn good. Just like the Gardeners look pretty damn good all the time. As do Jana Kramer, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Kelly Evans, Keira Knightley, Emily Ratajkowski, Julie "The Cat" Gaffney, Eliza Dushku, and Mila Kunis. Yet that’s for another conversation.

You know what else looks good? Sluggers Pat Reilly and Dave Watters playing in the lineup together. Again. And what has the theme been when these two play together – the theme that our intern at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) pointed out last week?

That when these two are both in the lineup, two homers are hit in the game. Simple fact, based on science, observations, and PECOTA projections. In Week Four – their first time playing together – Reilly hit the two homers. Reilly did it again in Week Six (he missed Week Five while having a tryout with the Yankees). And in Week Seven, Watters hit the two blasts.

This time, with their powers combined, they each hit one apiece. Two men. Two homers. Any time. Regardless of the pitcher, score, weather, election year or not, bull or bear market. Two bombs are going out of the park. After the sluggers had hit their two, in the sixth inning The Good Guys’ defense caught on and played their left center fielder 650 feet deep, where he was (unfortunately for the Gardeners) able to camp under Watters’ leadoff blast, capping the homers at two for the night.

The two sluggers also almost mirrored each other batting for the night, both hitting a homer, triple, and two singles while contributing 11 RBIs combined.

Reilly’s hitting raised his season slugging percentage to 1.560 – translating to getting just over 1.5 bases per at-bat. Yeah that's not bad.

On the other side of the coin though, the Gardeners’ opponent created a multitude of RBIs of their own, putting up 22 runs – double-digit runs scored against the Gardeners for the first time in three games.

The away opponent put up four in the top of the first yet the Gardeners turned right around and scored three back in their half. And no, we’re not going to say how the Gardeners’ hitting started – because it happens every fucking time now.

Yet we have to mention it, because this is a newspaper that reports the news.

As usual, left center fielder Ari Hersher led off for the Gardeners. As usual, a screaming, over-aroused, voracious dog in heat hot coed tried to devour Hersher’s perfect body as he stood in the batter’s box. Yada yada yada you know the story, security came and escorted her off the field and the Gardeners got their hitting under way. Hersher’s leadoff single (is it really a surprise anymore that he always leads off with hits?) led the way for right fielder/catcher Eric Snow to single him to third and for Reilly to push him in with a single to right. Snow’s hustle to third on Reilly’s hit allowed shortstop J.J. Warren to earn a lucky sacrifice fly instead of an out, then Watters in the fifth spot singled in Reilly and the Gardeners had their three runs for the inning.

The Good Guys scored three more in the second, yet the Gardeners and the bottom of the lineup led a five-run rally that gave the Gardeners the lead at 8-7 after two. Catcher/right fielder Dan Gatta led off with a smashed double to left and third baseman Dane Dobrinich followed with a walk. Hersher’s single to right scored Gatta and Snow’s half-sacrifice fly to right center moved Hersher to second and Dobrinich to third for Reilly. Reilly’s second RBI of the night – a sac-fly to right – scored Dobrinich, and Warren’s soft single to right pushed Hersher across to bring it to 7-6.

This is where we learned there is nothing easier than being on base when Watters is hitting. All there is to do is take an easy trot home when Watters launches a deep homer, which he did to put the Gardeners up 8-7.

Alan Donner at second base made two defensive stops – getting a force at second and catching a liner as well – to help Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde shut down the enemy in the third. The Gardeners couldn’t put any runs on the board in their half, and The Good Guys took advantage of this momentum shift to add five more in the fourth to take the lead back at 12-8.

Reilly’s leadoff triple and Watters’ triple two batters later scored Reilly, and Edde up next easily singled in Watters for one of his five hits for the night.

Down only two at 12-10, the Gardeners clamped down on defense in the top of the fifth, highlighted by right center fielder Jason Friedman’s running grab on a short popup to center that could’ve easily spelled disaster for the Gardeners and hence more runs for their opponent. However, his heads-up play squashed all momentum and Edde closed out his second shutout inning, keeping the Gardeners only down two.

In the bottom of the fifth Reilly said he’d had enough of the Gardeners’ trailing. With two runners on (Gatta and Snow) and two outs, Reilly launched a mile-long shot to deep right for a three-run homer to give the Gardeners the lead back at 13-12.

After this huge blast unfortunately, The Good Guys launched a rally of their own in the sixth, putting up eight runs to go up 20-13. The Gardeners clawed two back in their half on a two-RBI double by Friedman to score Edde and Donner, yet The Good Guys pushed their lead back to seven again with two more runs in the seventh to make it 22-15 as the Gardeners came to the plate for their final at-bat.

And the Gardeners started off hot as they should have, pushing runners around the bases starting with six straight hits, leading to four runs scored with no outs. However, their rally was cut off drastically like a balloon on a string and they couldn’t score any more, finishing the game looking at a rare defeat, final score 22-19.

After the game, rioters in Baltimore took to the streets, overturning cars and setting businesses on fire, blaming the defeat on Phil Zackler.

“Phil not playing this game cost the Gardeners their win, ya know what I be sayin’ homeboy?” rioter D’Brickshawquin JaQuantrell screamed into a news camera while brandishing a burning torch in the dark Baltimore night. “He can’t be no mo' missin’ games like dis! That gangsta’s our boy! C’mon man!”

Somewhere Cris Carter spiked a football.

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Stat of the Week:

.821:

Season leadoff On-Base Percentage (OBP) by Tuesday’s Gardeners outfield: Reilly (LF), Hersher (LC), Friedman (RC), Snow (RF), and Gatta (RF).
In simpler terms, when these Gardeners have led off an inning this season, they’ve gotten on base 82% of the time.

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Body by Jake Useless Sports Trivia Question of the Week to Help You Fill the Time at Work/Home/On the Bus/During Intercourse:

Which four NFL teams have never been to the Super Bowl?

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4/22/2015

The Savage Gardeners cemented themselves as the top team of the CC Division and as the ferocious fearsome formidable force to be reckoned with this spring in their confident 16-6 win over TopThat! on Tuesday night. At a not-as-chilly-as-planned-for Lance Harbor Moscone Field, on Mexican Appreciation Night (because burritos are amazing), the Gardeners' wearing “Los Jardineros Salvajes” jerseys showed their Mexican pride and pelotas grandes by slapping hits and their pelotas all over the field. Los vatos con bates aplastaron mujeres.

Last week USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) pointed out that a pattern was developing when Pat Reilly and Dave Watters were in the lineup together. Two homers were hit by Reilly in the first game of their playing together. And two homers were hit by Reilly again in the second game they played together. Tuesday was their third time in the same lineup – and two homers were hit again, this time by the first baseman Watters. So this shit is working.

The first was a two-run blast to left for the game’s first two runs – Watters’ batting second and scoring left center fielder Ari Hersher from first. The second was a shot to right in the third inning for only a grand slam. And by only a grand slam, we mean only the seventh in Gardeners’ history.

The Gardeners at 5-1 (now 6-1) entered the game as clear favorites – 9.5-run favorites to be exact.

They won by ten and covered, 16-6. They’re simply amazing. Somebody somewhere made a lot of money betting on them. And by somebody somewhere, we mean a couple of Gardeners’ players who pulled some Pete Rose-like bets on their own team on Tuesday. One bettor was looking for the favorite to get down early so he could put an in-game bet in on the mispriced favorite to get a few points. We won’t say who that was, yet it’s a VERY profitable system. Nevertheless, the Gardeners as the favorites never saw a deficit against TopThat! so this strategist couldn’t get his bets down.

As the visiting team at Lance Harbor’s namesake field (quick digression: $1 billion for “Fast 7?” One word: What the fuck), the Gardeners started off once again in typical Gardeners fashion, the same as last week – a female running onto the field trying to molest the leadoff batter Hersher. Hersher has seen this too many times before, and quite frankly is getting tired of it. He deftly shunned her advances, then got a hit as usual, singling to start off the game. Watters then cranked his first homer to put the Gardeners up by a safety, 2-0.

A few batters later, with two outs, left fielder Alan Donner restarted the hitting by doubling then scoring on Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde’s double to center. Right fielder Dan Gatta followed Edde with one of his classic lined singles to left field and veryquickly (one word) before you can say “Nick Papageorgio” the Gardeners were up by two safeties, 4-0.

TopThat! scored one run in the bottom of the first before batter Aaron Sele flied out to Reilly in right center for out number three of the inning.

Yet apparently a fly ball landing in an outfielder’s glove (Reilly’s) does not count as an out. And because of this weird rule on Tuesday, TopThat!’s baserunner from second Frank Viola was able to score on the fly ball out/hit for the second run of the inning.

It’s cool though, Reilly got the umpire back in the second inning when he made it to third from first safely without getting tagged on Donner’s single. Yet apparently if you don’t get tagged at third base, that means you are out. So Reilly was “out” at third despite not being tagged. God these rules started getting weird Tuesday night.

Befuddled by these new rules, the Gardeners had no choice yet to play henceforward haphazardly with no clue what the rules would be for the rest of the game.

Despite the weird play at third, Reilly had been able to RBI in Watters from second earlier to make it 5-2, Gardeners, after 1 ½ innings. Edde on the mound dominated once again, especially in innings two through four when he allowed no runs and only four hits combined. To close out the second, he got batter Paul Quantrill to foul out easily with his classic knuckler called by All-Star catcher Phil Zackler behind the plate. This was Zackler’s first game back in a month and he resumed his impeccable pitch-calling abilities right on cue.

Edde finished the game with four shutout innings with TopThat! only batting .417 against him (in comparison the Gardeners batted .550 for the game; their career batting average is .587).

With a 5-2 lead heading into the third, the Gardeners felt an illness coming on and decided the third would be their contagious sick inning. TopThat! tried to foresee this and counter it by switching pitchers.

Yeah………that didn’t work. The relief pitcher allowed the Gardeners’ first six batters to get on base – four of them by shitty-pitch walks (Edde, Gatta, Zackler, and Hersher) – and two others producing singles – Manager third baseman Chris Norton and second baseman Mike Gorman, finally playing after a seven-year absence. Three Gardeners scored during this six-batter onslaught (Edde on Gorman’s bases loaded single and Gatta and Norton on bases loaded walks by Zackler and Hersher).

This 8-2 lead put the bases loaded for Watters when TopThat! brought back in their starter. Which…………was not the smartest move. Watters smashed a tailing shot to deep right to easily clear the bases for a grand slam, the second of his career, and which comfortably put the Gardeners up, 12-2.

They added one more on Reilly’s sacrifice fly to right to extend their convenient spread-beating 13-2 score.

After Edde shut down the enemy in the third and fourth, Donner’s fourth hit of the game RBI’d in Watters (who scored five runs for the night) in the top of the fifth for a 14-2 lead. TopThat! scored two in their half of the fifth, yet in the sixth the Gardeners kept incrementally adding more when Gorman sacrifice-flied in Gatta from third after Gatta’s leadoff single down the line in left then move to third on Norton’s single after him.

Now ahead 15-4, the Gardeners felt compassionate and allowed TopThat! to score two more in the sixth, yet Edde ended the rally by getting batter Mike Greenwell to ground out to him to end the inning.

Up 15-6 – not enough to cover the 9.5-run spread – the Gardeners assisted their fellow bettors by pushing the lead to ten with another RBI single by Reilly, his third RBI of the night.

A 16-6 lead was enough for Edde to close out the complete game as he produced a flyout to Hersher in left center, a force to Gorman at second, then finished it off by mowing down batter Carlos Quintana swinging for an ideal ending to the game. The easy win pushed the Gardeners to 6-1 and kept them in first place in the standings, where they belong, cause if you ain’t first, you’re last.

On a similar note, this conversation in a postgame interview was overheard in the locker room between Hersher and reporter Kristina Akra:

HERSHER: “We’ve got a lot of great ideas if we win the division next week. We were thinking we’d design a car that’s in the shape of a rabbit. And it might poop out little real rabbits out the back that’ll run around the field.”
AKRA: “You have live rabbits being pooped out onto the field?”
HERSHER: “If we win, we might do a special thing with David Copperfield where he hides in the dugout and he just flings magic stuff on the field.”
AKRA: “Wha--?”
HERSHER: “Jackhawk 9000.”

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Stat of the Week:

.889……Alan Donner’s batting average at Moscone 2 (Lance Harbor Moscone Field)

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Body by Jake Useless Sports Trivia Question of the Week to Help You Fill the Time at Work/Home/On the Bus/During Intercourse:

What do the Seattle Seahawks, Milwaukee Brewers, and Houston Astros all have in common?

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4/16/2015

Despite the absence of Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde, the Savage Gardeners and Manager Chris Norton culled together a pitching-first victory Tuesday night over I’d Tap That at KKU Field, winning easily, 10-5.

With Edde away at the ESPYs accepting his award for Dominating Performance of the Year (winning the award over Madison Bumgarner’s 2014 playoff pitching), Norton stepped back onto the mound for the first time in almost a year – April 29th, 2014, to be exact, against none other than…………I’d Tap That. His better than Barry Zito return turned into one of the most solid outings in Gardeners’ history: seven innings, five runs, one strikeout (looking), and his holding the opponent to a .333 batting average. Yes – you read that right: I’d Tap That batted 10-for-30 for the game (.333) against the studly Gardeners’ defense and Norton’s mix of splitters and changeups. As a testament to his display of fortitude, he baffled batter Ed Sprague leading off the sixth inning with a dazzling changeup, catching Sprague looking flat-footed at strike three.

In the third inning Norton goaded an easy popup from Pat Borders to himself for another leadoff out. In total, Norton coaxed 13 flyouts, seven groundouts, and the aforementioned strikeout. His producing 13 flyouts is an attribute to his solid pitching performance, as flyouts are classically classified in softball as easier outs to make versus groundouts. With groundouts, a bad hop or bad throw can occur at any time. With a flyball, none such event can occur, and most players can catch fly balls easier than fielding grounders. What can happen is a dropped ball, though it is much more rare. Yet still possible, as seen in the Gardeners’ hitting seventh inning when right center fielder Jason Friedman’s double bounced out of outfielder Devon White’s glove for an RBI double and needed insurance run for the Gardeners.

With sluggers Pat Reilly and Dave Watters in the lineup together for only the second time this season as well, a pattern finally developed.

In Week Four – the first time the Gardeners had both sluggers playing together – Reilly blasted two home runs.

Tuesday was to be no exception – Reilly knocked two homers again for the Gardeners’ main source of power for the night, both shots earning the Kelly Evans CNBC Hot co-Drives of the Game. Reilly was presented with the keys to an Aston Martin after the game for his performance. We just know those cars are nice, that’s pretty much it.

The left fielder Reilly has been a very welcome addition for the Gardeners this season, as his five homers lead the team and account for half of his hits. He now averages a home run every 3.6 at-bats. So that’s kind of nice. Seven of his ten hits have been extra-base hits, contributing to an ISO (Isolated Power) of 1.059.

The statistic ISO is simply a measure of extra bases per at-bat, a calculation taking singles out of the slugging equation. Thus, Reilly’s 1.059 ISO means he averages just over one extra base per at-bat. ISO can initially be a foreign stat to understand, yet considering that an ISO above .250 in MLB is labeled “excellent,” we’ll go with his ISO number being extra-extraordinary. So that's good. Yet damn these fucking baseball math nerds creating these weird statistics.

Nevertheless, Tuesday’s game at the Gardeners’ home field represented a must-win for the then-in-first-place Gardeners.

Check that – still in first place. And not just in Mila Kunis’ heart. In the division standings as well. Even with the absence of All-Star catcher Phil Zackler - in L.A. for the premiere of "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2" - the Gardeners maintained their division lead.

The Gardeners started their hitting off in typical Gardeners fashion – with a hot chick running onto the field trying to rape leadoff batter Ari Hersher. This is the fourth time this season this has happened to start a game. Either ballpark security is very lax or these females simply can’t control themselves. All signs point to the latter.

Hersher delivered as he always does leading off for the Gardeners, pushing a single to right into a hustling double, setting an early tone for the night. Right fielder Eric Snow dropped a single to center and a few batters later Hersher scored from third on shortstop J.J. Warren’s fielder’s choice to second.

Leading 1-0 as the away team heading into the bottom of the first, the Gardeners never relinquished their lead. And I’d Tap That’s batters in the first couldn’t get their bats around to Norton’s screaming fastballs. Norton in the first threw all fastballs and I’d Tap That’s batters couldn’t catch up, flying out to the right side of the field for all three outs – a liner to Alan Donner at second for the first out and two flyouts to Snow in right for outs two and three. The 1-2-3 inning headed by Dan Gatta calling the pitches behind the plate set the tone for the Norton versus I’d Tap That hitting (or lack of) for the evening. This was the first of Norton’s four shutout innings for the night – Gatta’s catching two of them and Watters’ the other two.

In the second the Gardeners blew open the hitting for the most run-heavy half inning of the game, with a whopping four runs scored. (In contrast, last week’s game saw totals of nine, seven, seven, six, five, and five runs scored in half innings, both Gardeners’ and their opponent). Tuesday night, no more than two runs were scored in any other half inning for the next 11 half innings. (A half inning is one team’s at-bat in an inning, to clarify.)

Friedman’s and Donner’s back-to-back singles and Norton’s walk loaded the bases for Triple A callup third baseman Casey Keenum to come through with a pretty single to left to score two in Friedman and Donner. Hersher’s single loaded the bases again, this time for Snow, who sacrifice flied in Norton from third on a flyball to right center. On the play, Keenum tagged from second, drawing an overthrow to third, which allowed him to score as well. The lesson here is that hustling puts pressure on the defense and produces mishaps in the field – in this case Keenum’s scoring from second due to the poor throw.

Keenum turned around and displayed his skill in the field in the bottom of the second by backhanding a one-hopper and throw to Gatta at first for the first out. I’d Tap That scored two runs to bring it to 5-2, the Gardeners’ scored one in the third, then I’d Tap That threatened again with two more in their third, making it 6-4.

The fourth saw no runs scored for either team, yet in the fifth the Gardeners got back to their hitting ways with Reilly no doubt providing the pop. After Snow’s leadoff single, Reilly clobbered a blast to right center for a two-run bomb to extend the lead to 8-4.

Watters made a key stop at first defensively in the fifth as Norton threw curveballs all inning for his third shutout inning. He added the fourth goose egg inning pitching in the sixth, starting with the strikeout of Sprague.

Truthfully, the game was a very quick – lackluster is not the word – yet simply, uneventful, bout, punctuated mainly by Reilly’s blasts and the Gardeners’ shutdown pitching and defense. Reilly added his second homer in the seventh – a solo lined shot over right fielder Joe Carter’s head, and the Gardeners added another on Friedman’s double that made it 10-4 heading into the last of the seventh.

I’d Tap That tried scoring in the seventh yet Norton’s pitching was too much for them. They eked out a lone run yet were left looking at the 10-5 final score as the Gardeners quietly celebrated their victory in the center of the diamond. The Gardeners had been there before – and by there, we mean “victorious” – so they acted like it.

The win pushed the Gardeners’ career winning percentage at KKU Field (otherwise known as Moscone 1) to a whopping .744 (29-10). According to our database here at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY), going back to the Spring 2013 Season, the Gardeners are 17-4 in the regular season at KKU Field (.810 winning percentage). In short, they own that field. Probably because they know hella Marina girls are secretly watching them through the windows from their bedrooms on Chestnut Street.

We could say something X-rated and provocative about what these aroused Marina girls are doing in their bedrooms while watching the Gardeners, possibly or possibly not rhyming with lingering gemshelves. We won’t say anything though, USASSY is classy.

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Stat of the Week:

85% (22 of 26): Percentage of innings this season that the Gardeners’ have scored at least one run if the leadoff batter has gotten on base (only four times did the leadoff batter get on base and they didn’t score). If the leadoff batter has gotten out, the Gardeners have only scored in 53% of those innings.

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Body by Jake Useless Sports Trivia Question of the Week to Help You Fill the Time at Work/Home/On the Bus/During Intercourse:

There are 11 metropolitan areas in the U.S. that have two and ONLY TWO professional sports teams of the big four (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL). For example, the Bay Area has six teams (Raiders, A’s, Warriors, 49ers, Giants, Sharks).

Here are the three harder ones:
Indianapolis (Colts and Pacers)
Nashville (Titans and Predators)
Charlotte (Panthers and Hornets)

Name the remaining eight cities.
(Hint: They all have their respective city’s name in their team names.)

*New Jersey doesn’t count (Jets and Giants are both New York)

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4/02/2015

With the game on the line and a win in doubt, the Savage Gardeners knew what to do.

Eat hella sugary blue raspberry Pixy Stix and do a team Macarena dance in the dugout.

Also, by “game on the line,” we mean down six runs in the final inning.

Down 22-16 in the bottom of the sixth inning – the Gardeners’ last at-bat – the Gardeners continued their clutch hitting to score six straight runs with no outs before Jason Friedman put the cherry on top of the comeback with a bases loaded walk-off single.

It was the Gardeners’ fourth game this season that has come down to the last at-bat. Technically, every game comes down to a last at-bat, so we should specify that this was the fourth game that ended with a Gardeners’ margin of victory of three runs or less.

Chosen as one of the two teams by MLB this season to play internationally in London, the Gardeners Tuesday night played overseas at Steven Jackson Memorial Field as the home team against the then-division leader S.F. Seals.

The S.F. Seals used to be a minor league team in the Pacific Coast League whose stadium was situated only a few blocks from where the Gardeners played Tuesday – at 16th and Bryant in Potrero – where there’s now a fucking Safeway and Jamba Juice instead of a badass ballpark. There is a 24-Hour Fitness there if you want to get jacked before the game, yet otherwise it’s simply a place to buy groceries and a smoothie and get cheap shit at the Ross next door, like a Brad Johnson Minnesota Vikings jersey. No wait, that’s that place down by the wharf – Sports Shop on Jefferson. If you’re ever down there (which you’ll never be, let’s be honest, what locals go to the wharf) check it out. The sports jerseys there are relevant circa 2008 for unsuspecting European and Asian tourists to buy.

In addition, on the adjoining northwest corners of Seals Stadium there used to be three breweries – a Hamm’s, Budweiser, and Lucky Lager. Unfortunately the Hamm’s Brewery went out of business or else it would’ve been a postgame hotspot for the Gardeners and their groupies. Because Hamm’s is delicious, obviously.

Little known fact yet Joe DiMaggio played for the Seals and had a 61-game hitting streak. His grandson who is better than him at baseball played for the Seals against the Gardeners last night (we made that up). Lefty O’Doul also coached the Seals for a bit then opened a restaurant by Union Square that serves sliced pastrami.

In 1958 the New York Giants moved into town and the Seals were forced to relocate. They moved to Phoenix; then Tacoma, Washington; then back to Phoenix. The Diamondbacks came into town in 1998 and named them the Tucson Sidewinders. The existing Tucson Toros moved to Fresno and became the Giants’ affiliate, the Fresno Grizzlies. The Tucson Sidewinders moved to Reno in 2009 and became the Reno Aces. The Tucson Toros returned to Tucson; the Grizzlies stayed in Fresno. Notable alumni of the Grizzlies include Buster Posey, Matt Cain, Bryant Reeves, and Shareef Abdur-Rahim. The Grizzlies have since moved to Memphis and challenge the Warriors for one of the top teams in the West.

Long story short, the S.F. Seals are in their third year back in existence. No wonder Tsuyoshi Shinjo was out there in center field.

On the eve of the eve of former Cy Young pitcher Kevin Dickenson’s birthday, in the epic 23-22 victory that kept the Gardeners undefeated against the Seals (3-0 all-time), the bats were alive for the studs throughout the game. They didn’t let a 7-2 deficit destroy them. They didn’t let a 22-16 last-inning deficit destroy them. What they did instead was put on their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle eye bandanas and nunchuck their way to destroying their opponent and rescuing April tied up in the burning building.

As the home team, the Gardeners kindly let the Seals bat first; the Seals took advantage of this by scoring five runs in the top of the first to put a scare on the scoreboard. Manager Chris Norton at third made two solid plays in the inning, fielding a grounder and throwing to Dane Dobrinich at second for a force for the first out, then with two runners on flipping another grounder to Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde covering third for the second out. Left fielder Dan Gatta rounded out the inning by making a sliding catch in left to keep the Seals’ run total topped at five.

Left center fielder Ari Hersher for the fourth straight game got on base to lead off the Gardeners’ hitting, slapping a single to right center. Gold Glove right fielder Eric Snow (4-for-5 for the evening, .773 batting average this season) followed with a single to center and out-of-towner first baseman Dave Watters ensued with a single as well to score Hersher and put the Gardeners on the board. Shortstop J.J. Warren hit into a lovely double play to the pitcher yet Snow scored on the play and the Gardeners finished the inning cutting the deficit to 5-2.

Ryan Hester came in to catch in the second inning and called a wide array of pitches to baffle the Seals’ batters and keep them scoreless for the inning. The Gardeners couldn’t score in the second and the Seals took advantage of this lapse in the third to add two more to make it 7-2.

All-Star catcher Phil Zackler’s handwritten speech – that he had written the night before while cuddling with Falcon on the couch and then handed to his roommate Alan Donner to bring to the game – was read aloud in the Gardeners’ dugout in the third to pep the team up. It was a slightly generic speech considering he wrote it the night before (one excerpt read, “Hey Gardeners, it’s the (fill in the blank) inning. We are losing by (fill in the blank) runs. Let’s get our act together! Start us off with a hit Ari/Eric/Dave/JJ/Mike/ Jason/Dan/Dane/Chris/Alan/Ryan (whoever is reading my speech, please choose the name with whoever is leading off)!”

The speech worked – five straight batters got hits. Snow and Watters both singled for Warren’s lucky triple to score them both. Edde slashed a great double in the gap in right center to score Warren, and Friedman’s first of three hits for the night (a double) plated Edde to cut the score to 7-6. With two outs Dobrinich singled in Friedman from second and the Gardeners had tied it up, like Christian Grey to Anastasia Steele in the red room. What?

The top of the fourth saw a battle between hitters and fielders – Hester at first making a great stop of a one-hopper then flip to Edde covering first to get leadoff batter Damon Buford.

On that note, this is where we point out the benefits of Spring Training. The Gardeners and Edde each day in February and March in the hot Arizona sun practiced the pitcher’s covering first base in all situations. Thus, they have this shit down to a tee. Edde’s glove is phenomenal enough on its own – his covering first (or third, as in the first inning) and constant backup on outfield relay throws is at a completely unheard of level in softball.

Other benefits of Spring Training are the warm weather and the skimpily dressed babes, yet no one really cares about either of those.

Next batter Chris Hoiles then hit a chopper to Norton at third. He made the quickest transfer of the ball from glove to hand ever seen and fired to first in time to get Hoiles for the second out. The Seals scored two on a homer, yet Dobrinich positioned himself well at second to catch a liner from Mike Devereaux to end the inning.

Down 9-7, the Gardeners ate more 22-inch Pixy Stix straws and subsequently started crushing the ball. Or, in Gardeners terms: They Got Sick.

With one out, Hersher doubled to right center and Snow singled after. Watters and Warren added back-to-back RBI hits and Edde singled next to load the bases for Friedman. This turned out to be a precursor for later in the game. Friedman with one out and the bases loaded singled to bring in Watters and put the Gardeners ahead, 10-9. With the bases still loaded, Warren cowered on third with the pull-down-the-left-field-line-for-tons-of-hits Gatta at the plate. Gatta played it perfectly and lined it into left for a standing two-RBI double. Dobrinich doubled next to score Gatta; Norton then singled him in. The catcher Donner singled to put two on for Hester and Hester came through with a single to right to score Norton from second and put runners at the corners for Hersher. Hersher’s third of four hits for the night looked like a double…yes it was a double, and Donner scored to make it 16-9, Gardeners, as the fifth inning rolled around like a cuddly otter on the grass.

Nevertheless, the Seals battled back with six runs in their half to bring it to 16-15; thankfully stopping the bleeding was a running Hester catch in right with two on to end the inning. Yet this momentum turner was a crusher. The Gardeners were blanked in their half, then the Seals turned it on again and added seven more runs in the top of the sixth to take a commanding lead of 22-16 going into the bottom of the sixth, likely the last inning of the night (which turned out to be the case, as time expired while the Gardeners were batting, thus meaning theirs would be the last at-bat).

Thus, the picture – down six runs, final at-bat, losers get the guillotine. Gatta taking cuts before leading off said to sideline reporter Jenny Dell, his girlfriend, “Hell naw, this losing shit ain’t happening.”

His leadoff single started the fire and the sickness. Dobrinich followed with a single to left. Pushing runners base-to-base – the underrated key to runs. Norton then launched a low laser straight over first base and down the right field line to score Gatta from second and move Dobrinich to second. Gardeners only down five, 22-17. Donner’s infield single next loaded the bases for Hester. And Hester came through, lining a single to score Dobrinich from third and keep the bases loaded again for Hersher, score 22-18. Still no outs. Hit-after-hit-after-hit. Contagion. Sickness. Quickness. Thickness. Sick hits. Slick Ricks. Dick pics. Rik Smits. Indiana Pacers. Grizzlies. See – everything comes full circle.

And Hersher’s fourth hit of the night looked a beauty – a line drive shot into right for a two-RBI single, Norton and Donner scoring to make it 22-20. Snow’s fourth hit of the night as well loaded the bases for the one and only Watters. Which is an easy conclusion. No outs, bases loaded, Gardeners down two, Watters at the plate – yeah, that shit’s a gimme. In his career at this point Watters was batting 1.000 with no outs and the bases loaded (1-for-1, Summer 2012 vs. Free Agents CC). Watters easily singled (duh), Hester and Hersher coasting across home plate, and whaddya know, it’s 22-22. This game is fucking ovahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Warren was intentionally walked and despite a fielder’s choice to get a force at home yet keep the bases loaded, Friedman knew what to do batting next. In the fourth he had been up to the plate with one out and the bases loaded. This was the same scenario. And with a stroke as cool as the other side of the pillow, Friedman calmly singled to left center to push the winning run in Watters across: 23-22 victory, Gardeners. That shit was so fucking easy. Never was there a doubt in any Gardener player’s mind about their prowess or their chance at victory (100% the whole time, according to in-game real-time AccuScore projections that updated continuously throughout the game).

The Gardeners at 4-1 look very hot. Not only in the looks department and In Touch Weekly's April 2015 “Sexiest Men Alive” issue, yet also on the softball field. Instead of their win percentage being .600 (3-2) with a loss, they are .800 (4-1). Not quite the .878 win percentage of the 72-10 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, yet still respectable. If the season ended today, they would crush the all-time MLB season win percentage record of .763 set by the 1906 Chicago Cubs.

Cubs......Cubs......Wrigley Field......ballpark......ballpark dogs......franks......

Oh, you forgot your birthday, didn’t you Frank?

Damn it.

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Stat of the Week:

10-for-12 (.833): The Gardeners’ batting average this season with the bases loaded

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Body by Jake Useless Sports Trivia Question of the Week to Help You Fill the Time at Work/Home/On the Bus/During Intercourse:

Seven pro sports teams total (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL) have two word team names. Which seven?

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3/28/2015

Pat Reilly showed up for the Savage Gardeners’ week four game at KKU Field with no warm-up right at kickoff and with a cold sickness that could’ve affected his play for the worse.

Not happening. Remember Michael Jordan playing that playoff game with the flu? This was like that.

Reilly crushed two two-run homers and added an RBI triple in a third at-bat to lead the Gardeners to a well-fought 11-8 victory over Pizza Joint SF on Tuesday night. The win pushed the Gardeners’ record to 3-1 for the season. The win also pushed the females on hand to absurdly arousing heights.

Reilly also caught the final out of the game – a flyout to left by batter and tying run Gary DiSarcina with runners on second and third – to make a fitting closing to the night. His efforts easily earned him the Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game Award.

With a slew of Garden Hoes on hand – a newly-engaged Margot, soon-to-be-married Meredith, and recently-honeymooned Dina – the game portended to be a successful one from the start with the handful of happy ladies present. And the Gardeners men wanted to give these ladies a present in the form of a victory. Along with a new ring, pitcher Mike Edde was able to give his future bride the present of his prowess, both on the mound and at the plate. In the bottom of the first, with his unreal Gold Glove skills, he snagged a blazing one-hopper then flip to Dave Watters at first for the second out of the inning. In the second – en route to a shutout inning – he goaded a popup to himself from Luis Polonia for the first out, then saved runs later in the inning on a grounder up the middle once again.

With batter Kelly Gruber up and two down and a runner on first, Edde sliced an inside curveball on Gruber who knocked it up the middle for a clear base hit. Yet Edde got a hand on it and slowed its roll to center. The deflection allowed shortstop J.J. Warren to field it before it hit the outfield grass and flip it to T.J. Myersieck at second for the force and inning-ender.

Edde’s defense didn’t stop there. In the sixth inning he dominated Pizza Joint batter Chad Curtis big time, catching Curtis looking at a called strike three on a knuckler for Edde’s first strikeout of the season. He rounded out the sixth by getting Damion Easley to ground out weakly to him. The sixth was another shutout inning for Edde, part of his four shutout innings total for the night.

At the plate he went 3-for-4 to raise his batting average to .647 for the season.

[Notable stat: Edde is batting 8-for-10 (.800) with at least a runner on third (bases loaded, runners on second and third, first and third, or third alone) with a whopping 17 RBIs.]

In addition, this weekend he is in Spring Training in Arizona. Rumors are that he’s not going for vacation – he has been looked at and is getting tryouts with a couple of teams. It would be a huge loss to the Gardeners if he ends up on an MLB roster; nevertheless, the team wishes him the best.

As the away team, the Gardeners led off the hitting with left center fielder Ari Hersher coming to the plate to the walk-up tune of “It’s All About the Benjamins” by Puff Daddy. Hersher singled to get on base, then subsequently retired from the game of softball on top with a perfect Tuesday, March 24th, 2015, 1.000 batting average. However, his teammates forced him to reconsider his decision to retire from the game of softball; thus, he stayed on first base.

Right fielder Eric Snow fielder’s choiced himself to first (the first non-hit in his last 1,000 at-bats - Snow has been on fire), yet Reilly afterward easily contributed his first RBI of the night with a triple. Which happened to be a theme throughout the game, thanks to the well-constructed lineup by Manager Chris Norton: Snow on first base, Reilly knocks him in. Happened three times Tuesday night. Reilly’s scoring happened three times last night as well (unless he went to Balboa afterwards, then it may have been four heyyo), his coming home from third after his triple on Warren’s sacrifice fly to put the Gardeners up 2-0.

Pizza Joint scored two in the bottom half, yet Edde shut them down for the next two innings. The Gardeners scored two more in the second – catcher/utility man Dan Gatta and right center fielder Jason Friedman both getting on base for Norton. Norton’s single scored Gatta, and the rookie Myersieck singled as well to load the bases for Hersher at the top of the lineup. Hersher then added to his RBI total by walking in Friedman and keep the bases loaded for Snow, who sac-flied in Norton to make it 5-2, Gardeners. (Fun fact: There has never been a final 5-2 NFL score in the history of the NFL. There’s been a 5-0 and a 5-3 though.)

Gatta’s sacrifice fly in the third (the Gardeners’ third sac-fly for the night, gosh they’re so unselfish) made it 6-2, Gardeners, leading into another shutdown inning for Edde in the bottom half. Yet it could’ve been more of a disaster than warranted.

With runner Mark Langston on first and no outs, batter Gary Gaetti hit a towering flyball to right center. Snow in right and Friedman in right center both converged on the ball and camped under it. Yet possibly no one called for it. As the ball cratered down towards the earth and was about to hit the ground, Friedman stuck his glove out and basket caught it at the last second. Langston - the runner on first - was doing a dance between going halfway to second, then back to first to tag, then upon seeing that the ball may drop, bolting for second before the catch. He was unprepared for Friedman’s last-second dupe and catch, a brilliant strategy planned in advance by Snow and Friedman. The relay throw came in and ultimately ended in Watters' glove as he tagged first for the 9-6-3 double play.

Up 6-2, the Gardeners were blanked in the fourth and gave up three runs as well, looking at a slim 6-5 lead heading into the top of the fifth. Phil Zackler’s Skyped pep-talk that was broadcast in the dugout helped turn the gears back on. Snow led off with a single, putting himself on first with Reilly up. And what did we say earlier? That when Snow is on first, Reilly RBIs him in. It’s like the Pythagorean Theorem – in a right triangle, A-squared plus B-squared equals C-squared. Translated to softball, it means Snow on first equals Reilly scores him. Which is what exactly happened – the lefty Reilly blasting a two-run homer over the fielders’ heads in deep right to put the Gardeners up 8-5.

Warren’s and Edde’s singles put runners at the corners for Gatta to add his second RBI of the night with a grounding liner down the line in left for a single. After this play, it was scientifically confirmed that being on third base with either Gatta or Watters at the plate is more dangerous than playing golf in a lightning storm. And those guys need to stop working out.

Norton playing third base saved the day in the bottom of the fifth by stopping a grounder with a runner on second and no outs. He made a great backhand pick on a hard-hit shot to his right, then threw to Gatta at first for the out that changed the course of the game: The ball gets by, the runner scores, and the batter likely ends up on second for a double with still no outs and the lead cut to 9-6. However, with the stop, there’s now one out and the initial runner still on second. After this, the defense shut it down by Edde’s goading a liner to Norton and a flyout to Hersher for the final two outs, keeping Pizza Joint scoreless for the inning.

The Gardeners added two more in the sixth in expected Gardeners fashion according to the Softball Pythagorean Theorem, SOF = RRBI: Snow On First Equals Reilly RBI. Snow got on first (a single), and Reilly knocked him in (another two-run bomb to right on one of the sweetest swings ever seen this side of the Mississipp’). Up 11-5, Edde looked to close it out in the last two innings, starting with his strikeout of Curtis for the first out. A flyout to Friedman then comebacker to Edde himself ended the inning and the Gardeners were three outs away from pushing their record to 3-1.

Despite going scoreless in their batting half of the seventh, the Gardeners gritted their teeth and buckled down in the final half. Pizza Joint put up a fight however – they scored three runs to bring it to 11-8, then put runners on second and third with two outs and the tying run in DiSarcina at the plate. DiSarcina had already hit a homer earlier in the game; there was no doubt in his mind he wanted to do the same. Yet Reilly all the way out in left saw this in DiSarcina’s eyes. Thus, Reilly positioned himself perfectly in left to camp under DiSarcina’s flyout for the final out and the Gardeners’ victory.

Before Reilly could make it to the infield however to do the congratulatory postgame high-five of teammates and the opponent, his teammates mobbed him and carried him off the field on their shoulders as the “Top Gun” Anthem blared over the loudspeakers and hundreds of women threw their handkerchiefs onto the field.

The Gardeners switched it up in the locker room and had a mad champagne-spraying Miley Cyrus “Party in the USA” dance-off during the postgame celebration. Shit got super rowdy. Everybody loves Miley.

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Stat of the Week:

1.000 (8-for-8)………Combined career batting average as leadoff batters for Mike Edde and Alan Donner

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Body by Jake Useless Sports Trivia Question of the Week to Help You Fill the Time at Work/Home/On the Bus/During Intercourse:

Besides Mike Edde, who are the other four pitchers in the 4,000 strikeouts club?

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3/23/2015

Alas, history was not to be made in the Spring 2015 Season for the University of Kentucky Savage Gardeners as their undefeated run ended Tuesday night in a 22-15 loss to Ball So Hard University.

At Lance Harbor Moscone Field – after the game was delayed ten minutes due to a monsoon where 12 people were stuck on an island with a see-saw – the Gardeners crumbled in the fifth inning as Ball So Hard University (BSHU) got hit after hit after hit en route to a nine-run inning in their victory. BSHU played the Three Winning Rules of Softball to a tee; hence, they won.

In the fifth inning, BSHU took advantage of errors for Extra Outs (Winning Rule #1: Instead of a play being an out, a BSHU runner got on base), took Extra Bases (#2: For example, taking second on a play that’s usually a single), and capitalized on the hitting Momentum (#3: One hit leads to another and another, for example) to wallop the ball around and scramble around the bases.

The Gardeners balled hard in the early stages of the game; however, once BSHU scored their nine runs in the fifth to take the lead 18-10, the Gardeners’ tires were semi-deflated for a hot second and they couldn’t fully recover, like Lindsay Lohan coming out of rehab. Try to make her go to rehab she says oh…no…no.

So stupid.

R.I.P. Amy Winehouse.

You know what’s good? Bacon.

Simply had to state that fact. It’s science.

Undefeated at 2-0 and with a packed house paying up to $340 a seat on Stubhub for Standing Room Only tickets, the Gardeners took the field by storm in the top of the first to fireworks and an annoying “Your Savage Gardeners!” cheer over the speakers from the Gardeners’ PA announcer Renel Brooks-Moon. There was no Oakland A’s announcer on hand because there is none, because nobody watches the A’s except Dave Watters.

BSHU scored two in the top of the first yet a liner to Alan Donner at second base and a flyout to Ari Hersher in left center squashed all chances for more runs. Hersher – who doesn’t find March Madness sportscaster Tracy Wolfson with the mole attractive – then turned it around at the plate by leading off with a single to bump his lifetime on-base percentage up .001 from .687 to .688 at the time. Gold Glove right fielder Eric Snow singled Hersher to third, and left fielder Pat Reilly – back in action after missing last week’s game due to being a VIP at an insanely wild party on Flo Rida’s yacht in the Bahamas – sacrifice-flied in Hersher for the Gardeners’ first run.

Shortstop J.J. Warren’s liner to second put a lovely two outs on the board, yet the Gardeners in line to hit felt no pressure at all with two down. Pitcher Mike Edde and first baseman Dan Gatta both followed with walks, loading the bases for right center fielder Jason Friedman. With two strikes on him, Friedman crushed an epic shot to left for a double that cleared the bases and put the Gardeners up 4-1.

Not stopping there, Donner next roped a laser deep down the left field line that rolled a millions miles in deep left field for a two-run homer to push the Gardeners’ lead to 6-1, a typical final WNBA score.

BSHU scored two in the second and the Gardeners added another on Reilly’s fielder’s choice that scored Hersher from third after Hersher and Snow’s back-to-back singles. Snow peppered the ball around smartly all night, going 5-or-5, keeping the outfield guessing by spraying his hits to all fields – left, center, and right.

The enemy scored another in the third, held in check in part by two solid defensive plays in the inning. Edde snagged a grounder up the middle and flipped a throw to Donner at second – perfectly leading Donner to the bag – for a force play for the first out. Manager Chris Norton at third base called his own play later in the inning with two outs. With batter Greg Vaughn at the plate with runners on first and second and two outs, Norton called out that if the ball came to him he’d take it solo to the bag. Immediately after on the next pitch, Vaughn grounded right to Norton, who easily made the play and bag touch for the force to end the inning.

A similar play happened in the fifth when Norton predicted that BSHU batter John Jaha would ground to him. And, as expected on the next pitch, Jaha grounded to Norton for another Norton-called-it out.

Norton contributed one of his three RBIs for the evening in the third after a single from Gatta, double for Donner (to score Gatta), then single by All-Star catcher Phil Zackler. With Donner and Zackler at the corners, Norton sac-flied in Donner to left to make the score 9-5. A single by Hersher and double by Snow moved Zackler around the bases and across the plate from first and soon the Gardeners were looking at a 10-5 lead after three.

This ended up being the apex of the night for the Gardeners as BSHU scored four in the fourth to bring it to 10-9, shut down the Gardeners’ bats in their turn, then erupted in the fifth inning for nine runs to take the lead for good at 18-10.

Not to be fully deflated, the Gardeners clawed their way back in the fifth by pushing runners around the bases small-ball style (except for Norton). A leadoff single by Donner followed by another single by Zackler put runners on first and second for the Gardeners' manager. Norton then sliced a tailing liner down the right field line for a standing triple to score roommates Donner and Zackler and cut the deficit to 18-12. Snow singled him in to make it 18-13, then three straight singles by Reilly, Warren, and Edde loaded the bases (Snow scoring in the interim) for Gatta. Gatta then contributed the third sacrifice fly of the night for the Gardeners with a fly to right center to score Reilly and the Gardeners were back in it at 18-15.

Unfortunately, BSHU kept their momentum going and pushed seven more across in the sixth inning to push their lead to 22-15, then turned it around and shut down the Gardeners’ bats in both the sixth and seventh to close out the victory.

Nevertheless, the Gardeners didn’t let the game define them.

“Despite the loss,” Norton commented after the game, “we will crush beers at the Bus Stop because we are gods and your Mom goes to college.”

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Stat of the Week:

.616…The Gardeners’ team batting average as leadoff batters. They are .584 otherwise.

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Body by Jake Useless Sports Trivia Question of the Week to Help You Fill the Time at Work/Home/On the Bus/During Intercourse:

Which pro sports team (NFL, MLB, NBA, or NHL) has the longest team name by syllables, with ten syllables in its full team name?

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3/11/2015

After last week’s home opening, come from behind 27-26 win, the Savage Gardeners looked to have an easier game in their away opener Tuesday night to keep their stress levels low for the long 162-game season. Unfortunately, at KKU Field – the same field where the Gardeners’ home opener occurred last week – the opponent Blue Light had different plans in mind, dammit. Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.

This game was intense. This was to be no walkover. Though the Gardeners did end up walking over Blue Light. Literally. Like a lotta walks.

Thus, the Gardeners laced their boots up (figuratively, of course – boots on a softball field? Now that’s just silly) and pulled together when it all counted, playing a quality game throughout en route to an 11-9, eight-inning pee-your-pants-just-go-man..................... ohh.....................that’s really warm..................suspense-filled victory.

And for the second game in a row, the Gardeners found themselves down by one in their last at-bat.

And for the second game in a row, the Gardeners willed their way to victory.

And for the second game in a row, the “Blurred Lines” chick Emily Ratajkowski was in the stands topless holding a sign saying, “Marry Me Phil Zackler! Do a ‘Blurred Lines’ Video with Me!”

Regardless, Zackler behind the plate casually ignored the screams from Ratajkowski like he has done with all the other female admirers throughout the multiple seasons he’s played behind the plate. Stud catcher in baseball pants squatting back there close to the female fans? Yeah – they’re gonna go apeshit.

Not going apeshit were either team’s bats compared to last week’s 53-runs combined shootout. Tuesday’s game featured much cleaner defense and Bruce Bochy-like baseball – advancing runners, sacrifice flies, solid defense, and a small Asian man sprinting out every inning to coach third base.

Whoops wrong era, R.I.P. Wendell Kim. (Thanks to Johnny Moran for the recollection.)

The key to Tuesday night’s hard-fought victory clearly was the stellar defensive play by the Gardeners. Playing second base for the first time in his career, Alan Donner scooped both grounders that came his way – back-to-back outs in the second inning to help preserve pitcher Mike Edde’s shutout so far – as well as grabbing the force at second in the bottom of the eighth for the final out of the game.

Donner’s compatriot on the right side of the infield – first baseman Eric Snow – also played impeccably, highlighted by his making an incredible scoop on a throw by shortstop J.J. Warren in the seventh inning for the second out to keep the Gardeners up by one. Yes, Blue Light did tie the game two batters later, yet if we look at the intricacies and statistical analysis of his scoop we can appreciate how monumental it was in saving the game.

At the time of the scoop, it was the bottom of the seventh inning and the Gardeners were up by one, 9-8, with one out. Blue Light had some key hitters coming up next when batter Tim Wallach grounded to short.

Let’s play hypothetical and say that Snow doesn’t make the scoop and Wallach gets to second on the overthrow. Let’s now also estimate that Blue Light batted .500 for the game (actually .465, yet we’ll use .500 for simplicity), meaning each batter had a 50% chance of getting a hit. Thus, according to our calculations, with one out, the chance of the next two batters getting hits – and scoring at least one, possibly two runs (to tie and win the game) – is 25% (50% chance for the first guy, 50% for the second. Multiplied together is 25%. Stats 101).

If Snow makes the scoop (which he did), there are two outs and no runners on; thus, Blue Light needs (hypothetically) three hits to score two runs – instead of only two hits with a runner already on base. Three hits in a row has a probability of 12.5% (50% x 50% x 50%).

Therefore, by basic mathematic calculations verified by Bill James and Jonah Hill, Snow dropped the chances of Blue Light’s scoring two runs and winning the game from 25% to 12.5% – a 50% decrease. In essence, Snow singlehandedly saved the game.

(We know, we know...with our confusing statistical analysis we're kind of like fivethirtyeight.com over here at USASSY [USA Softball Statistics Yearly].)

The scoop stands out because of its relevance and place and time in the game, as well as its prevalent replaying on SportsCenter that night. Not to be overlooked as well are his fielding of a hard grounder and flip to Edde in the third and his diving stop and toss to second in the fourth for a force out and rally-stopper. In softball - especially close games - it truly is small plays like this that incrementally lead to stopping baserunners and therefore runs, increasing the odds of victory.

In addition to his defensive prowess, Snow in the top of the eighth doubled with one out and scored the what-was-to-be go-ahead run.

In addition to the strong infield play, the Gardeners’ outfield of Papa Ryan Preston in left field, Ari Hersher in left center, speedster Johnny Moran in right center, and Ryan Hester in right field all played heroically in either making outs or stopping Blue Light from taking extra bases (Softball Winning Rule #2 – Don’t Give Up Extra Bases). This quartet was especially effective in relaying the ball in quickly on hits to the outfield as well as either hitting the cutoff or nailing the infielder on base right on the money with throws. These small plays – the Gardeners' outfielders' getting the ball in quick, though seeming routine – added up to the difference between Blue Light’s runners taking extra bases or being stuck with singles or held up on the basepaths. Simple fundamentals – and the Gardeners rode them to victory. Moran displayed these to a tee on a bomb hit way deep to right center in the sixth inning with the Gardeners down one at 8-7.

After a one-out home run by Blue Light batter Greg Colbrunn, next batter Wil Cordero launched a sure homer to deep right center. However, Moran hustled the hit down hard, relayed in to Donner at second, and Cordero was forced to stop at third. After Snow at first stopped a grounder for out number two to hold Cordero at third, next batter Darrin Fletcher flew out to short for the third out.

Cordero never scored.

Thus, the Gardeners got out of the inning not giving up any more runs, heading into the last inning only down one run instead of two or more if Moran hadn’t hustled like hell on Cordero’s triple.

Small plays like that helped propel the Gardeners to victory. Nevertheless, each inning depicted a battle of its own.

The Gardeners’ crew started off the top of the first with back-to-back-to-back walks by Hersher, Moran, and Snow from pitcher Gil Heredia, who was pitching all over the place. Flat, high, inside, outside, sideways, backwards, blind, drunk – he couldn’t get his shit down. On the night, Heredia walked nine batters; it was a disaster.

Warren and third baseman Dan Gatta sacrifice-flied in Hersher and Moran, respectively, and the Gardeners jumped out to a 2-0 early lead. After Edde’s shutout bottom of the first (one of four shutout innings for the night), the Gardeners pieced together a few two-out hits for another run in the second. With two down, Hester in his first at-bat for the Gardeners roped a single to right. Hersher moved him to third with a single to right center, and Snow cleaned up by singling up the middle to score Hester and put the Gardeners up 3-0.

Donner’s defense spearheaded the defensive second, and in the third the Gardeners kept adding runs incrementally. Warren’s leadoff single and Edde’s solid double to center put two on for Papa Preston. And with babies and RBIs in his mind, Preston scouted a shot to left to score Warren and Edde to push the Gardeners’ lead to 5-0.

Blue Light launched a rally and scored four in the bottom of the third to bring it to the common football score of 5-4. Unfortunately the Gardeners couldn’t get anything going in the fourth and Blue Light capitalized and took the lead with two runs in their half to make it 6-5. It easily could’ve been more runs for Blue Light, yet Hester’s running catch in deep right off of Bret Barberie’s bat saved the inning from falling apart.

The Gardeners looked like they could fall apart with a three-up, three-down fifth inning; however, before running out to play defense, Zackler reminded his teammates of the presence of both Ratajkowski in the stands as well as every Spice Girl, who were strangely on hand to watch the Gardeners.

Come to think of it though, it wasn’t strange the Spice Girls were there to watch. They are apparently all obsessed with the Gardeners, huge fans who wannabe sexually involved with most of the players in the way where two become one. Say you’ll be there Gardeners and the Spice Girls will follow.

Edde goaded flyouts to all three batters in the fifth – Moran caught the first one, much to the delight of Ginger Spice who jumped with glee in her British flag dress, clapping after his catch. With Hersher knowing Baby Spice was on hand, he made sure to make out number two and was subsequently rewarded with a coy finger-biting look and wink from his female admirer. And Papa Preston cleaned up the third out yet had trouble deciding whom to toss the ball to – Posh, Scary, or Sporty Spice, who were all clamoring behind the dugout in low-cut shirts for Preston’s attention and hopefully a souvenir softball.

In the sixth, Zackler led off with a walk and Donner followed with a double. Hester’s walk loaded the bases for Hersher, who until then career-wise had 12 RBIs in ten bases loaded at-bats. And, as expected, he pulled through with a two-RBI single to right to give the Gardeners the lead, 7-6, going into the bottom half of the sixth.

Not to be outdone, Blue Light scored two right back to retake the lead at 8-7, pushing the Gardeners to the brink in their last at-bat in the top of the seventh. And like “Brink!” that great rollerblading Disney Channel Original movie, the Gardeners rolled onward. Warren and Edde both singled then moved to second and third, respectively, on Preston’s strangely-called dropped infield fly to the outfield. Whatever that was.

With two outs now, down by one, last inning, and runners at second and third, the stud Zackler stepped up. Ratajkowski literally couldn’t take the suspense with her beau at the plate; thus she went into the players’ wives suite and covered her eyes in the corner, praying for the best.

Zackler played it patient at the plate against Heredia, eyeing him until Heredia caved and walked him to load the bases. Next up was Zackler’s roommate Donner, who stared down Heredia as well. And Heredia couldn’t take it – he walked Donner to push in the tying run and keep the bases loaded again. Up stepped Hester – and the same shit happened. Heredia folded under the pressure………and walked Hester! Edde came across the plate and the Gardeners were up one, 9-8. Heredia’s three straight walks did him in – his WHIP is way the fuck up there now.

Blue Light got out of the inning and the Gardeners took the field looking to hold on to the lead for the win.

In the bottom of the seventh, after a flyout to Preston and Snow’s great scoop for the second out, the Gardeners looked primed to win. However, Blue Light’s sluggers Archi Cianfrocco and Kent Bottenfield put together back-to-back doubles to tie the game at nine-apiece.

Fuck. This game was such a fucking seesaw. Gardeners up one, 5-4; down 6-5; up 7-6; down 8-7; up 9-8. Now tied 9-9.

And thus occurred the Sweet Potatoes Sweet Defensive Play of the Game.

Tie game, two outs, bottom seven, winning run on second. Delino DeShields at the plate. DeShields rocked a shot up the middle. Game over.

Except Edde on the mound was there to snag it on a quick hop. Toss to Snow at first. Inning ended. Extra innings. Greg Maddux Gold Glove defense.

At this time Ratajkowski was so emotionally distraught she was found crumbled and crying against the wall like Molly Ringwald in “Sixteen Candles.”

Nevertheless, the Gardeners played on. With one out in the eighth, Snow’s opposite field double and Warren’s hit to right that just slipped past the right fielder provided two runs for the Gardeners and put them ahead, 11-9.

Then the Gardeners buckled down again on defense in the last of the eighth. After the leadoff batter singled, Moran perfectly positioned himself in deep right center for a catch for out number one – then relayed in quickly to keep the runner on first. Hersher fought the bright lights in left center for out number two – then relayed in quickly to keep the runner on first. Blue Light had no more against Edde’s pitching. Donner caught the flip from short for the final out and the Gardeners pumped their fists and sprayed champagne all over themselves on the field like the deserving champs they were Tuesday night.

To cap off the victory Zackler had a sixsome with the Spice Girls.

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Stat of the Week:

Bases Loaded, Zero At-Bats, Three Runs: The Gardeners used zero at-bats to score three runs with the bases loaded Tuesday night. Two runs were scored on walks and a third on a sacrifice fly.

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Body by Jake Useless Sports Trivia Question of the Week to Help You Fill the Time at Work/Home/On the Bus/During Intercourse:

Among the big four major professional sports (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL), there are nine teams whose team names do not end in the letter “s” (e.g. Broncos is a team name). Name them.

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3/08/2015

Springtime baseball. Crisp grass, fresh players, and the promise of a new season. Hopes high. Can’t get any better better than that. Unless you’re a billionaire living on your own private island with a harem of Megan Foxes and Mila Kunises and Jennifer Love Hewitts and that brunette that Brett Favre used to text.

Other than those minor details, the Savage Gardeners entered the Spring 2015 regular season destined for their first championship since 1908 when they were Plymouth Rock Shipbuilders.

Due to the team’s popularity with the female fans and with absurdly high television ratings, for the spring season MLB moved the Gardeners up a division to the CC Division from the C Division. Because of this realignment, of the eight teams in the division, the Gardeners entered the season with the lowest opening Vegas odds of a world championship, at 15:1, which, in our unbiased opinion at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY), is way undervalued. Thus, we put $100,000 on this line ($1.5 million payout). So the Gardeners better fucking win the championship.

After months of tireless workouts with Bear Grylls in the frozen winter tundra of Northern Minnesota to toughen their minds and bodies, the Gardeners showed up for the season home opener Tuesday night at KKU Field with much more bulk, heavily calloused-hands, and Northern-man beards like the Mountain Man in the Dr. Pepper Ten commercial. They looked tougher. They smelled tougher. They breathed tougher. And after giving up two runs in the top of the first to their opponent TopThat!, the Gardeners exhibited their toughness by showing up hard with their bats.

Or maybe not.

The top of the lineup for the Gardeners decided to delay displaying their toughness in the first inning by posting a lovely three-up, three-down inning. We only say this because after this incredible exhibition of hitting prowess, these players – left center fielder Ari Hersher, first baseman/right fielder Eric Snow, and shortstop J.J. Warren – went a combined 12-for-12 in their final 12 at-bats.

Back on the mound after his rookie year breakout season was the stud Mike Edde, who drove into the players’ parking lot before the game in the 2016 Ferrari 488 GTB that he won for his Cy Young last year. Batting in the sixth spot in the lineup – the highest ever for a pitcher in the history of baseball – he raked in at the plate for the night, going 4-for-5 with two key bases-loaded two-RBI hits, one in the fourth and one in the fifth.

[Side note: You think we’re that nerdy or car-obsessed and know what the new Ferrari is called? Hell no. That’s called Googling. Edde knows though of course. Because he has one. For winning the Cy Young last year. True story.]

After ceding six runs in the top of the second to put themselves in a hole down 8-0, the Gardeners gathered together in the dugout away from the cameras under All-Star catcher Phil Zackler’s direction for a scathing yet arousing pep talk. (“Arousing,” as in the speech lit a fire in the Gardeners’ hearts. And also arousing because Zackler was speaking, which caused a couple of tents to be pitched in the dugout as well.) We can’t repeat the speech here because there are kids around.

What we can say is that that shit worked. With two outs and right center fielder Jason Friedman on second and Edde on first, Zackler stepped to the plate with the opportunity to back up his words and set the example he had preached about in his speech. He thus crushed a liner to left for a two-RBI double, Friedman and Edde scoring to put the Gardeners’ first runs on the board. And therefore the contagion started and the Gardeners started getting sick. Third baseman Alan Donner followed with a single to left to score Zackler. Roommate love! Rookie left fielder Pat Reilly then smoothed a lefty swing to right-center for a single, putting two on for Hersher to redeem himself after his first at-bat.

And with the pressure high with two on and two out, Hersher Capitalized with a capital “C,” crushing a cutting hit down the line in right for a three-run homer to push the Gardeners to six runs for the inning, all scored with two outs nonetheless. After Snow and Warren both singled, first baseman/right fielder Dan Gatta then kept up the two-out RBIs with a smashing double down the line in left to score Snow from second and make it 8-7 heading into the third.

The second inning's hitting portended the night for the Gardeners, as this contagion led to their crushing the ball for the rest of the evening. Little did anyone notice, yet in five innings of at-bats (not counting the sixth, a two-batter walk-off inning), the Gardeners batted around four times – in innings two through five. EVERY GARDENERS BATTER CAME TO THE PLATE IN FOUR STRAIGHT INNINGS. That’s getting sick. The Gardeners never gave up, and it wasn't over until they said it was. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

(By the way John Belushi, it wasn’t the Germans who bombed Pearl Harbor. It was the Chinese.)

Thus, the Gardeners crushed it at the plate. Which leads to a few notable stats to point out:

Hersher – 4-for-5
Snow – 4-for-5
Edde – 4-for-5
Donner – 4-for-5
Reilly – 4-for-5

You get the picture.

TopThat! scored two in the third to make it 10-7; however, the Gardeners launched into another two-out hit tirade in their half to assert their dominance like Christian Grey. Edde’s leadoff double put him on third a few batters later for Donner to fielder’s choice him in. Now with two outs, the Gardeners felt more comfortable getting hits. Because that’s what they do – produce two-out hits. Reilly singled to right to move Donner to second. Hersher then launched another shot to right – this time for only a triple, womp womp – to score two more and tie the game at 10-10. Snow, Warren, and Gatta all followed with RBI hits to push the Gardeners ahead by a field goal, 13-10, as the fourth inning showed up in high heels and a tight t-shirt.

That makes no sense.

TopThat! didn’t back down however, displaying their CC status by scoring seven runs in the frame to retake the lead at 17-13 going into the bottom of the fourth. Not to be outdone, the Gardeners put together another huge rally with seven runs of their own. Second baseman Kevin Coupe, Zackler, and Donner stringed together back-to-back-to-back singles to score one (Coupe), and with two on, Reilly hit a half sacrifice fly to push Zackler to third and bring Hersher to the plate. And with two on for the third time in the game, Hersher came through, this time with an RBI single to score Donner. Snow and Warren both followed with RBI singles to tie the game at 17-apiece. Gatta’s walk loaded the bases for Friedman, who followed suit with a walk as well for the go-ahead run, keeping the bases loaded for Edde. Edde then roped a single to left to score Warren and Gatta and the Gardeners were setting themselves up pretty at 20-17.

Edde’s pitching in the fifth goaded two flyouts to Hersher in left center, and after only one run scored, the Gardeners up 20-18 pounded the plate for more, like Oliver Twist. Donner’s leadoff single and Reilly’s double put two on once again for – you guessed it (or looked at the box score) – Hersher, who – for the fourth time with two runners on – knocked in runs, this time with another triple to push his RBI total to eight for the night. Thus, these easy exploits by Hersher (eight RBIs, four runs, a homer, two triples, 2.200 slugging percentage, one sexy bod) earned him the Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game Award.

Snow pulled the ‘ol 1-2-3-4 by one-bagging (1) in Hersher for the second (2) time in the night and his third (3) RBI as well as his fourth (4) hit. A few batters later and with the bases loaded again, Edde executed another of his classic two-RBI plays by doubling to center to make it 25-18, Gardeners.

Up seven heading into the top of the sixth – the last inning for the evening due to time constraints – the Gardeners felt very comfortable, especially after Edde coerced the first batter of the inning to fly out to right. Nevertheless, TopThat! caught fire after that, scoring eight runs to take the lead before Edde got the final out with a grounder to first base, his covering the bag in classic fundamentals baseball-style for the second time that night. The other time occurred in the first inning on a grounder to Snow, toss to Edde putout. A few plays before, Zackler at catcher had cleanly fielded a bunt and tossed to first to get his assist total up to one for the year.

Down by one, 26-25, and heading into the last of the sixth, the Gardeners had batters nine and ten coming up – what TopThat! thought would be easy outs.

Fuck naw.

Donner in the nine-spot led off with a laser single to left to get the leadoff batter on board – the secret to winning baseball (or softball). Reilly then did what he does best. And that’s hit an unquestionable walk-off two-run bomb to deep right to send the fans and the Gardeners’ dugout into a frenzy. This smash clearly earned the Kelly Evans CNBC Hot Drive of the Game Award. Fireworks went off, champagne popped everywhere, and the Gardeners celebrated their 27-26 opening day victory in style, with a round of Hamm’s beer at Gary Danko followed by dominating the $9.99 buffet breakfast in the wee hours of Wednesday morning at the five-star restaurant on Broadway called the Condor Club.

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Stat of the Week:

12 of 13: Twelve of the Gardeners’ first 13 runs Tuesday night were scored with two outs.

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Body by Jake Useless Trivia Question of the Week to Help You Fill the Time at Work/Home/On the Bus/During Intercourse:

Among the big four major professional sports (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL), there are six pairs of teams that share the same team name (e.g. NY football Giants and SF Giants). Name the other five.
(Bonus point for the seventh pair – one team has been disbanded, the other is still intact.)

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10/13/2014

Rumors are swirling that Blue Light took some roofies from behind their bar on Union Street - that they usually reserve for Saturday night on Marina girls - and dropped some in the Savage Gardeners' Gatorade bottles, blunting the Gardeners' output for the night. Regardless, Tuesday night’s Final Four bout between the Gardeners and Blue Light found the Gardeners shorthanded against the C-4 Division Champions from the start, limiting the Gardeners' fielding potential. They figured they could get by with the nine-man handicap; however, having three outfielders for the Gardeners truly did prove unfortunate as Blue Light took advantage of the open space to crush hit after hit in the 26-16 victory over your local heroes.

At Steven Jackson Memorial Field, the Gardeners’ outfielders were forced to play deeper than normal to cover more ground without a fourth outfielder present. And Blue Light took advantage of this situation, turning many short hits to the outfield into doubles instead of singles. With a regular four-man outfield, Blue Light wouldn’t have been able to reach second on many of their hits. Nevertheless, with the Gardners' fielders' having to play deeper, this proved to be a huge advantage for the Gardeners' opponent, ultimately weighing the scale in Blue Light’s favor.

We'll also give them credit as they hit the ball well, as most playoff teams do.

With the Geico blimp flying overhead over the Gardeners’ game (not the Giants’ NLDS game, as commonly assumed) the Gardeners took advantage of the national attention to get their bats' firing hot in the first inning. With first baseman Eric Snow on third and shortstop Dave Watters on first with one out, right fielder Dan Gatta produced the first of his four hits for the night with an RBI single to put the Gardeners on the board. Second baseman J.J. Warren’s double added another, and Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde singled in Gatta right after to put the Gardeners up 3-0. Left fielder Matt Mason then sac-flied in Warren from third for a nice 4-0 lead for the away team Gardeners heading into the bottom of the first.

Blue Light countered with three runs in their half, yet the Gardeners fired right back in the second. All-Star catcher Phil Zackler’s leadoff single set the table for center fielder Ari Hersher to double to right to score Zackler all the way from first. During the play as well, Zackler turned into "Rookie of the Year's" Henry Rowengartner running the bases, being chased one step behind by Hersher on the run from first to second. Nevertheless, the baserunning worked out in the end with the RBI for Hersher and sex for Zackler that night with Jessica Biel.

A grounder moved Hersher to third, yet from there it didn’t really matter what base he was on with Watters up next. Watters blasted a homer to deep left center that landed on the infield of the opposite field, narrowly missing crushing the skull of the shortstop there.

The 7-3 lead for the Gardeners soon became a 7-7 tie after Blue Light put up four in the bottom half. A shutout third for the Gardeners offensively swung the momentum in Blue Light’s favor as they capitalized on this opportunity to deflate the Gardeners momentarily by scoring six runs to take a 13-7 lead heading into the fourth.

Nevertheless, the Gardeners knew it was playoff time and time to step up big time like the FUBU-wearing playa hatuhs they are. Snow started the scoring by coming home on a one-out double by Warren, and Gatta crossed the plate next on Edde’s sacrifice fly.

With two outs now, the Gardeners stepped up and rallied like waking up to go out at nighttime after passing out after day drinking. Mason hit a sliding double to score Warren from third to bring it to 13-10. Manager Chris Norton followed with a double to push Mason across, and Zackler kept up the hits with a single to left to score Norton and make it 13-12. A single by Hersher put runners at first and second for Snow’s second at-bat of the inning. And after leading off the inning with a single, he produced another single as well to score Zackler to tie it up. Watters followed with an RBI single for another run and the Gardeners cruised into the bottom of the fourth with the lead, up 14-13. A savory seven-run inning ignited the night like Fireball, especially with five of those runs coming with two outs.

Edde on the mound shut down Blue Light in the fourth, and the Gardeners added one more in the fifth on Norton’s RBI single that scored Edde to push it to 15-13.

Then disaster struck.

Heidi Klum broke up with Seal.

No………looks like that actually didn’t happen according to TMZ, our employees’ homepage here at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY). No – looks like the disaster was a seven-run outburst by Blue Light to take a 20-15 lead over the Gardeners. It simply was an inning where nothing went right for the Gardeners and the game spiraled downward quickly. Blue Light simply snatched Momentum (Softball Winning Rule #3) back in their favor to take the lead for good.

And actually a Heidi Klum breakup wouldn’t be a disaster. It would be good news (Heidi Klum single! Calling Matt Mason!).

The Gardeners fought back and scored one in the sixth on Gatta’s RBI single to score Snow, yet after that the air was out of the Gardeners’ tires. Blue Light erupted for six more in the bottom of the sixth to stretch the lead to ten at 26-16 going into the seventh, where the score stayed when the final whistle sounded for the Gardeners and their season.

Credit must be given to Gardeners though for their rallying to close out the season. Facing elimination from playoffs in the regular season finale, they played a quality clutch game to clinch playoffs in their 16-12 win over Gino N Carlos. In the Elite Eight last week they played one of the most epic games in Gardeners’ history with their come-from-behind-down-by-ten-runs 24-21 comeback victory over The Good Guys.

At the ESPY Awards a few days later, the Gardeners won multiple awards besides best-looking team and most chiseled jaws. Steve Smith led the league in batting average and Skype'd in his acceptance speech from Virginia. Gatta crushed it in the final three heightened competitive games, going 11-for-14, and for the season led the league in singles, tied for the league lead in hits with Watters, and finished second in slugging, OBP., and OPS., as well as tying for third in RBIs. KKU mate Watters only led the Gardeners in RBIs for the seventh time in nine seasons while finishing first in slugging for the fifth time in nine. Edde was presented with the Cy Young award, a first for a rookie, while also claiming the Rookie of the Year Award. He cleaned up Madison Bumgarner-style at the plate as well, finishing second in RBIs.

One of these days, though, the Gardeners will hoist the SF Softball Championship trophy over their heads and host the subsequent after-party at the Bus Stop until the sun comes up and the bar gets shut down from a combination of too much testosterone inside and Marina girls lining up outside trying to swarm in to get a piece of the Gardeners’ players.

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Stat of the Week:

2: Number of games the Savage Gardeners have played with nine players. Both have been playoff losses (Spring 2011, Summer 2014).

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10/06/2014

Underdogs......Playoff flameouts......Drunks......God-like chiseled-faced good-looking Adonis figures. The Savage Gardeners have been labeled many names before. The only appropriate name for the Gardeners Tuesday night however, was the most appropriate one, one that Enrique Iglesias kissed away the pain and stood by you forever and sang a song about. The name that hit right to the core of whom the Gardeners are and represent, a name attributable to those who’ve changed the course of history with courage and valor, men like George Washington and Davy Crockett and Paul Revere. A name that resonates through history:

FUBU-wearing playa hatuhs.

Other people threw out the word “heroes” to describe the Gardeners. We disagree. The FUBU moniker is more accurate.

What could be described as heroic nevertheless was the one-legged play by the Gardeners’ Cy Young pitcher Mike Edde and first baseman/catcher Eric Snow. With only two good quadriceps muscles combined between the two of them, they played through their injuries like a feverish vomiting playoffs Michael Jordan to continue, build, and enhance the Gardeners’ hitting rallies late in the game during clutch time. When you’re squatting 585lbs (six plates on each side) like Edde and Snow do, every now and then you’ll get some soreness and tweaks. Hence the quad injuries. Which didn’t affect them anyways.

Edde on the mound shut down The Good Guys for only three runs in the final two innings for the hold, the save, and the win, as well as going 3-for-4 at the plate with key RBIs and rally-sustaining hits in the latter half of the game. Snow – after injuring his quad running the basepaths in the fifth on shortstop Dave Watters’ double – played through the injury by providing a clutch RBI single in the sixth inning and allowing his pinch runner to make it around the bases to score a run in the inning that brought the Gardeners within one run.

The 24-21 football score victory over The Good Guys Tuesday night at Steven Jackson Memorial Field in the Elite Eight went down as one of the most epic – if not the most epic – games in Savage Gardeners’ history. What it boiled down to was the Gardeners’ taking advantage of the three rules of winning a softball game – Extra Runs (#1), Extra Bases (#2), and Momentum (#3). The Gardeners capitalized hard on Momentum (#3) in the fifth and sixth innings at the plate: In the fifth they got sickkkkkkkk. They sent nine straight batters to the plate before getting their first out; in the sixth it was eight batters. Down with the sickness they were. The “Get Sick” Gardeners’ shirts (the Gardeners’ rally cry) worn by most of the fans in the attendance were displayed with pride and waved about relentlessly by the ladies who took them off in excitement and threw them at the Gardeners’ players in the hopes of getting a marriage proposal. Needless to say, half of Tuesday’s lineup has already reached the marriage stage, with a sixth falling hard to Garden Hoe Meredith two weeks ago. And a seventh rolling it back on Friday…

In the rally fifth and sixth innings, the Gardeners took 100% full advantage of taking Extra Bases (Rule #2), stretching singles into doubles (a la Ryan Preston), and scoring from second (or first) on hits to the outfield, taking the extra base and tempting The Good Guys’ outfielders to throw them out, which none of them did of course, because they suck. The Extra Runs (Rule #1) came as a result of the hard-hit balls by the Gardeners careening off of the fielders’ gloves, turning potential outs into hits, and thus extra runs.

So what actually happened in the game - why the epicness? Because the Gardeners didn’t do shit in the first three innings.

After Robyn and Flo Rida’s duet National Anthem, Manager Chris Norton strategically won the coin toss to put the away team Good Guys to the plate first. And they attacked hard as the C-2 Division Champions they were, putting up five runs to start off the game. Thus it was oh shit for the Gardeners. They didn’t score until the third, while The Good Guys scored two more each in the second and third to go up 9-0.

Not fun to say, yet to put an ugly stat out there, the Gardeners had runners on second and third with one out in the first and couldn’t score; in the second they loaded the bases with no outs and didn’t score as well.

Yikes. Kind of like Giants baseball. Giants baseball in the past of course, because after the Pirates 8-0 Wild Card domination, Friday’s stellar 3-2 win, and Saturday’s 2-1, 18-inning epic victory, the Giants are back to being the shit. Even year – hollaback y’all.

So - down 9-0 in the bottom of the third. Playoffs. Facing a good team.

In these situations the Gardeners historically fall into losing hope, popping out a bunch, and letting the game snowball out of hand. Yet something in the Gardeners’ blood on Tuesday went against this regression. May have been the pregame spinach and egg yolks they consumed. May have been the bonus incentives they’d receive if they reached the Final Four. Needless to say, they finally came out of the woodworks of mediocrity in the playoffs and took a stand like the “300” Spartans, especially with their shirts off.

With one out in the third, a walk by Watters and a single by first baseman Dan Gatta put two on for outfielder Corbin Shields, the Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game. Shields only went 4-for-5 with a homer, two doubles, a single, and five RBIs. He earned the first of his four hits for the night with his single to left to score Watters and put the Gardeners on the board for the first time, after 2 1/3 innings. Second baseman J.J. Warren got his swing back and doubled in two later in the inning with two outs, moving right center fielder Jason Friedman to third on the play. Preston then slashed a key double to left to score them both, and with a deep breath the Gardeners finally were back in the game, cutting the deficit to 9-5. Preston finished the game with five RBIs.

The Gardeners’ opponent though was relentless at the plate, scoring three in the fourth to go up 12-5. This truly was a fucking battle, as the Good Guys were clearly a very formidable team. The Gardeners however out-formidabled them in the long run, as shown by the scoreboard when all was said and done. By the scoreboard, we mean the final score. Which was 24-21. We also mean the Condor Club live video feed advertisement on the side of the scoreboard that also provided motivation. Thus they countered with three in their half – one on a two-out Shields RBI double and right afterwards with a two-RBI single by Edde to bring it to 12-8.

Nevertheless, The Good Guys dug into more Gardeners’ frustration by blowing up for six runs in the top of the fifth. This is where it looked like the wheels were coming off. The six-run fifth inning, where The Good Guys capitalized on some Gardeners’ defensive mistakes, put the Gardeners in a ten-run hole, down 18-8.

They looked fucked.

So they said “Fuck you” to looking fucked.

And everything changed. The FUBU-wearing playa hatuhs rose to the occasion. And by rising like a phoenix from the ashes to the occasion (whatever that means), they put up eight runs before making their first out, yet not before Matt Mason was making out on some date somewhere.

Back-to-back-to-back hits by Warren, Preston, and Norton led the fifth off and scored the first two of eight, Preston’s scoring all the way from first on Norton’s double. Left center fielder Ari Hersher, after missing the finale of the regular season to get his playoff tan on in Fiji with Garden Hoe Stacy, stroked a single to score Norton, and the Gardeners had scored three runs justlikethat, bringing it to 18-11.

Snow kept the contagion growing with a single to center, bringing up the newly engaged slugger Watters. Watters then roped a double to left center that put a heroic hobbling Snow at third. Luckily for Snow, Gatta was up next, meaning with Gatta’s hitting with runners in scoring position, there was a high probability that Snow could coast in easily from third.

Which is exactly what happened – Gatta’s slashing a laser double to left to score both Snow and Watters, deficit cut to 18-14.

What does this make Shields do, at this point in the game 2-for-3 with two RBIs?

Easy – hit the Kelly Evans CNBC Hot Drive of the Game, a booming two-run homer to left field that brought the Gardeners within two, 18-16. And this was a fucking shot. Not only did it bring major life to the Gardeners and their fans, especially the females, it also wet the bleachers.

Holy shit 18-16, this is a matchup. Down ten with low hopes turned into an eight-run outburst to cut the lead to two.

The bad guys (the Gardeners’ opponent) scored two in the top of the sixth to make it 20-16. The Gardeners would have none of that though – with their confidence soaring after the relentless fever in the fifth, they turned the temperature up even more so everyone was sick as shit. How would they rally again? By pretty much repeating the fifth inning by getting hit after hit after hit with no outs to fucking annihilate their opponent’s defense and morale.

Norton’s leadoff single started the show. Hersher walked, and a limping Snow came to the plate. And despite the leg injury, Snow didn’t back down and whopped a single to center to score Norton and move Hersher to third. A pinch runner took his place, and Watters took advantage of runners on base to hit an RBI single to left center for run number two of the inning.

Bad news here for The Good Guys – Gatta in the cleanup spot at the plate, two runners on, Gardeners down two.

And Gatta cleaned up all right. A shot of a double to left to score two and tie the game, 20-20. What the fuck is up now. The Gardeners are fucking back.

Silently Shields cleaned up with his fifth RBI of the game – the go-ahead RBI – with another double to score Gatta and put the Gardeners ahead for the first time all night, 21-20. After five-and-a-half innings, the Gardeners finally had the lead. And once they had it, their opponent was toast.

Edde up next cleaned in Shields with a single, and Friedman followed with a single as well. Eight straight runners on base (seven hits, one walk), and the Gardeners were in business. Warren fucked up and flew out, yet Preston up next pulled through again. He slashed a sliding double to left to score Edde from third and Friedman all the way from first, capping off the rally and putting the Gardeners’ run total at 24 for the night.

Up 24-20 heading into the bottom of the sixth, the Gardeners kept closer Mariano Rivera in the bullpen and let Edde finish off his complete game to the delight of Garden Hoe Margot and the other 70,000 fans in attendance. Finishing off The Good Guys he did in perfect fashion, striking out batter Cameron Frye to end the epic battle.

After Edde’s strikeout, the Gardeners rushed in in celebration, threw the goggles on, sprayed some champagne, pounded some brews, then were given keys to the city and every bar and restaurant in SF, including Cinch and Stud.

All-Star catcher Phil Zackler missed his fourth straight game as he fell asleep on his stove in the kitchen.

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Stat of the Week:

58%: Percentage of runs scored Tuesday night (14 of 24) with zero outs. Historically, the Gardeners have scored 30% of their runs with zero outs.

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9/13/2014

A heavy sandstorm swirled around Lance Harbor Moscone Field Tuesday evening while massive thunderstorms raged concurrently an hour before the Savage Gardeners’ regular season finale, threatening to postpone the Gardeners’ last chance at making the playoffs. Coupled with aftershocks from Hurricane Katrina from nine years ago, these brutal weather conditions looked to put the team out of commission for a week. Nevertheless, Bruce Almighty did his magic, the sandstorm and thunderstorms let up, and at 8:50pm sharp the third place Gardeners took to the plate as the away team against second place Gino & Carlo.

On a related note, none of the above weather conditions happened. It was a regular San Francisco night.

With the playoff format changed from last season from a one team left standing Hunger Games arena battle with bows and arrows and axes, to the top one or two teams in the division making the playoffs, the Gardeners had to adjust their strategy this season for reaching the Promised Land. Thus, the team called back their ace Mike Edde from mid-season retirement in the Adirondack Mountains to pitch the final game and close out his Cy Young-caliber season. And on Steve Smith Talking Bobblehead night (a figure of a preacher with chew swinging a bat), the fans came out in droves, spearheaded as usual by the ever-present group of Margot, Meredith, and Sophie in the players’ wives and girlfriends section.

The talking bobblehead, that is now retailing on eBay for $79.99, on pressing a button cycles through nonsense baseball chatter phrases such as, “Hummm now Steinbrenner,” “Hey now McGorts,” “Buttercup toaster toys now comin' in heayah,” “Squat n gobble heeweego now Edde boy put ter right there now boyyyeey,” and, “Thare’s a snake in my boot.”

On a related note, Smith led the team in batting average during the regular season, hitting at a .737 clip. This done with a bum shoulder and shoddy cleats – and a snake in his boot – yet overcome and compensated for with his big-time biceps.

Playing without left center fielder Ari Hersher (in Fiji scouting high school prospects for the farm system) and All-Star catcher Phil Zackler (waiting in line for the big event at the Apple store on Chestnut introducing the new Apple Macintosh computer), the oddsmakers favored Gino by three runs.

Idiots.

Except when they take “Money Talks’” supposed bookie killer Steve Stevens’ money. We’re all for that.

Without these two studs, the Gardeners entered the game severely in a hole from the start, looking for a way to make up for the loss of Hersher’s leadoff hits and stolen bases, as well as Zackler’s sacrifice flies and witty quips, specialties of both, on top of their ravishing good looks and massive quads.

Left center fielder Jason Friedman, after Eagle-Eye Cherry saved tonight with a stirring rendition of the National Anthem, slated in the leadoff spot led off the game with an on-base percentage booster with a walk. Left fielder Eric Snow, whose 1.000 fielding percentage during the game provided a huge boost to the Gardeners’ defense, followed with a double to right, the first of his three hits for the night. Manager Chris Norton’s well-crafted lineup proved its worth when shortstop Dave Watters in the three-spot doubled to left to score Friedman.

Burner first baseman Matt Mason put his dust goggles and hula hoops away and followed with a sacrifice fly to left to plate Snow, and right center fielder J.J. Warren somehow got a hit to score Watters and make it 3-0. Right fielder Dan Gatta later RBI’d in Warren with a two-out single to left push the lead to 4-0 heading into the bottom of the first.

Edde took over on the mound from there to a rousing ovation from the 41,915 fans (all Gardeners, including Jack Nicholson, Spike Lee, and Billy Chrystal) in attendance that missed his signature curveball in the previous week’s matchup. And took over like white settlers versus Choctaw Indians in 1831 during the Trail of Tears he did, producing a shutout inning, goading two 5-4 fielder’s choice plays from Norton to Dane Dobrinich at second, as well as a popout to Watters to end the inning.

Edde didn’t stop there, like the time in the “Boxer” skit where he disregarded the pink suit riding up on him and still followed through in crushing the garbage can with a baseball bat. He shut out Gino in the second and third as well, producing four flyouts and two groundouts, one to himself for the second out of the third to keep his career fielding percentage at 1.000, the same as Snow's.

These three defensive stalwart innings saw the Hardy Boys Book #55 Witchmaster’s Key Key Moments of the Game. The two groundouts to Norton in the first and one to Dobrinich in the third were handled unhurriedly and calmly for the should-be outs they should have been – and were. This contrasts to the opposite happening - Gino’s batters getting on base on should-be outs. Key underappreciated plays that go a long way – getting needed outs instead of prolonging the opponent’s hitting innings. These three infield plays set the tone defensively for the Gardeners.

Despite scoring none in the second, the Gardeners produced back-to-back-to-back singles by Snow, Watters, and Mason in the third to score one (Snow), and a double by Warren to score the others (Watters and Mason).

Up 7-0 in the fourth, they added another on Double-A callup catcher Shaun Johnson’s homer to right center.

Gino rallied in their half of the fourth to score five runs, yet were hampered from scoring more by Norton’s great play at third to get two of the three outs.

The first play was a runners on first and second force out at third, where batter Bobby Boucher hit a grounder in the hole to Watters at short. Seeing that the force at second was out of the picture, and that Watters still had a chance to make a play to him at third, Norton called for the throw that Watters made in time to get lead baserunner Red Beaulieu. Later in the inning, Norton stayed down on a grounder to whip a force to Dobrinich at second for the second out. Edde goaded a two-out bases-loaded flyout to Clark Stevens in right to get out of a jam and the Gardeners headed to the dugout pulling the momentum (Softball Winning Rule #3) back to their side.

Snow’s leadoff triple in the fifth pushed all the chips to the Gardeners’ seat at the table, simply making the general statement, “Aw nah, momentum is back on our side beetches.” Watters sac-flied him in, then Mason and Warren put two on for Edde. Edde laced a sharp single to center to score Mason, and Gatta followed with another RBI single to left to extend the Gardeners’ lead to 11-5.

The enemy scored two in their half, yet the Gardeners were too strong. And not just on the bench press and hack squat and reverse cable flyes – on the field as well. Their contagious hitting in the sixth proved their mettle as a playoff- and championship-worthy ball club, silencing any comeback by their opponent. Up 11-7 with two innings to play, singles by Johnson and Friedman put runners at first and second with two outs, though no runs yet to show for it.

Enter clutch time.

Watters singled to left to score Johnson for a 12-7 lead. Mason doubled in Friedman for his third hit of the day to make it 13-7. And somehow Warren got a hit again for Watters and Mason to score and push it to 15-7. Edde’s second RBI single of the night created a 16-7 lead, and at this juncture the Gardeners felt very comfortable with their lead and chances of getting six outs from Gino to finish them out dirty. Gino did score four in the sixth to bring it to 16-11, yet after none for the Gardeners' offense in the seventh, they locked it down in the final frame defensively, led by two huge clutch plays by Dobrinich at second.

Dobrinich stayed cool and calm on two grounders to him in the inning, getting a much-needed force at second for the first out and a putout to Mason at first for the second to squelch all of Gino’s attempts at coming back to challenge the Gardeners. A great play on a grounder by Watters up the middle at short closed it out for the 16-12 victory, and the Gardeners subsequently celebrated four minutes later with champagne showers in the locker room. Not because they made playoffs – which is still up in the air and out of their control – yet for another reason. Why the champagne showers? The answer is similar to a response made by legend Cal Naughton Jr. after being asked “Why do you want to listen to the TV with the stereo on?”

“Cause I like to party.”

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Stat of the Week:

Nine: Consecutive games won by the Gardeners at Lance Harbor Moscone Field (Moscone 2)

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9/06/2014

The Savage Gardeners’ sickness made a delayed arrival to Tuesday night’s game, showing up in the sixth inning after three-quarters of the fans had already gone home to catch the finale of “Hard Knocks.” [Spoiler alert: Matt Ryan and Julio Jones get cut.] This late onset of sickness was a welcome visitor for the Gardeners, who spent the first five innings against the Screwballs scoring two runs total. However, the contagion couldn’t carry into the later innings as the Gardeners ultimately lost at KKU Field in devastating extra-inning fashion, 11-10.

Granted, pitcher Corbin Shields and the Gardeners’ defense held the Screwballs to four runs through five innings, truly defining the softball game through five as a pitcher’s duel, a rare occurrence. For the fans who stayed to see the sixth inning though, they got their money’s worth (if they are fans who like high-scoring offensive games) as both teams combined to score 13 runs total in the inning – six by the Screwballs and seven by the Gardeners.

Earlier unfortunately, the Gardeners could get nothing going and subsequently no luck at all, like one of our writer’s Tinder matches. Left center fielder Ari Hersher, after leading off the game with – surprise, surprise – a hit, almost didn’t see another at-bat until the fourth inning, finally getting up again with two outs in the third. Which is unheard of with a ten-man lineup - going almost three innings without getting another turn at the plate. This can easily lead a player to being rusty in his next at-bat. Muscles get cold, benches get warm, and Ron Washington is still there in the corner doing coke.

Luckily, the Gardeners finally started getting warm once Garden Hoe Stacy Faber showed up in the sixth, when the Gardeners produced a hitting rally of Jimmy Connors-John McEnroe proportions. Or Yevgeny Kafelnikov-MaliVai Washington proportions, to name more well-known players.

However, Screwballs put some damage in the scoreboard by scoring three runs in the first, yet also successfully warming up the Gardeners’ outfielders by flying out to Jason Friedman in right center, Hersher in left center, and Double-A callup Casey Keenum in left field, respectively. Keenum had just flown in after adding a “Y” to his name and being cut by the Texans.

Such a dumb joke.

Screwballs scored another in the second, yet were suppressed from scoring more when right fielder Dan Gatta caught the third out of the inning, hustling into foul territory on batter Ned Nederlander’s foul ball, reaching into the stands for the grab, then flipping over with momentum into the seats onto Gardeners’ fan Jessica Alba’s lap.

Shortstop Dave Watters and first baseman Dane Dobrinich turned a sexy 6-3 double play in the third on hitter Dusty Bottom’s liner to Watters then throw to first to hold Screwballs scoreless in the inning.

Shields pitched three straight shutout innings starting in the third, allowing only two hits total and ending with a 1-2-3 fifth inning that ended on a hot liner to Dobrinich. The play before, Hersher had laid-out Mariners Ken Griffey-style (the young years) for out number two on batter Lucky Day’s liner to center. Hersher added another diving catch in the seventh to lead the team in diving catches for the night with two.

Watters at short did quite well though to keep up with Hersher’s defensive acrobatics. In the fourth he made an exact replica Willie-Mays over the shoulder grab on a bloop to short center. He yelled, “Go Giants!” after the catch as his teammates high-fived him for the play.

To tie Hersher in the Web Gem-worthy candidate category, Watters helped stymie Screwballs’ rally in the sixth with a great scoop of a rifled one-hopper to him at short; Dobrinich at first helped add to the lore of the play with a fantastic scoop of the throw to get Harry Flugleman at first. The ‘ol scoop-scoop combo play.

Thus, the Gardeners provided some peppery spice defensively, like a girl pepper spraying you for the seventh time.

What?

No one else has had that happen to them? Baloney.

Despite the defensive spice though, the Gardeners were shut out through three innings, and finally got on the board in the fourth on a one-out triple then back-to-back doubles by Watters, Shields, and Gatta, in order. With Watters’ triple, he took the team lead this season in triples with an insurmountable two.

Down 4-2, the Gardeners shut out Screwballs in the fifth then turned the shutout on themselves by putting up a zero as well.

The Screwballs blew up in the top of the sixth with six runs, punctuated by a hurtful grand slam that could’ve crushed the Gardeners’ hopes momentously, like when Kerri Strug fucked up her ankle. Yet like Strug, the Gardeners came back in epic fashion in their half of the sixth.

So weird that we admire sixteen-year old girls. Strug was actually nineteen years old at the time. Dominique Moceanu though - fourteen. Heyyyyyooooooooo.

Watters’ leadoff double and Shields’ single after set the stage and put the grass-fed meat and sweet potatoes on the table for Gatta in the five-spot. Gatta then roped the fifth homer of his career to deep left to score three and inject major life and Red Bull-like adrenaline into the Gardeners’ dugout. Operation Sickness implemented: Watters' cough led to a contagious cough by Shields’ which led to a whooping cough by Gatta. Gatta finished the night with four RBIs.

Second baseman Mike Gorman and catcher Matt Mason followed with singles to keep the sickness and hits going, and Dobrinich RBI’d in Gorman with an easy single to left. Keenum sac-flied in Mason to bring it to 10-7, moving a heads-up Dobrinich to second.

Hersher – coming up to the plate rocking out in MC Hammer pants as always to Calvin Harris’ “Summer,” (“When I met you in the summer…”) – then crushed his ninth career non-leadoff homer, to right, to bring it to 10-9. This game was now hot like the Mighty Ducks’ Connie Moreau then Katie in “Wet Hot American Summer.” Sorry Coop. Even though she might be…she’s got a pretty big nose.

Momentum carried the Gardeners into the seventh as they crushed Screwballs’ batters with at 1-2-3 inning, Shields’ goading back-to-back groundouts to him to close out the last two batters.

Down one in the seventh and final inning, the Gardeners kept the sickness rolling until weird shit started happening. A perfect relay strike (WTF?) from center field to the catcher made the first out. However, Gorman, Mason, and Manager third baseman Chris Norton loaded the bases for Dobrinich, who clutched an RBI single to left-center to score the tying run at ten-apiece.

Then weird shit happened again, as the Screwballs’ catcher got the second out of the inning as well on a 6-to-2 shortstop-to-catcher bases loaded fielder’s choice play. Catchers don’t make outs, WTF. Thus, the Gardeners got one back in the inning to force the game into extras, yet couldn’t hang on from there. The enemy scored one in the top of the eighth to go up 11-10, and the Gardeners couldn’t capitalize in their half as the final whistle ended.

Phil Zackler also missed his second game in a row to attend arts and crafts class (both Gardeners' losses). Coincidence?

Nevertheless, the Gardeners still (?) may have a chance at the playoffs? If they do, they’ll have to play next week without Hersher, who according to rumors got suspended for handing out $100 bills to strangers at Golden Gate Fields while purportedly on molly. Or he’s in Fiji.

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Stat of the Week:

19.0: Average runs scored by the Gardeners when Mike Gorman and Corbin Shields are in the lineup together. The team averages 16.4 runs a game.

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8/30/2014

Despite a strong lineup of sluggers finally playing Tuesday night, the Savage Gardeners couldn’t put together a strong challenge against their division leader, falling 20-12 to Ball So Hard University. The loss at KKU Field was the Gardeners’ second loss to them this season.

It’s very simple, as a few factors contributed to Ball So Hard’s playing better than the Gardeners:

1.) That pesky third baseman. Friedrich Von Trapp playing third base scooped up almost everything hit his way, plays that an average 0.0 WAR third baseman in the league wouldn’t make. As a team, the Gardeners grounded out four times to Von Trapp. While this may seem like a relatively low or average number (out of a total 21 outs in the game), the context hurt, as they grounded to Von Trapp twice with the bases loaded and twice with runners on first and second.

Replace Von Trapp with an average fielder, and let’s say half of those four outs get through to left field. That’s two or three more runs right there. And a momentum changer: one more hit that builds momentum, versus its antithesis, an out that slows momentum and ends or shortens innings.

Thus, this represented a situation that was out of the Gardeners’ control. Hard as it is to say, credit thus has to be given to Von Trapp for his play.

2.) WSOP (Warren’s Shitness Of Production) – J.J. Warren has grounded out to second base six times out of his 12 outs, twice on Tuesday. He’s terrible.

3.) PIZZA (Phil “Infallible” Zackler’s Zero Attendance) – Zackler missed Tuesday night’s game; thus the Gardeners lost.

As the away team, after Rammstein’s singing of the National Anthem, the Gardeners flipped a coin in the dugout and decided to bat left center fielder Ari Hersher in the leadoff spot this time. This was the first time Hersher batted leadoff since last week, or one game ago.

Hersher added to his career .730 leadoff batting average by slapping a single to right to start the game. Right center fielder Johnny Moran, in his first game this season as a Gardener, followed with a single as well, his first of three for the day.

This now showed how perfectly crafted the lineup was by Manager Chris Norton, as slugger shortstop Dave Watters stepped up with two on. Hit, hit, slugger – a perfect 1-2-3 punch to start off the game offensively for the Gardeners. This trio punch is mainly the case historically in the first inning with Hersher’s leading off and a solid consistent hitter like Moran or Eric Snow batting second.

Watters then lived up to his slugger status in the number-three spot by blasting a shot to.........oh shit, no.........he walked. Zero RBIs occurred.

First baseman Steve Smith, completing his farewell tour Derek Jeter-style and playing in his final game as a Gardener this season, made up for Watters’ non-RBIs by singling in Hersher to put the Gardeners up a perfect 1-0. Moran and Watters then scored on Warren’s fielder’s choice and almost double play grounder to second, where 50% of his outs go.

Ball So Hard showed their formidability by putting up a momentum-grabbing five runs in their half, which thus unfortunately set the tone for the game.

Triple-A callup second baseman Dane Dobrinich countered in the second by scoring after singling with one out, and at 5-4 this game portended to be a juggernaut classic.

Mike Edde on the mound crushed a shutout inning in the second, ending with a grounder by batter Max Detweiler up the middle that Watters nimbly scooped and hurled to Smith at first for the putout.

Nevertheless, the Gardeners couldn’t turn this momentum in their favor, not scoring in the third and allowing Ball So Hard to take over from there. And the enemy capitalized, putting up four runs to take a 9-4 lead heading into the fourth.

Your heroes put together a small two-out rally in the fourth with right fielder Corbin Shields and Smith producing RBI singles that scored Hersher and Moran, respectively.

And this is where disaster struck, like unplanned pregnancy in Texas El Paso with the Jagwoirs where sumbody gonna git pregnant oh my gawd.

A complete meltdown occurred with Ball So Hard’s batting in the fourth, as they pounded the Gardeners’ defense for eight runs, blowing the game open and demoralizing the Gardeners and even the Garden Hoe sisters Margot and Sophie, as well as the consistently present Meredith, sipping Chateau Lafite Rothschild like it ain’t no thang in the stands.

Always true – a 17-6 deficit isn’t insurmountable. Yet it seems the hardest thing the Gardeners have consistently struggled with is psychologically getting over a poor inning defensively or a large deficit, and coming back with the ferocity of a wild tiger or Holcombe on the rebound.

Edde singled to lead off the fifth and scored later on Dobrinich’s single a few batters later. So the Gardeners got one back, yet ceded two in the bottom half. They switched the scoring in the sixth, scoring two versus the opponent’s one, pushing the score to 20-9 heading into the final inning. Watters and Shields had provide a one-two punch in the sixth with Watters’ blast of a leadoff triple to center and Shields’ easy RBI single to left. Shields later scored on Norton’s bases loaded two-out single.

Down 20-9, the Gardeners pushed back to show some late-inning strength, starting with Hersher’s third single of the night. Moran singled him to second, and Watters singled next to load the bases. A fielder’s choice scored Hersher, and Smith in his final at-bat to a standing ovation by the 69,420 fans in attendance singled to close out his 2014 season, yet hopefully not his Gardeners’ career. A single by Warren and a double by Edde to right center RBI’d in Watters and Smith, respectively, for the Gardeners’ final two runs.

Smith’s final hit closed his season out at a league-leading .737 batting average, which may likely stay atop the leaderboard through the end of the season. What needs to be pointed out is the impressive feat that leading the league in hitting is by Smith, who played the season with a bad shoulder and rented cleats not from the Out of the Closet thrift store on Polk, yet from the homeless man sleeping in front of Out of the Closet with his pants half-down, like half of all homeless people in the city.

On that note, R.I.P. Bushman.

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Stat of the Week:

89%: This season, if the Gardeners’ leadoff batter of an inning got on base, they’ve scored a run that inning 89% of the time. If he got out, that number drops to 57%.

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8/23/2014

The Savage Gardeners are heating up at just the right time. Playoffs are looming around the corner like a shirt-unbuttoned pedophile, as is a rematch with division leader Ball So Hard University. And the Gardeners are playing great ball, heading into week six in second place in the division and 3½ games ahead of the Montreal Expos for the first wild-card spot in the American League.

On a related note, a few Gardeners players have started a business selling Montreal Expos toothpaste. Spread the word, taking pre-orders in two weeks.

Tuesday night at Lance Harbor Moscone Field, the Gardeners rolled over division doormat Team Mauna Loa in a whopper, 21-6. The Loa scored three garbage runs in the sixth and final inning to try to make their score respectable; it really wasn’t respectable though, because they suck.

What this means though, is that once again, pitcher Mike Edde dominated on the mound, only allowing three runs in the other five innings. Actually, the Loa scored one in the first and two in the second – and that was it until the sixth. Three straight shutout innings from Edde from the third through fifth – once again remarkable, and putting his total at 18 shutout innings in 35 pitched, a rocking 51% of innings. His 18 shutout innings through five games has surpassed the 2013 Summer Season’s full-season total of 17. Boom boom pow.

He also almost hit for the cycle, knocking a single, double, and a triple while scoring three times and producing five RBIs. Thus Edde’s production by itself – three runs scored, five knocked in, for eight runs total – beat the Loa’s total team production. Edde alone on the mound and batting at the plate could’ve beat the entire nine-man squad of Mauna Loa, a William Wallace-esque one-against-nine smackdown. The Loa players probably spend too much of their time playing pop-a-shot.

(Cue TV show laugh track) HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Or playing too much Buck Hunter.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Or paying cash too much since the bar doesn’t take credit cards.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Or using the men’s bathroom where people in the bar can see the men inside peeing when the door opens.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Ahhhh jokes that are relevant to the bar. Sooooooooooooooooo funny.

Also, apparently Alanis Morissette’s song “You Oughta Know” – you know, “You…you…you……..oughta know” – was sung about Uncle Joey from “Full House.”

We are now smarter.

What matters is that Edde’s combo of stellar pitching and solid hitting earned him the Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game Award for the second time this season (in five games). Incredible for the front-runner for Rookie of the Year and the Cy Young Award, especially with Garden Hoe Margot on hand and the newly recruited Garden Hoe duo of Kat and Char wearing “Edde” jerseys bought from the dugout store and sitting in the players’ girlfriends' and wives' section of the stands. The slew of Edde jerseys and consistently present Garden Hoe Meredith as well complemented the wine and cheese party in the stands, standard for San Francisco stadium baseball food. This compares to Oakland stadium baseball food sold at that one concession stand in the whole stadium, with options of delicacies like raw hamburgers, stale nachos from the 2008 season, and sewer mud.

The six-inning shortened game due to the Gardeners’ dominance saw a slew of hits, bats, and arms-flailing opponents’ defense. After Piper Perabo’s sexy singing of the National Anthem using her “Coyote Ugly” singing voice, our hometown heroes led off the hitting, playing this week as the away team. They started off in control by scoring one in the first, after left center fielder Ari Hersher’s leadoff double, right fielder Eric Snow’s half sacrifice fly that moved Hersher to third, and shortstop Dave Watters’ full sacrifice fly to move Hersher home. Hersher has led off the game getting on base 9-out-of-his-last-10 times, mainly due to his walkup song he has grown to love and can't get out of his head, Calvin Harris’ “Summer.” (“When I met you in the summer…”)

Once again, we mention the song solely to not get it stuck in your head.

The Loa scored one in the first, yet after that it was all over.

After making the final out defensively for the Gardeners in left in the bottom of the first, left fielder Ryan Preston led off the second with a single. Edde’s following him got his only out for the day out of the way with a disheartening liner that Loa’s pitcher Brian Fantana made a great lucky snag at for the out.

Yet with one out, the Gardeners didn’t feel threatened or lose hope. Not at all, especially with second baseman Phil Zackler dressed all in red coming to the plate. After ambling to the game four minutes before game time while leisurely on a conference call, Zackler made his nonchalant appearance known quickly by needing no time to warm up. His single through the hole in left put himself aboard with Preston. Double-A callup Tanner MacDiarmid then bucked all minor league callup trends by getting a single in his first at-bat, loading the bases.

[In an impressive note, MacDiarmid in his first appearance as a Gardener went a stellar 5-for-5 at the plate. Normally most substitute players/callups perform poorly when thrown into the fire with no practice or prior relations with the Gardeners, except for the occasional past hookup partner. What? So MacDiarmid was a great call by the Gardeners’ front office.]

Now with the bases loaded, Hersher – who was at happy hour in SOMA 40 minutes earlier and was probably hammered from seventy ice luge shots – stepped up and roped his second double of the day, this one down the line in right to score Preston and Zackler. Snow kept the two-RBI theme going with a single to center that then pushed MacDiarmid and Hersher across.

Back-to-back singles by roommates Watters and first baseman Dan Gatta loaded the bases, and later with two outs third baseman and Manager Chris Norton pulled through with a clutch single to right to score two more runs in Snow and Watters. Preston in his second at-bat of the inning kept the rally alive with a single to right as well, bringing Edde to the plate. And Edde’s first bases-loaded plate appearance was a beauty – a double to center that produced the fourth two-RBI hit of the inning, with Gatta and Norton scoring easily. After this eight-run onslaught of four two-RBI hits, the Gardeners clearly asserted their control over the game, heading into the bottom of the second with a 9-1 lead, your typical end-of-first-quarter NFL score.

The Loa’s two runs in their half made it 9-3, yet after this they didn’t score for 11 straight outs, until one out in the sixth inning.

Gatta hit an RBI double down the line in left in the third, and after the first scoreless inning for Loa in their half, the Gardeners struck for more. Back-to-back one-out walks by Edde and Zackler in the fourth led to a MacDiarmid RBI double to score Edde. With runners on second and third, Hersher and Zackler pulled the perfect suicide squeeze next to catch the Loa off-guard.

With Zackler taking a strong lead off third against the righty pitcher Fantana facing him, he dared him to pick him off, goading him with his tongue out and taunting, “Pitcher’s got a big butt, pitcher’s got a big butt.” Nevertheless, once Fantana started his delivery towards the plate, Zackler bolted towards home Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez-style. Hersher laid down the perfect already-moving-towards-first-even-though-he’s-in-the-right-side-batter’s-box bunt that dribbled down the first-base side. The second baseman charging had only one play to make – to get the out at first – as Zackler with his speed had scored and was already back in the dugout smoking a cigar and doing mid-inning pushups when the successful squeeze play finally ended with umpire Ed Hochuli making the "out" call at first.

With two outs now, Snow’s hard-hit bloop double to center moved MacDiarmid to third, and Watters cleaned them both in with another single to push the score to 14-3, apparently a normal football score? I’m Ron Burgundy? [Editors note: Yes, that Ron Burgundy phrase has been used before in prior game summaries. Yet it’s applicable in this case. And in any case. It never gets old. Just like watching “Love Actually” for the fiftieth time. Never gets old.]

Edde’s second shutout inning led to a four-run top of the fifth for the Gardeners, with Norton and Preston starting the rally with a leadoff single and double, respectively. Edde – on his way to earning the Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game Award, as stated – then added the Kelly Evans CNBC Hot Drive of the Game with a slashing triple to right, the Gardeners’ second of the season (Jason Friedman provided the first last week), to score Preston and Norton easily, easier than counting backward from 1,728 by 43.

Zackler – after Watters had tied Zackler's career-lead in sacrifice flies with one in the first – then got pissed and decided to earn back his claim to the title. And as the career leader, it was easy done and said, as he sac-flied in Edde for the Gardeners’ 17th run and Zackler's 11th sac-fly of his career.

He now averages a sacrifice fly one out of roughly every 16 plate appearances. Beat that.

Watters added his fourth RBI of the night – and only 232nd of his career – later in the inning with a two-out single. As pointed out during the game, Watters only has 127 more RBIs than the Gardener with the second most.

And if Zackler keeps up his sacrifice fly pace and only hit sacrifice flies for every at-bat here on out, and Watters retired from the sport today, Zackler could catch Watters in RBIs with only 2,750 more plate appearances.

Up 18-3 going into the bottom of the fifth, the Gardeners kept it that way with another shutout inning. Snow risked injury for the first out by making a running grab in right field, then moved to first base thereafter to avoid more harm to his much needed body (and glove and arm and bat and laugh). With one out now and a runner on first, Loa batter Ed Harken lined a shot straight to Watters at short. Watters easily made a heads-up play after the catch, gunning the ball to Snow covering first to double off Loa baserunner Brick Tamland and end the inning.

Snow and Watters had also combined for a stellar defensive play in the third inning, when with a runner on first and two outs, Watters fielded a grounder at short, yet due to a minor earthquake and a heavy gust of wind the throw to Zackler for the force at second went awry. Nevertheless, Snow in right was backing up the play as the trained in fundamentals outfielder he is. Batter Champ Kind had rounded first, yet seeing that he couldn’t make it to second on the overthrow, tried to return to first. Snow backing up the play fired to Gatta at first for the tag and final out of the inning, your classic 6-10-3 out in the scorebook.

On the topic of common scorebook out entries, in the second inning with one out and runners on first and second, a bloop hit to short left center was charged hard by Friedman in right center; making another heads-up play for the Gardeners, Friedman fired to Norton at third for the lovely right center fielder-to-third baseman force out, or 9-5 in the scorebook. Norton followed that second out in the second inning with an unassisted force putout at third for the third out; the third inning came around and Norton continued his hot glove with outs one and two of the inning, a groundout then a force at second, respectively. He made four outs at third base in a row. That’s what this comes down to. Hawt corner.

The top of the sixth added three more for the Gardeners, on the heels of RBIs from Edde, MacDiarmid, and Hersher. Loa scored a garbage three in their half, as stated before, yet that was all folks. This ended up as the third game this season with the opponent’s scoring seven runs or less. This is especially noteworthy, when, heading into the season, Gardeners’ opponents averaged 14 runs per game. Edde and the Gardeners' defense is consistently bringing their opponents’ run total this season to half the normal average.

The Gardeners are simply hot right now. Lotta right-swipes. And they’re playing great softball too.

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Stat of the Week:

.741.........Team career batting average with the bases loaded. The team batting average in all other situations (a.k.a. without the bases loaded) is 155 points lower, at .586.

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8/16/2014

Slumdog Millionaire.

That was a movie. And it has no relation to the Savage Gardeners whatsoever.

Tuesday night’s bought with the Big Bamboos turned into an easy win early at KKU Field, as the Gardeners put up a safety and a field goal in the first inning to never look back. In the 23-14 victory, they scored five in the first, finally broke over the 20-run mark this season, and did not let go of their lead at all - unlike Rose Dawson, who let go of Jack and let him drown in the iceberg waters after specifically saying, “I’ll never let go Jack, I’ll never let go.” Huge bitch.

Despite allowing 14 runs against the Bamboos, half of those runs came in the fifth inning, on a Ray Lucas to Oronde Gadsden 70-yard TD pass. That means though that the other seven runs were spread out over the other six innings – namely three innings actually where the Bamboos weren't shut out. Pitcher Mike Edde once again kept the Gardeners’ opponent on its toes, this time throwing 62% sliders throughout his complete game according to PITCHf/x. His three shutout innings added to his season total of 15 shutout innings out of 29, a rate of more than 50%. As a comparison, the Gardeners had 19 shutout innings in the entire last season (out of 53 innings, or 36% of innings), and 17 of 56 (30%) the season before. Edde has almost reached those absolute marks, and we're only halfway through the season.

Many Gardeners players easily could have earned the Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game Award and the cars, cash, celebrity and chicks that are the perks of the award. First baseman Steve Smith was an easy candidate with his 3-for-3 night at the plate, raising his batting average to a sloppiddy doppy dop .786. He’s 9-for-his-last-9 (that’s 1.000 mathematically), despite playing handicapped with handmade Fila cleats he brought back from South Africa after stealing them from a nine-year old emaciated kid during a street soccer game where all they could muster was using a pillow of chicken feathers as a soccer ball.

Shortstop Dave Watters played a solid game and had sweet-looking stats as well, going 4-for-5 with five RBIs. Right fielder Dan Gatta went 4-for-5 as well; fellow outfielder Ari Hersher - 3-for-4 with three doubles.

With so many options, the parents took over and decided no one would win the Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game Award, and instead gave everyone a participation blue ribbon that reads, “Your the best!” in shiny gold lettering. And yes, the dumb parents spelled “You’re” wrong on the ribbons. No kudos for them. Or even Kudos bars.

During Tuesday night’s game as well, one of our research and development employees here at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY), while watching the game in the ESPN video production booth, came up with an idea for a new stat and immediately put it to work – catcher ERA.

Since catchers are calling pitches behind the plate, they are directly responsible for pitches as well, and thus we believe they should share the pitcher’s ERA. Thus, with catcher ERA, we can compare how different catchers are effective calling pitches (fastball, slider, spitball, etc.; as well as location, pitch framing, etc.), and how many runs per inning are given up when a certain catcher is behind the plate.

Catcher’s ERA is denoted CERA, in honor of Michael Cera in his Oscar-winning Best Actor performance in “Superbad.” Catcher’s ERA is simply Runs Scored divided by Innings. Runs scored by the opponent while catching, divided by the number of those innings caught. Currently Phil Zackler has a 1.00 CERA (an average of one run scored per inning by the opponent when he catches, 10 runs in 10 innings this season). Double-A callup Matt Todd has a 1.00 CERA as well (7 runs, 7 innings), and Casanova Matt Mason’s CERA is 1.42 (17 runs, 12 innings). The rainbow wheel on our computers is still spinning and loading calculating our algorithm for past years and career stats.

Since we patented the CERA statistic and the likes of ESPN, Yahoo! Sports, Bleacher Report, etc. contracted with us to use our statistic, we get paid every time we mention it, like ad clicks. So CERA CERA CERA. Marsha Marsha Marsha. Penis penis penis, vagina vagina vagina. RIP Lance Harbor again.

Big Bamboos started off in a formidable way by scoring three runs in the first, putting a slight non-scare in the Gardeners since they are proven fearless, like the 300 Spartans. Thus, the team rallied in the dugout between innings due to a rousing Jimmy Dugan-esque speech by Manager Chris Norton and got their act together (one excerpt overheard from the speech was, “Baseball is what gets inside you. It’s what lights you up, you can’t deny that…If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great”).

Leadoff batter Hersher, after changing his walk-up song to Calvin Harris’ “Summer” (“When I met you in the summer...”), took his time humming the song is his head between pitches (“When I met you in the summer…”) and walked (“When I met you in the summer…”) to lead off the game (“When I met you in the summer…”).

As a precaution, do not get the song stuck in your head. Cause it’s awesome.

Left fielder and lefty batter Eric Snow followed with a walk as well – the fourth of his career (in 178 plate appearances). Watters batting in the third spot for the first time since last week then did what he does best – lift the heaviest weights in the Union Crunch gym. He also hit a double to right center to score Hersher. No longer a shutout. Infinity ERA for Bamboos' pitcher Aaron Samuels.

Runners on second and third now – cleanup batter Dan Gatta up. Boom goes the dynamite – lined single to left in classic Body By Gatta fashion to score Snow and Watters and tie the game. This was the first of Gatta’s four hits on the night.

As the inning continued, the Gardeners moved a few runners around through some outs until the pitcher Edde came to the plate wearing his 1993 SF Giants Starter jacket to keep his pitching arm warm. The jacket didn’t restrict his movement at all as he roped a double to center to score two more for a Gardeners’ lead of 5-3. Since the Gardeners held the lead from then on, technically Edde hit the go-ahead RBI. And he got the win as the pitcher. Quite the accomplishment. Deserving of the Julie the Cat Gaffney Cool Fact of the Game.

With the Garden Hoes M-squared duo of Meredith and Margot getting their resveratrols on drinking red wine in the stands, it’s no surprise that Watters and Edde had much success in the inning.

Edde followed his two-RBI hit in the first with a shutout inning on the mound in the second. As All-Star catcher Phil Zackler worked behind the plate this inning, the fans saw the Bud Light Denver Broncos Commercial Defensive Play of the Game, Zackler’s first of the honor.

With one out, batter Trang Pak laid a whopping bunt half a foot in front of the plate that stopped dead deep in the dirt. Zackler in classic Bobby Estalella form – he has the physical attributes of him as well – threw off his mask, scrambled from behind the plate with perfect step-step-step-step-plant-and-throw footwork, and gunned the ball down to Smith at first for the out. He had sex with 1,001 women after the game because of the play, true fact.

The Gardeners’ half of the second brought another leadoff walk, this one from Smith protecting his shoulder. A double to right ensued next from Hersher. Snow then hit the hardest shot of the night – unfortunately a liner straight to shortstop Cady Heron. Watters then did what he does best again – set up a classic poker atmosphere in KKU’s garage. He also hit a single to left to score Smith and Hersher, and it was finally a good score for a football squares pool, 7-3. Except for the first-play safety in the Broncos-Seahawks Super Bowl, which fucked up everyone’s squares. Or made the pool awesome. Fuck you sevens, threes, zeros, and fours people.

Later in the inning with two outs, Mason swung at a pitch that was about five feet inside, head-high. And clearly he roped it to left center for a standing double to score two more in Gatta and right center fielder Jason Friedman. Norton’s smooth single to center next put Mason across and now it was 10-3. Fuck you again 10-3 football squares person.

Edde’s next inning on the mound was predictable – a shutout inning. Gatta made a great deep catch in right and Watters scooped a sharp liner at short with a fancy flip to Zackler at second to close out the inning.

The third inning saw the third-straight leadoff walk for the Gardeners, this one by Zackler, a feat that has never been done before in the history of softball – three straight leadoff walk innings. Snow later singled him in, and Watters next did what he does best – fix things like a handyman. He also added RBIs four and five with another single to push it to 13-3.

The Bamboos vomited out three runs in the fourth, yet the Gardeners kept pouring it on in their half.

The fourth almost saw an unprecedented fourth leadoff walk for the Gardeners. However, Norton would have none of it. With a 3-1 count, Norton received a pitch clearly about to land ten feet short of the plate. In a classic display of awesomeness, Norton swung with the clear intention of missing and getting another pitch to hit. And like a champion his strategy pulled through obviously, as on the next pitched he lined a single to center. It was the second purposely-swing-and-miss-to-avoid-a-walk move in Gardeners’ history, joining Watters in the club, who also got a hit on the subsequent full-count pitch when he did it a few seasons back.

With Norton on first, Edde lined one down the third base line for his second double of the night, pushing Norton to third. Zackler’s fielder’s choice scored one, and Smith’s second hit of the night put him on base as well with Zackler. Hersher’s double to right center RBI’d in Zackler, even though RBI is not a verb. Yet now it is, because we said so. With runners on second and third, or RISP – Reliably Immaculate defenSive Play – Snow singled through the hole in right to score roommates and bunk bed mates Smith and Hersher. Watters then did what he does best – cooked a pan of delicious cauliflower. He also followed with his first non-RBI hit of the night, a double to left.

Gatta’s third of four hits moved a hustling Snow home and moved Watters to third; Friedman’s sac-fly to left moved in Watters and now the Gardeners had a 19-6 lead. The Bamboos erupted for seven in the fifth to bring it to 19-13; however, that’s about as far as they could get, as Edde and the Gardeners’ defense locked it down for the final two innings as expected. They worked a 1-2-3 sixth, punctuated by Gatta’s running catch in foul territory in right field for out number three.

A solo shot led off the seventh for Big Bamboos, and there was a slight pungent smell in the air of their blowing up for a bunch of hits. However, Norton playing third called it all off, saying, “Play’s at one, take your time” when next batter Shane Oman stepped up. Literally on the next pitch, Oman grounded one right to Norton. He cleanly fielded the grounder, took his time, and made the play at one for the first out and Big Bamboos’ momentum-crusher.

In the interim at the plate, the Gardeners scored two in the fifth on RBI doubles apiece from Smith and Hersher. The two men, sometimes nicknamed Dale and Brennan, combined scored seven of the Gardeners’ 23 runs, 30% of the team’s total.

The team’s lone triple of the season - by Friedman - scored Gatta in the sixth; Mason RBI’d him in for the 23rd run, and the Gardeners headed into the seventh with a comfortable lead, ultimately closing it out 23-14, the same score as the Tennessee Oilers-Pittsburgh Steelers game in Week 11 of the 1998 NFL season.

And apparently the Steelers and Eagles created a merged team in 1943 called the Steagles.

Man you can do a lot with this. No one cares about the Bills or Vikings – combine them to become the Bikings. Baltimore could combine with Mason’s favorite team (Green Bay) to become the aptly named Ravers. Or throw the Bills and Bengals together for another of Mason's current favorites, the Bi-gals. There’s the Jewboys. The 4skins. The Taints. What the fuck are we at USASSY doing wasting our time here.

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Stat of the Week:

1.25: Average number of RBIs each time Dave Watters comes to the plate with runners in scoring position (RISP) in his career

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8/09/2014

Like a child using multiple watercolors to create a masterpiece of varied colors, the Savage Gardeners Tuesday night mixed together the essentials of quality baseball to produce a 13-7 victory. At Lance Harbor Moscone Stadium against first-place Gino & Carlo, the Gardeners combined solid hitting, consistent defense, Cy Young-caliber pitching, and Vince Coleman-like baserunning to boost their record to 2-1 after the easy win.

Pitcher Mike Edde once again kept the opponents on their toes, pitching four shutout innings. In addition, he threw a slew of sinkers that many of Gino & Carlo players ended up lunging for off-balance, rolling over into grounders to Manager Chris Norton at third. Norton made at least five putouts on grounders and a liner, and an additional out in a pickle play between third and home with catcher Matt Todd, who took a short break from Tinder to catch Norton’s relay yet keep Tinder in mind by right-swiping baserunner Gus Polinski for the out.

Edde kept throwing his usual dominant stuff, garnering a whopping three 1-2-3 innings. Luckily, the July 31st trade deadline has passed, and David Price and Jon Lester were snatched away and are no longer trade bait for Edde.

He was backed by solid consistent defense in the field, as the Gardeners played an almost error-free game (there probably was one somewhere in there), while ceding very few extra bases (Softball Winning Rule #2) with sharp relay throws on top of the lack of hits that Gino & Carlo produced off of Edde.

With a scrambled lineup where the Gardeners had to dig into three levels of their farm system to grab players – Triple-A (David Yanover), Double-A (Todd), and Single-A (Mike Gloves) – the Gardeners had a raw slew of bottom-of-the-order batters from the get-go.

[As a side note, Yanover has played a few times in the big leagues and is mostly accessible and available when the Gardeners need replacement players. Thus, he spends most of his time at the Triple-A level in Des Moines; Todd was making his major-league debut and is known by the players, yet is stuck in Oaxaca, Mexico, with the Double-A team; Gloves was a substitute of a substitute – hence Single-A.

We also don't know Gloves' last name, so he got donned the surname Gloves because he wore batting gloves.]

Nevertheless, the minor-league call-ups added value to the team and overall helped the Gardeners in the victory. Todd got the most action all night, as he played catcher squatting behind the plate – or technically five feet to the right behind the plate – and thus was involved in every play. That action likely continued back at the Lookout at Duboce Triangle in the Castro where he lives, and also later than that when accessing Tinder and Grindr simultaneously. Right-swiping everyone. Just as long as you don’t forget which app is which when you’re using them.

The home team Gardeners set things right defensively to start the game, getting a lovely three-up, three-down beauty in the top of the first against Gino & Carlo batters “Dave,” “Dom,” and “Jon,” according to the yellow underside of the scorebook. We think they could’ve been Dave Henderson, Dom DiMaggio, and Jon Jay – a formidable 1-2-3 trio, and there’s still debate about that being the top of their lineup. However, we’ll play it safe with their real identities, which actually have now been confirmed as Kevin McAllister, Fuller McAllister, and Buzz McAllister.

Long story short, they all got out. They suck. Fuck them.

The colder air and unfamiliarity with Lance Harbor Moscone Field (the Gardeners haven’t played there since September 24th, 2013, or a 315-day stretch) contributed to the Gardeners’ cold bats and slow warm-up, as they couldn’t produce anything in the first inning except for spiking the female fans’ libidos through the roof. Some of the weird European tourists behind the backstop filming the game were also overheard saying shit in German or Danish or Bosnian like “Le vieil home mange raisin rouge por le diner,” which we believe translates to, “We should rape that team’s third hitter (Dave Watters).”

Gino & Carlo got on the scoreboard in the top of the second with three runs, scoring twice on fielder’s choices, one being a groundout to a one-shouldered Steve Smith at first base, who played the grounder Jim Abbott-like perfectly – switch glove hand, field grounder, make out, sex ladies.

A flyout to Jason Friedman in right center easily ended the rally, and the Gardeners took complete control from there.

In the bottom half, one-out singles by Edde, Smith, and Yanover scored the Gardeners’ first run (Edde). Todd then followed with a perfectly executed Texas League single to short left to load the bases. Single-A call-up Gloves then singled to short to score one and bring it to 3-2, keeping the bases loaded for left center fielder Ari Hersher’s sacrifice fly to left center to tie the game. The contagion kept spreading and momentum carried in the Gardeners’ favor, as Friedman and Watters both hit RBI singles to push the score to 5-3, Gardeners (obvies), heading into the third.

Gino plopped down two in the third to tie it at five-apiece; nevertheless, that was the closest they ever got to Holy Grail Gardeners’ God-like immortal Brad Pitt status, and they were left in the dust (or infield dirt, to use a baseball term) from then on.

Norton’s smooth single to center led off the third. Smith’s second single of the night moved him to second, and Yanover’s second single as well scored him to put the Gardeners ahead for good now, 6-5. Classic WNBA final score.

The fourth and fifth innings saw an early-years Tim Lincecum-like performance from Edde, as he produced two straight 1-2-3 innings – six straight outs. Actually seven straight outs, including the final out of the third inning.

In between, Hersher scored a run for the Gardeners to push the score to 7-5. The scoreboard displayed a close score mathematically, yet did not accurately portray the Gardeners’ control over the game.

After Edde’s shutout fifth, the bats came alive once again, like rallying after a nap after getting hammered day drinking. And none other than Edde was there to start the contagion of an inning full of hit after hit, like a Taylor Swift album or a Ray Rice-Greg Hardy double-date.

The one-shouldered Smith followed Edde with a double to left center, Edde moving to third on the play. Yanover’s third RBI single of the night scored Edde, and the Gardeners were headed to poundtown. Especially with Todd up next. And Todd added to the poundtown with his second single of the night, a rocketed rocket to shortstop to score Smith and make it 9-5. Yep, 9-5, as in a 9-to-5 job. Nine p.m. to five a.m. In Vegas. Which means you’re a hooker. Okay, so how much.

With two runs in already, the Gardeners looked to add more later in the inning with Friedman at the plate with higher stakes than usual. And by high stakes, we mean there were runners on second and third with two outs. And by higher stakes, we mean there may have been a bet in the dugout where they considered making Friedman buy beers if he got out.

Friedman said, “Fuck that bet,” and roped his third single of the night, to left to score both runners, making it 11-5. He and Watters scored later in the inning, and finally the Gardeners had extended their lead to where it deserved to be, a comfortable 13-5, your typical NHL score.

Gino & Carlo sliced in two runs in the sixth, yet that was it for their offense. Smith in the bottom half added his fourth hit of the night to raise his season average to a lovely .727. Just think – if he had two good shoulders instead of just one, he’d be batting double that, a 1.454 batting average. Damn that would be sweet.

Once again the Gardeners trotted Edde out in the final inning to finish his complete game, pitching a final shutout inning to earn the win. With ten shutout innings in his last fifteen pitched, Edde is clearly the hands-down favorite to win the Cy Young this year. He’s handled it well, especially since he’s played with three different catchers in his three games he’s pitched this season (Phil Zackler in week one, Matt Mason in week two, and Todd on Tuesday).

Zackler missed Tuesday’s game as usual because of community service. Mason up until game-time was debating if he could make it or not. There was a show or his brother was in town or he was in Spain or he had to work or Shab was texting him.

Nevertheless, Edde has proved his dominance on the mound regardless of who catches him. Our R&D department at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) is still working on normalizing ERA for softball so we can have a relative ERA stat similar to baseball that is easy to understand. Softball pitching stats are skewed though, so it’s probably fruitless.

Needless to say, with the advance of sabermetrics, baseball has progressed immensely, and it's cool that nerds are taking over the world. The downside is that some of these new sabermetric statistics take a few minutes – or forever – to wrap one’s head around, like ERA+, EqA, wRC+, FIP, and UZR, for example. Yet it's been confirmed that if you want to impress a girl, simply explain to her step-by-step the formula for wOBA: [(0.72 * NIBB) + (0.75 * OBP) + (0.90 * 1B) + (0.92 * RBOE) + (1.24 * 2B) + (1.56 * 3B) + (1.95 x HR) ]/ PA.

Instant love.

All we need to know though is that, according to our calculations, all Gardeners players have a season WAR above 8.0 (a WAR of 8.0+ is a Hall of Fame-caliber level).

Until we progress into relative softball sabermetric stats, though, we’re sticking with traditional stats to look at career leaders in stats like hits (Watters), runs (Hersher), lefty hits (Snow), bunt homers (team tie with zero), foul balls that hit the tall light fixture down the right field line (Hersher), curse words (Casey Cole), and frustrated hat spikes (Zackler).

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Stat of the Week:

17-for-41 (.415): Batting average of last-second substitute players who have only played one career game with the Gardeners (Single-A call-ups). Take out Lair guys and it drops to a .357 average.

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8/03/2014

Pitcher Mike Edde singlehandedly crushed the Screwballs Tuesday night, plain and simple. In the Savage Gardeners’ 8-6, eight-inning victory over their green-jerseyed opponent at KKU Field, Edde made 57 putouts as well as pitching a gem to hold the Screwballs to a measly six runs.

He actually pitched a shutout through five innings. Let’s say it – that’s remarkable. Screwballs scored two in the sixth, and it would’ve only been one in the seventh if an error by J.J. Warren/Brooks Conrad at second base didn’t lead to extra hits and therefore extra runs, in this case three more, that tied the game at 6-6 to push it to extras and drama-time. Conrad’s play that awarded Screwballs extra runs (Softball Winning Rule #1) earned the Boss Johnson Anti-Defensive Play of the Game Award.

This game got too close in the end. The Gardeners were clearly the better team. And their defense Tuesday – pretty much flawless. They displayed their Herculean skill defensively when they got the first – and second – out to start off the game. In the bottom of the first with runners on first and second, Screwballs batter Adam Banks hit a bouncer back to Edde. Edde quickly turned – and here’s where the stellarness of the play comes in – and tossed the ball towards second with no one yet on the bag. He knew, however, that shortstop Dave Watters would be closing in on second soon enough. The timing was perfect, as Watters caught the toss at second and relayed to Steve Smith at first for the 1-6-3 double play to get the first two outs of the inning. Hours of practice at Phoenix Municipal Stadium during Spring Training made the Edde-leading-Watters throw look as easy as not dunking. Because it’s pretty easy to not dunk. The play pleased the female fans as well, wetting the bleachers.

Right fielder Eric Snow rounded out the first with a well-positioned catch of a tailing liner off Charlie Conway’s bat for the third out of the inning. “Film study,” he quoted after the game in his Phil Knight-sponsored locker, when asked about the catch. “Simply was in the film room at 4am this morning studying tendencies. Always prepared.”

His diligence helped at the plate as well, as he produced three hits, contributing to his team-leading OPS. of 1.792.

The Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game Award easily went to Edde. Pitching a shutout through five and only allowing two runs through six innings deserves an accolade of its own. In fact, if the game had ended there, he would’ve finished with a pitching game score of 100, third place all-time, just behind Matt Cain’s perfect game (101 game score, game attended by left centerfielder Ari Hersher) and Kerry Wood’s 20-strikeout game (105).

The Edde-Watters-Smith double play also earned the Bud Light Denver Broncos Commercial Defensive Play of the Game.

The competition for defensive play of the game was ridiculously heated, as the Gardeners all night provided gem after gem that overloaded and overheated SportsCenter’s Web Gems video room. Snow’s catch to close out the first was up there. As was left fielder Ryan Preston’s diving catch in the fifth inning. Or Edde’s snagging of a liner to his left. We could go all night. Unless we took a NyQuil, Ambien, and melatonin combination. Then we’d probably get sleepy.

There were so many plays of the game (Defensive Play of the Game, Clutch Hit of the Game, Play of the Game, etc.) we feel like youth soccer where everyone gets a participation trophy. Yet in this case, unlike in participation-trophy events, these plays were earned and were legit epic plays. So people who get bummed that you don’t get a participation trophy, go fuck off and have a second Strawberry Kiwi Capri Sun from the unwashed cooler that parent brought.

Before the Gardeners’ rally-stopping solid defensive bottom of the first however, they had put one on the board with a superlative play of its own. Leading off a game for the Gardeners for the 67th time in his career 69 games played, Hersher played his leadoff role to perfection, getting on base. And by getting on base, we mean he knocked a solo leadoff homer to right to put the Gardeners ahead, 1-0, earning the Kelly Evans CNBC Hot Drive of the Game. Twas his fifth game-leadoff homer of his career. Thus, mathematically, he hits a leadoff solo home run every 11.8 games. Rickey never did that. And by Rickey we don’t mean leadoff champion Rickey Henderson. Or Ricky Watters. We mean the greatest Ricky athlete of all-time, Ricky Bobby.

“Bat. It handled real good,” Hersher quoted in a soft voice after the game, when asked about where he learned to hit his leadoff homer like that. “I felt like I was on a spaceship and…I’m not sure what to do with my hands…We were really happy, with what was goin’ on, and at the end of the day, you know, you gotta be happy.”

Hersher also during pregame warm-ups spent most of his time not taking swings, working on his defense instead. He was seen practicing his relay throws from left center to second with Warren at second base. “Why the fuck are they practicing throws to second?” commentator Joe Buck stated from his booth while sipping a Slurpee and watching warm-ups. “That’s dumb. They should be taking cuts.”

Defensively in the second, Edde barreled down and threw a quick 1-2-3 inning, goading two flyouts to Smith at first and a liner to the third baseman, Manager Chris Norton.

Smith then led off the top of the third with a single to right, followed by Hersher’s two-strike easy-swinging double to right center to put runners on second and third for the RBI machine Snow. Unsurprisingly, like another Lindsay Lohan back-to-rehab story or another terrible Ben Stiller movie, Snow pulled through with an RBI with a single to score Smith in his flashy new L.A. Gear cleats hustling home from third.

With runners at the corners, Watters easily then produced his first hit of the season with a single to score Hersher. Snow later scored on a fielder’s choice and the Gardeners were up 4-0 heading into the bottom half of the third.

In that half, Edde got to once again show his Gold Glove skills on the mound, snagging a popup for the first out and a screamer back at him for the third out. And for the second out he demonstrated his communication skills to a tee. With one out and the bases empty, Screwballs batter Dean Portman knocked a liner to center for a clear hit. As he rounded first, he stuttered and slowed down to try and deke out Hersher fielding the ball in the outfield, then bolted for second. Edde saw this and thus communicated brilliantly to Warren covering second waiting for Hersher’s throw, alerting him that the runner Portman was digging in hard. With this help, Warren was able to catch the throw from Hersher, quickly turn, then tag out Portman. Two-down; a classic display of middle-of-the-field teamwork.

Did we mention that Hersher’s throw from the outfield – which he had practiced pre-game – was on target dead-on?

Yeah, fuck you Joe Buck. Now how you like them apples.

The Gardeners went scoreless in the fourth, except for All-Star catcher Phil Zackler, who was finishing up a Hinge date. Edde kept his groove going in the bottom half with a shutout inning on the mound, extending his scoreless inning streak to four.

Despite the Gardeners’ leading 4-0 in the top of the fifth, any observer would’ve thought the Gardeners had scored more runs and were way more in control. In truth they were in major control, as the Screwballs looked clearly inferior to the Gardeners. The Screwballs looked inferior on the softball field as well, not just in the looks department. Snow led off the inning with his third straight hit, sliding into second on a double to right center. Watters scored him with a single to left in the next at-bat. A few batters later, right centerfielder Jason Friedman singled in Watters to put the Gardeners up 6-0.

Edde’s fifth straight shutout inning in the fifth kept it at 6-0, and that number stayed the same after the Gardeners couldn’t muster up any offense to start the sixth. In the bottom of the sixth, after 15 outs with no runs, Screwballs finally got on the board, putting up two runs and threatening with a third. However, that third run was stymied with two outs and a runner on second when batter Lester Averman hit a shot to left. Runner Greg Goldberg on second decided to make a stupid move against the left fielder Preston’s arm and tried to score. Preston’s relay throw hit Norton chest-high at third; Norton easily turned and tossed home to Matt Mason at catcher to nail Goldberg and end the rally. Once again, another impressive defensive play of beauty from the Gardeners.

Comfortably up 6-2 in the seventh, the Gardeners once again couldn’t score for the fourth inning of the night, yet headed into the bottom of the seventh confident of closing the game out easily. A leadoff solo shot putting the score at 6-3 slowly started a momentum swing towards the Screwballs’ side. Next batter Fulton Reed then launched a deep shot into the glare of the lights in center. Hersher running back lost sight for a few seconds with the lights baring down on him, yet at the last second caught up with the ball and snagged it for a suspense-relieving first out of the inning. Nevertheless, Screwballs countered back by getting a runner on first with two outs when the Conrad error on the easy grounder at second – which would’ve ended the game – put two on. And karma in your face Conrad, Screwballs’ next hitter Gordon Bombay blasted a three-run home run to center to tie the game.

Fuckkkkk. The extra hit given up on the error led to a pay-for-it homer that tied the game. Fortunately, the Gardeners got out of the inning, and soon were looking at extra innings with the 6-6 tie.

With momentum now on Screwballs’ side, first baseman Dan Gatta stepped up and countered back leading off the eighth. His lined single to left started the Gardeners’ rally and shifted all momentum (Winning Rule #3) to the Gardeners, earning the Colorado Triple AAA Insurance Clutch Hit of the Game. A few batters later and with one out, he found himself on third base with Mason on first when Edde stepped to the plate and supplied the Can’t Hardly Wait Play of the Game. Edde knocked a fly ball to right that was about the exact distance in the outfield where both teams could see that there would definitely be a play at the plate. Not too deep where it’s an easy sac-fly, and not too shallow where the runner doesn’t even try running. Medium-distance where shit’s gonna happen. At the pop of the ball hitting glove, Gatta took off tagging up from third. The throw came in on target to build the tie game (now two-out) suspense; however, the ex-linebacker Gatta nimbly scurried around catcher Luis Mendoza, scoring the fuck yeah go-ahead run for the Gardeners.

The play didn’t end there. Mason on the throw home tagged from first, and the catcher tried throwing Mason out late at second; however, the ball sailed into short center field, and Mason took off for third. And just like Kit Keller rounding third in “A League of Their Own” with complete disregard for the third base coach, Mason did the same, bolting around third towards home. The throw from center bounced in early, yet Mason wasn’t to be stopped. Diving in headfirst, Mason avoided the tag and swiped home plate, proving that his gamble was worth the risk, and putting the Gardeners up two, 8-6.

The scoring stopped there, and the Gardeners, instead of bringing in closer Trevor Hoffman, to the delight of the fans tromped out Edde to the mound to finish the complete game. The outs didn’t come easily nevertheless. Smith made an incredibly clutch scoop at first base for the first out, putting the Gardeners in the driver’s seat with one down and two to go. Screwballs put a runner on, yet with two outs Edde closed out his gem and stellar defensive performance with a snag of a grounder up the middle, easy toss to first, and subsequent carry off the field to the “Rudy” music. A pitching masterpiece, at least five putouts, and the go-ahead RBIs in extras? Yeah, that’s reason enough for his player of the game award and the perks that come with it – the keys to a Tesla Model S, a trip to Disneyworld, and Sonora Applebee’s for life.

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Stat of the Week:

Zero: Scores from first on a sacrifice-fly in the history of pro baseball. Matt Mason did it Tuesday.

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7/25/2014

The bat-less, restless, and shirtless (unfortunately) Savage Gardeners showed a bit of rust in Tuesday night’s season opener, falling to Ball So Hard University in a pitching duel, 15-7. Granted, Ball So Hard’s defense played quite stellar, apparently backed by their catcher’s claim that their entire infield played college ball. “Ball” likely meant college baseball, yet it also could’ve meant foosball; it could’ve meant tea-bagging each other late at night. We’ll never know. One of those mysteries like UFOs or Amelia Earhart’s disappearance or Barry Bonds’ unsubstantiated “supposed” steroid use or why that hot sailor from TGI Friday’s never did call back. Mysteries.

Using a bat from the 1998 season and borrowing another from a brown-bagging homeless man named Rulenfurter passed out on the bleachers, the Gardeners psychologically may have felt some pop missing when taking their turns at the plate. This isn’t an excuse though; humans have adapted and evolved over the centuries. The Gardeners can as well. Third baseman Chris Norton adapted easily with the new bats, leading the way with a 4-for-4 night, calmly smacking singles to center, showing both how getting on base really is easy, and how monstrous hacks at the plate are more detrimental than helpful.

The Gardeners came to the plate swinging cold from not taking any preseason hacks, due mainly to the cancellation of the team-bonding trip to the Fairfield Scandia’s batting cages with the yellow rubber balls. Let’s be honest though – they would’ve done maybe one turn in the cage apiece, then spent the rest of the time at Scandia playing relentless nonstop Pop-A-Shot and Skee-Ball to earn enough tickets to get one of those small plastic parachuting action figures.

Right center fielder Eric Snow also batted 1.000 for the night, hitting two doubles and a single – with a sacrifice fly on top of those – for a team-leading three RBIs (42% of the team’s total). Shortstop J.J. Warren crushed it for the day as well, posting an ERA of 0.00 for the night and adding a strikeout.

Wait………………..wrong statistic…………………………apparently it was an 0.000 batting average – not ERA. Yet the strikeout fact was true. As in he struck out. After his whiff, somewhere in the stands a fan named Ham Porter rightly shouted, “You play ball like a giiiiiiiirrrrrrl.”

Going back to last season, Warren is 1-for-his-last-8, a whopping .125 batting average, just below the poverty line and ripe grounds for a demotion to single-A ball. Or to coed softball on the same night as Gardeners’ games, which is the same thing.

The Gardeners unfortunately played a paradoxical healthy game – as in they didn’t get sick or contagious at any time throughout the game. That’s because in a softball game, as we all know, getting sick is a good thing. The sickness feeds on itself, and then it becomes contagious. This metaphor (simile? I’m Ron Burgundy?) translates to hitting. Contagious – one hit leads to another hit leads to another hit, etc. We all know the phrase. The “Get Sick” slogan for the Gardeners is the same as “Don’t Stop Believin’” is for the SF Giants. Or “We Are Always Delusional” is for Cleveland Browns fans.

Yet in all other aspects of life, sickness is not preferable. No one likes being sick. As the legendary band Disturbed once said, “Down with the sickness.”

At KKU Field to open the 2014 Summer Season, the Gardeners eased into the game with a semi-lax attitude, ceding five runs apiece in both the first and second inning. Granted again, Ball So Hard hit the ball where the Gardeners ain’t, yet it did seem like the first two innings defensively were played semi-half-heartedly. A short warm-up and one-and-a-half months of not playing softball can easily lead to a slow start.

Nevertheless, Snow batting comfortably in the second spot applied some solid WD-40 as he wasn’t going to let any rust creep up on him. He produced the Gardeners’ first hit of the night with one of his classic singles to center. He then hustled to third on left fielder Dan Gatta’s single to right center and came across the plate on right fielder Matt Mason’s single through the hole to left.

This was Mason’s first game back from the DL since the playoff loss in the 2013 Summer Season, when he hit three doubles. That season he led the team in OPS. Which, when you think about it, still is a hard relative number to wrap one’s head around. Batting average and ERA are self-explanatory; OPS. is easy to calculate, yet is simply a weird number to define. ERA – earned runs per nine innings. Easy to think about. Your OPS. is .946? That means you average how many what’s per what?

The season before, Mason had also hit the first cycle in Gardeners’ history (there’ve been two more since, by retired lefty Stu Jackson and speedster Johnny Moran). We could ramble on about Mason’s stats, yet the main one is that he leads the league in hits this year. That’s hits, as in HInge and Tinder Swipes. In fact, he leads all of San Francisco in hits. Delving deeper into our database, we found he also leads the league and San Francisco in slugging. Swiping Left for Ugly Girls and Getting Inundated with Numerous love messages from highly attractive Girls. Duh, he’s Matt Mason.

Down 10-1 heading into the bottom of the second, Norton led off the inning for the Gardeners with the first of his four singles. Catcher Phil Zackler’s fielder’s choice put himself on first, and he later ended up on third after first baseman Steve Smith’s single and left center fielder Ari Hersher’s walk, which loaded the bases for Snow.

Snow delivered as usual, knocking a double to center to score Zackler and Smith. Smith in his 1994 Keds tennis shoes scurried around from second to score, proving that cleats are actually unnecessary in softball, just as carbs and cell phones are unnecessary in life. Snow’s hit raised his career bases-loaded RBI total to nine RBIs in four at-bats. So in conclusion, load the bases for Snow. He’ll produce.

Defensively the Gardeners finally settled down, only allowing two runs in the third. Calmed down and comfortable, they looked a lot sharper in the field, and pitcher Mike Edde, adapting back to sea level after training in altitude in the mountains over the weekend, was settling into his groove.

The Gardeners put up none in the third, yet carried over their defensive momentum in the fourth with a 1-2-3 inning in the field, where something like only four to seven pitches were pitched total (the PITCHf/x tracking machine broke during the inning). Edde allowed each infielder to get a shot at an out, as Ball So Hard’s three batters Francis X. Hummel, John Patrick Mason, and Stanley Goodspeed grounded out to Norton at third, Dane Dobrinich at second, and Warren at short, respectively.

Dobrinich then led off the fourth with a single and later scored on Snow’s sacrifice fly.

Down 12-4 in the fifth, the Gardeners weren’t too out of it – they never are, as they’ve scored 18 runs in an inning before.

Ball So Hard at the plate put up a second straight zero-run inning in the fifth. They had easily been rattled by the catcher Zackler’s consistent smack talk in the prior innings, and couldn’t get their bats going. The chatter easily got in their heads – for example, Zackler’s saying quotes to the batter like, “Hey hope you get out this inning. Nah, just kidding man. You seem like a good guy. Want to join up and do community service on Polk Street someday soon?” and, “Hey batter batter, hey batter batter………nah, just kidding man, I feel bad messing with you. You seem like a good guy. Best of luck to you and your team.”

Casey Cole says pretty much the same stuff when he plays catcher.

After Edde’s shutout fifth inning, the Gardeners in their half put up the most amount of runs scored in an inning for them – two. Mason scored on Norton’s third hit of the night – a single to center – and Edde (after singling to get on base) crossed the plate shortly afterward on Zackler’s easy single to left.

Unfortunately, the Gardeners never could get the bats rolling or the contagion growing. Edde scored one more – their final run – in the seventh, yet all-in-all they could never capitalize on any momentum or get their stroke going like Ming Li at that great happy ending massage parlor in Chinatown. Statistically, Edde now leads all pitchers in the league in strikeouts with one, and Snow leads the league in sacrifice flies with one as well. Hersher grabbed a tie for the league lead in stolen bases with seventy, yet other than that the Gardeners will have to start drinking more pre-game to get the bats going or else they’re looking at the first winless season since the 2008 Detroit Lions.

Shabnam.

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Stat of the Week:

.765……………The Gardeners’ winning percentage with Steve Smith in the lineup, despite Tuesday’s loss. They are .587 when he doesn’t play

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6/08/2014

Eighty games.

That’s how many games over eight seasons the Savage Gardeners have played. What does one game of 80 – Tuesday’s playoff game – have so special about it?

It was by far the most devastating of all 80.

At the Gardeners’ home KKU Field Tuesday night (though they were the visiting team in the books), the Gardeners fell short in the first round of the playoffs once again, losing a should’ve-won failfest to Mas Cowbell, 10-9.

And yes, test results from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory just came in – this was the most devastating and frustrating loss in Gardeners’ history.

Thus, “There’s always next season.”

You know what we say?

Fuck next season. Why keep aiming for next season…or the next season...or the season after that…or the season after the season after that…or the season after the season after the season after that…or the season after the season after the season after the season after that…or the season after the season after the season after the season after the season after that.

The only thing we believe in is to win now. There’s no rebuilding year, no throwaway year – why would you not want to win now? Makes no sense. “There’s always next season” is simply a way to try and cope with a loss…which it was very hard for the Gardeners to do after Tuesday night. It’s a Band-Aid with a temporary soothing, not an underlying permanent fix.

[On a similar side note, let us point out the completely ridiculous concept of professional teams tanking towards the end of a season in hopes of getting a better draft slot. Complete bullshit. What kind of athlete wants to lose? What kind of athlete goes out there and purposely misses shots, makes turnovers, or strikes out? It’s fucking unheard of. Every human is a competitor in nature, striving to perform their best – not to perform their worst on purpose, so hopefully your team can potentially get a higher draft pick. And with that higher draft pick – wait for it – possibly draft someone at your same position to take your place. You think an athlete wants that? “Oh, I’m gonna start missing shots, so we can pick up that hot younger point guard who will replace me next year.”

Yeah, bullshit. We’re pretty sure no athlete strives to play shitty so the team can draft a player who could take his place. What did Bryan Hoyer say when the team informed him they were drafting Johnny Manziel? “Bring him on.” Competition. A teammate, yet competition for his job. Not, “Great for the team, I can’t wait for him to play.” Of course Bryan Hoyer doesn't want the Browns to draft Manziel. Because Manziel playing equals Hoyer not playing. It's a simple mathematical equation. MP = HNP. What athlete would rather not play than play? We at USASSY dove into our treasure trove of statistics and couldn’t find one instance.]

Whatever, that’s a season that’s a couple months away. [We will say it here first though: Manziel flops. Schadenfreude!]

The Gardeners entered the Spring 2014 Season Playoffs as a #1 seed after winning their division with a healthy 6-1-1 record. They had been crushing the ball of late, mercy-ruling their last opponent, and garnering three mercy-rule wins (out of the six wins) during the regular season. Confidence, spirits, talents, and female fans' libidos were all very high this year, with the Gardeners' posting the most well-rounded lineup in their history, both offensively and defensively. Heading into the game, they were posting the second-best team average (.630) and slugging percentage (1.050) in their history, only topped by the Spring 2011 Season (.667 AVG., 1.107 SLG.) when they went undefeated in their division yet also lost in the first round of the playoffs. Yet all in all, this season’s Gardeners team was mature, legit, strappingly handsome, and determined to take this championship down.

No, this loss wasn’t devastating because it would’ve been the 50th win in Gardeners’ history. No - it was because the Gardeners were supposed to win. They believed they would win. And the general feeling across the roster after the game was one of immense frustration, anguish, and sadness. Some Gardeners felt they hadn’t done all they could to win the game; that empty feeling only makes one feel worse, especially grounding out twice to end innings with runners in scoring position (see: Warren, J).

That’s the most frustrating part – accepting your results. If only this had happened, if only I hadn’t thrown there, if only I hadn’t swung at that one. Over and over these thoughts can be replayed in one’s head. Yet the truth is there – the events happened, and they can’t be changed. It sucks. It fucking sucked. Our writers here at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) felt the melancholic grievous pall hanging over the office all day on Wednesday. Their heroes – whom they’ve ridden with full hope through a spirited season, whom they live and die for – their heroes the Gardeners had lost a game they should’ve won. Another fucking playoff loss. When this was the year. Pure shock was the feeling – they literally never considered the Gardeners would lose this game. They had all been planning plane tickets and hotels for the Final Four for the upcoming Monday.

You could say that outfielder Ryan Preston did his part by getting on base all four times he came up, playing an error-free consistent game in left field, and also in the clutch putting himself on second in scoring position in the final inning. That's a solid performance.

Throughout the game, though, the Gardeners struggled mightily with runners in scoring position, batting only 7-for-19 (.368). They also left 12 men on base to end innings, eight of them in scoring position.

Thus, Tuesday’s loss to Mas Cowbell was complete, utter, merciless shock. Not to be confused though with the WNBA’s Tulsa Shock, who are 1-5 so far this season.

The writers of USASSY, Gardeners’ fans, and Gardeners players all collectively went through the stages of grief immediately following the loss and throughout the day on Wednesday. They immediately believed the loss didn’t happen (#1, Denial), as overheard by one fan standing hands over head in the stands following the game, “Wait…that didn’t happen…there’s no way...tell me that loss didn't happen.”

This was followed by #2 Anger, as exemplified by not responding to texts from friends that night, drinking heavily, and getting pissed at oneself, or pissing on oneself.

The third stage of grief (Bargaining) easily followed, as Gardeners players across the board thought similar thoughts:

“Why did I swing at that pitch? If only I had taken it…”
“If only I had thrown it there instead of there…”
“I should’ve taken that extra base…”
“I didn’t wear my lucky socks…”
“I shouldn’t have eaten that gallon of Ben & Jerry’s Red Velvet Cake ice cream for dinner right before the game…”

These are all natural parts of the Bargaining phase, which easily can be the hardest phase to get through, as it only brings regret, anger, depression, boners, etc. Once the depression sinks in, nothing seems worthwhile, and Murder (#4) is the only solution. After this phase is passed, #5 Acceptance finally comes, or will come, around. We accept this. How do we move on. It fucking sucks. Yet the strongest thing to do is move on.

And true to Accepting this, the entire Gardeners team rallied and was back in the gym doing Body By Gatta workouts Thursday morning. Three sets of 15 kettleball swings, followed by burpees. Then some Turkish get-ups into standing cable reverse-flye one-legged squat lunge press curl pulldown pull-up rows. This reflected the true spirit of champions, preparing for the summer season, where they are determined to let nothing stop them from their first championship. Nothing – not even injuries, Ke$ha, or the clap. Nothing. "Avoid the clap," as Jimmy Dugan would say.

The Gardeners batting first started off hot, as during the regular season they averaged 3.75 runs scored in the first inning, over half a run more than the average of the other innings combined (3.14 runs/inning). Rightfielder Dave Watters’ two-run home run to right to score leadoff batter Ari Hersher as well put the Gardeners on the board. A couple batters later – with the bases loaded and two outs no less – outfielder Johnny Moran pulled through with a clutch single to score two more, with third base coach Doug Cole wisely waving around the Gardeners’ runner on second to test Mas Cowbell’s arms and aggressively put another across the plate.

Up 4-0 after the top of the first, pitcher Corbin Shields shut down Mas Cowbell’s offense in the bottom half, goading two flyouts to Preston in left and a third straight to a smartly-located-thanks-to-hours-of-film-watching Watters in right to end the inning.

Feeling confident and with some momentum on their side, the Gardeners increased their lead in the second, started by first baseman Dan Gatta’s leadoff single. Shortstop Marshall Kratter singled as well, and with two now on, Hersher added a smooth-like-Will Smith line drive RBI single to right to put Gatta across.

Gatta didn’t easily jog home though, as, hustling from second, this was leading to a close play at the plate. Nevertheless, Mas Cowbell’s catcher Jeff Feagles awaiting the throw from rightfield saw the ex-linebacker Gatta coming at him down the third-base line like a blitzing Brian Urlacher and was overheard saying, “Fuck this, I want none of that,” and tried to get out of the way of the massive Gatta barreling down on him. Feagles couldn’t get out of the way, Gatta brushed him as he scored, and the Gardeners were now up 5-0. It wasn’t the only collision Gatta endured in the night; defensively in the sixth Gardeners second baseman J.J. Warren tried to make a spinning throw to first on a bobbled grounder. The throw was about 70 feet wide, and in reaching for it Gatta and runner Keith Byars collided at first, with Byars accidentally cleating Gatta pretty good in the finger. This caused only a minute’s delay or so, as umpire Tim Donaghy started yelling at catcher Casey Cole’s application of a Band-Aid to Gatta:

“Put a Band-Aid on it!”
“What do you think I’m doing jackass,” was Cole’s (not atypical) response.

After Gatta’s score in the second, Shields sac-flied in Kratter, and Watters next scored Hersher for his third of four RBIs for the night. Up 7-0 heading into the second, the Gardeners felt goooooooooood like an oxytocin-, serotonin-, and prolactin-induced sleep.

Unfortunately Mas Cowbell started hitting the ball, and when the second inning ended, they had put five up on the board to bring it to only a two-run lead, 7-5, Gardeners.

The Gardeners were shut out in the third, yet only gave up one in the bottom half, which ended with Shields' pitching a nasty cutter to batter Seth Joyner, striking him out swinging. This was Shields’ fourth K in four games pitching, quite a remarkable feat in softball since strikeouts are so rare. It's simply a testament to his pitching prowess though.

Watters in the fourth added his fourth RBI with a single to center to score the inning’s leadoff batter Kratter. Preston (3-for-3) in the cleanup spot followed with an RBI as well, a single to right-center to score Shields from third and put the score at 9-6.

Mas Cowbell scored one in their half to make it 9-7; it could have been more, yet a great defensive play for the Gardeners turned a possible error into an out. Kratter at short had fielded a grounder and threw a tad high to Eric Snow at first to experiment and test Snow’s leaping ability. Snow answered by leaping and making a great grab, getting his toe back down to the bag in time to get batter Clyde Simmons for the second out of the inning. This held Mas Cowbell from getting potential extra baserunners and stymied chances at momentum.

Blanked again in the top of the fifth, the Gardeners tried to settle down, yet Mas Cowbell took this lull opportunistically to grab momentum in their favor. They put up three runs in the bottom half to take the lead 10-9, and this game now looked like an ESPN Instant Classic. Which will never be watched because no one cares about Mas Cowbell.

Ugly followed the batting Gardeners into the sixth as well, as they once again failed to score in the inning. Shields pitched a 1-2-3 bottom half and soon the Gardeners were looking at a one-run deficit in their final at-bat, down 10-9 with consistent hitters Watters, Preston, Snow, Warren, and Friedman all due up.

Preston did his duty by doubling with one out, yet the Gardeners couldn’t put him across the plate to tie the game, as the game ended on Warren’s un-clutch third groundout of the night. He was just lifted yesterday from suicide watch.

Mathematically, the odds of Watters, Snow, and Warren all getting out in an inning at this point was 3.02% (true statistical fact). So there was basically a 1-in-33 chance that all of these three would get out in the seventh inning.

Unluckily, every now and then improbable events happen, and this was that one fucking shit chance when it did happen.

Oh well, there’s always next season.

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Stat of the Week:

.500: The Savage Gardeners’ winning percentage coming off of a bye week, like they did this week. They are .656 otherwise.

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5/27/2014

With the playoffs and player bonuses on the line in the regular season finale, the Savage Gardeners dug deep into their souls and vowed to win one for their manager, the newly married Chris Norton. Pull through they did for him Tuesday night at KKU Field, turning a close ballgame into a quick whomper. As a result S.F. Mayor Edwin Lee called for a team parade down Market Street, ending at Twin Peaks Tavern at Castro and Market.

Seriously though, this game was fucking close. After three innings, the Gardeners’ opponent Smoking bAces held a 6-4 lead. In addition, with only four outs remaining, the Gardeners had only a five-run advantage, 12-7. In classic Gardeners fashion nevertheless, they used their final four outs strategically, turning the game into a 27-7 mercy rule finish, weakening the knees of any remaining females whose knees hadn't already been weakened watching the Gardener studs play.

By four outs remaining, we mean there were two outs in the top of the sixth with the score at 12-7; thus, the Gardeners had one more out in the sixth and three in the seventh to use up before their batting chances ran dry. Yet actually, they only used up two of the four outs. Yes – the Gardeners scored 15 runs in the last two innings while only getting out twice: five runs with two outs in the sixth and ten in the seventh, only getting one out in the inning before Ed Hochuli umping the game after his biceps workout called the mercy rule. “MERCY!” Smoking bAces’ pitcher Deron Cherry screamed in the seventh as the Gardeners annihilated him with hit after hit and run after run. “MERCY FUCKING MERCY!”

“Okay, okay,” Umpire Hochuli responded calmly. “You could’ve said that in the first inning when you already knew you were going to lose, you know. Protein.”

Amen. The Gardeners crushed Smoking bAces in classic confidence fashion, cementing their place as the Spring Season 2014 San Francisco Softball C-2 Division Champions. Hats and t-shirts on the way for all Gardeners’ players. Donald Sterling gets none; he is no longer a Gardeners owner. Neither does Matt Mason; he’s been on the DL all season with a thumb injury from swiping too much.

Being the studs of the lineup Tuesday were the 1-2-3 lineup combo of Ari Hersher, Corbin Shields, and Dave Watters, who as a trio went 13-for-14 with 11 runs, 12 RBIs, and combined 18-pack abs among them. The left-centerfielder Hersher leading off has finally found his groove and is back to being the most consistent leadoff hitter of all-time in any level of the sport. Yes, even better than Rickey Henderson.

“Ari plays better leadoff than Rickey,” Hersher stated in the PA microphone to the fans in attendance after Tuesday’s victory, following Henderson’s third-person grammatical style. “Ari don’t like it when Ari can’t find Ari’s limo though.”

At least Hersher doesn’t follow Henderson’s lead all the time, as in the time Henderson struck out in Seattle one game, and as the next batter was walking past him, he heard Henderson say, “Don’t worry Rickey, you’re still the best.”

Hersher went 5-for-5 for the night with a solo homer to lead off the game, three doubles, and a single. He’s had a 1.000 OBP. his last 11 at-bats (9-for-9 with two walks), while raising his average 160 points in that span. If he keeps raising his average 160 points at a time, in a few games he’ll be batting over 1.000.

Shields in the number-two spot also went 5-for-5 for the night.

Shields as well was dialed in – DIALED IN – on the mound all night, especially in the latter half of the game. Smoking bAces scored a lucky three runs in the first and three in the third (also one in the fifth), yet other than that they were toast. Which is shit (carbs, remember). Shields threw two strikeouts for the night – both fastballs – one to get batter Dan Saleaumua swinging in the second and another in the fourth catching Nick Lowery looking.

He was definitely pitching a gem – getting ahead in the count and throwing solid outside curves and spinners with two strikes to get Smoking’s batters lunging at tricky pitches. Every other inning was a shutout inning, highlighted by a 1-2-3 lockdown in the bottom of the sixth after the Gardeners had put momentum on their side at the plate by going up 17-7, your typical WNBA halftime score. Shields also toughly shook off a potential injury early in the game when dipshit batter Barry Word hit a liner up the middle off Shields’ leg. We call Word a dipshit because he didn’t take the bat off his shoulder in his first at-bat (a walk), and took at pitch down the middle during his second at-bat with a 3-1 count (a.k.a. he was looking for another walk - fucking prissy). His third at-bat he took one or two pitches purposely as well - fucking tool. Thankfully, the Gardeners had leftfielder Johnny Moran on hand to talk shit from the outfield during Word’s at-bats, cracking up the Gardeners’ second baseman incessantly.

As the away team, the Gardeners got first crack at the bats. And Hersher did just that, cracking a homer to right to lead off the game and preserve the shutout.

Oddly enough, this happened to be the only run scored by the Gardeners in the first two innings. Down 3-1 going into the third – after Shields’ shutout second inning and aforementioned strikeout to Saleaumua in the inning – the Gardeners got the bats rolling like Mase at Coachella, thanks to singles by the young guns Marshall Kratter and Joey Faber. Hersher’s single scored Kratter, followed by Shields’ single to load the bases for the slugger Watters. Watters’ deep sacrifice fly to left-center scored one – Faber from third. Wait............is this happening?............Coming around third from second is Hersher............and Hersher scores as well! The classic two-RBI sacrifice fly pulled off to perfection once again.

Moran’s RBI single put Shields across the plate and the Gardeners had quickly taken the lead, 5-3. Smoking scored three in their half of the third to go up 6-5, yet after that it was all Gardeners, raping everything in sight, Marina girls and their poodles included.

Back-to-back singles in the fourth led to first baseman Dan Gatta’s one-out RBI to tie the game at 6-6. Kratter’s single loaded the bases for All-Star catcher Phil Zackler, playing back-to-back games for the first time in who knows how long. Zackler – who leads the team in career sacrifice flies, decided to change it up and drop a single over shortstop for an RBI to score right-centerfielder Jason Friedman from third, keeping the bases loaded for Faber. Faber decided to take advantage of Zackler’s non-sacrifice fly and start chasing the record with one of his own, a deep one to left-center that scored Gatta.

This brought up the top of the Gardeners lineup – Hersher, Shields, and Watters – who combined in their last 30 at-bats have been 27-for-30, only a .900 pace. Hersher doubled in two with a liner to right to put the score at 10-6; Shields followed with a double to left to push Hersher in. And classically, Watters kept the trend up by scoring Shields with a double as well.

With the 12-6 lead now, the Gardeners had the game well in hand and took their pants off for a sexy party with Stewie.

The bottom of the fourth brought Shields throwing heat again, punctuated as mentioned by his strike-three-looking fastball to Lowery.

The Gardeners were caught still with their pants down having the sexy party in the fifth as they failed to score in the inning (runs, at least).

Texas El Paso somebudyy gonna git pregnant tonight.

Smoking somehow scored a run in the fifth to make it 12-7. At this point the game was technically close, and it stayed that way until two outs in the top of the sixth with the rookie Faber batting. Here’s where we go to broadcaster Dane Kiper for the call:

“Faber up with Gatta on second and two outs, Gardeners holding to a slim 12-7 lead. Speaking of slim – Ma! Slim Jims! Now! I never know what she’s doing............Oh hey there little Tommy............you ever been in a Turkish prison............Ma Slim Jims NOW!............Oh shit, something’s happening on the field............[inaudible] you mean I can’t say shit on the air? Hey hows your motha............and Faber’s hit a shot to deep left-center............and it’s outta here!!! Over the fence into the bleachers............14-7 Gardeners!!! Hey snack girl! Blumpkin.”

Unluckily for Smoking after Faber’s two-out shot, this brought up the top of the Gardeners lineup. Oh no. And.........boom goes the dynamite. Hersher double, Shields RBI single, Watterssssssss deep line drive homer to right-center. Home-run number 46 for Watters in his career. Mark Bellhorn's number. Coincidence?

Veryquickly (that’s one word) a potential 12-7 lead going into the batting half of the sixth for Smoking was flipped around to a 17-7 lead by the Gardeners. Huge shift. And the Gardeners rode their momentum like California Chrome to at 1-2-3 defensive bottom of the sixth, smoking all of Smoking’s hopes into wisps of smoke into thin air.

Up 17-7 now in the seventh, it was destroy time. Five straight singles by Eric Snow, J.J. Warren, Friedman, Casey Cole, and Gatta pushed three across, with the latter two then on base for Kratter. Kratter kept the RBIs going with a triple – his and Gatta’s hustling leading to an overthrow that moved Gatta across the plate and Kratter to third instead of his settling for a double.

Zackler up next wasn’t to be outdone in the sacrifice fly department, making sure no one catches his lead. His sac-fly to left scored Kratter easily. Up to the plate stepped Faber, who decided to do it all again with a homer – this time one to deep right. Hersher, Shields, and Watters all did their same old boring shit by getting hits, and Moran and Snow following them continued the pace. After Snow’s RBI single, the umpire Hochuli checked the scoreboard – saw that it was 27-7 Gardeners – checked the fielders – saw that all of Smoking’s players were sobbing and peeing their pants in fear – and took mercy on the Gardeners’ opponent and called the game.

Twas a healthy finish to the regular season for the Gardeners. And it wasn’t until the newspaper was delivered the following morning did they find out that with S.F. Seals’ loss and the Washington Redskins’ tie or loss as well, the Gardeners had won the division. Fansedge, fanatics.com, mlbshop.com, and other sports memorabilia websites were soon flooded with orders for Gardeners Spring Season 2014 San Francisco Softball C-2 Division Champions t-shirts, hats, mugs, jock straps, NuvaRings, oven mitts, and spatulas.

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Stat of the Week:

3 and Zero: Division championships (3) in eight seasons for the Gardeners. They have zero league championships. Hint hint.

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5/19/2014

Tuesday night’s defense got a little lax...............................................................

Yeah……………………………….ahh are you going to go ahead and have those TPS reports for us this afternoon........................ahhh we’re gonna need to go ahead and move you downstairs into Storage B.

Despite Lumbergh’s droning voice, at KKU Field Tuesday Night the Savage Gardeners won 26-22 to keep their hold on first place.

Wait, are they in first? No one really knows what’s going on on the S.F. Softball website anyways. Nevertheless, the game got a littletooclose at the end.

After two innings the Gardeners were winning 22-0. They scored 13 runs in the first and nine in the second. Defensively, pitcher Corbin Shields shutout Shanghai United in both innings. Shanghai’s fielders in addition weren’t – to put it nicely – the best. They made some easy errors which the Gardeners took advantage of, as well as the Gardeners' taking extra bases (Softball Winning Rule #1) against their weaker arms in the outfield.

In short, the Gardeners’ opponent was not very good. After their 13-run outburst in the first, and the nine-run add-on in the second, the Gardeners eased into cruise control. Up 26-8 going into the fifth, the Gardeners had the game in hand. This is when they got a little lax. Maybe a little too lax.

With their (supposed) insurmountable lead in the fifth, defensively the Gardeners put out a quite different lineup in the field, thinking anybody could stop Shanghai United’s hitting without even trying. At one point in the inning, the four outfielders consisted of Ray Charles, royal baby George Alexander Louis, the large cackling putt-putt clown face from "Happy Gilmore," and Eleanor Roosevelt’s body.

As stated, with the game in hand the Gardeners let Stephen Hawking pitch in the fifth with the defensive players above behind him. The Gardeners leading 26-8 seemed okay with potentially ceding a few runs to get these players some playing time. However, what they didn’t foresee was that a “few” runs turned into a few more - namely 14 more runs that brought the score to 26-22, a four-run ballgame. The game was called due to time constraints when the inning finally ended, yet this scare by Shanghai did give the Gardeners cause for reflection.

Before that, though, as stated the Gardeners had jumped to a 22-run lead.

Twenty-two run lead. Insurmountable. They were crushing it. And defensively Shields on the mound pitched the two shutout innings to start the game, facing only four batters in the first and dealing a 1-2-3 inning in the second. Jason Friedman highlighted the end of the second with a running basket catch for out number three in short right-center.

Sitting pretty and riding confidence after last week’s 17-10 victory over the first place S.F. Seals, the Gardeners struck hard and early, like a vet staffer preying on a rookie early before she finds out he’s a huge creep two weeks later.

Oh hi Greg Maximov.

[Blue guys insert your representative guy's name here]

Leading off the bottom of the first was left-centerfielder Ari Hersher, who, after the game was over, had raised his season average 61 points with his 3-for-3 effort. Hersher’s walk led the way for Shields to single him to second. Rightfielder Dave Watters then stepped up for home run number 42 for his career – a three-run blast to left-center. The Gardeners were soon up 3-0, similar to a Mike Cofer field goal.

Friedman’s two-run double a few batters later added the first two of his four RBIs for the game, and first baseman Dan Gatta's RBI double to left easily scored him to put the score at 6-0. Gatta finished 3-for-3 for the game with another RBI as well.

A slew of singles kept the momentum (Softball Winning Rule #3) going, as shortstop Joey Faber’s two-out single led to All-Star catcher Phil Zackler’s single. Which led to third baseman Brendan Judge’s single. Which led to Hersher’s single. Which led to Shields’ single. These five singles in a row scored four, and with the score now 10-0, Watters came up with two runners on for the second time in the inning. This time Watters decide to change it up – and hit a three-run homer to left instead of left-center. Thirteen-zero Gardeners. With this homer, Watters became the 20th player in MLB history since 1900 to get six or more RBIs in one inning (true fact). Actually, everything written by USASSY (USA Softball Statistics Yearly) is true, so we’re not really sure why we had to point out that Watters’ feat was a true fact. Watters also has been batting a hot .880 this season since he switched his walk-up song for the year to “Careless Whisper.”

Shields’ 1-2-3 second inning proved that Tuesday’s game would be a blowout, which it was portended to be, especially after the Gardeners' hitting half of the second inning.

Leftfielder Ryan Preston scored the first run of the second after a leadoff single, and Friedman a few batters later added hit number two for him with a two-run home run blast to left. Catcher Casey Cole’s double after Gatta’s laser double to left scored another for a 17-0 lead, your typical hockey score. Zackler RBI’d in Cole later with a single and Hersher threw in his second of three hits with an RBI double in his third at-bat. Shields’ rare walk (shitty pitches) loaded the bases for Watters, coming up for the third time in two innings with RISP, or Ridiculously Intimidating Strong Pecs. He pulled through of course with a two-RBI double to left for RBIs seven and eight for the evening, putting his season RBI total at 21. Blackjack!

Ugh, 6-to-5 payout. Fuck this casino. Let’s go to the CBC.

Once the Gardeners were up 22-0, they felt pretty confident and the game seemed locked in. Yes, and it was locked in, as Shanghai was clearly the inferior team. Which could be said about any Gardeners opponent actually.

Duh.

The equipment room and locker room workers started covering the locker room in plastic and supplying goggles on hand for the post-game champagne celebration, which the Gardeners perform after every victory, no matter the week. Cause the Gardeners like to party, following the quote from their hero Cal Naughton Jr. that sits inscribed on a sign on the locker room wall:

“Play Like A Champion Today, Cause I Like To Party, And I Might Design A Car That Might Poop Out Little Real Rabbits Out The Back That'll Run Around The Track, And I Might Do A Special Thing With David Copperfield Where He Hides In My Car In The Passenger Seat And He Just Flings Magic Stuff Out The Window.”

Shanghai scored six in the third, and Gatta’s RBI single in the bottom half added another for the Gardeners for a 23-6 lead. Two more crossed the plate for Shanghai in the fourth, yet the Gardeners upped them with three in their half, punctuated by Shields’ third hit of the night, a two-run double to right to score Judge and Hersher. Pitcher Doug Cole in his lone at-bat sacrifice-flied him in, performing the role of a pinch-hitter perfectly – adding value by producing runs.

This put the score at 26-8 heading into the last inning, as the umpires decreed that Shanghai only had one chance to come back. With this in mind, the Gardeners as noted above threw out their – let’s simply say – “different” fielders onto the field, like Prince George and the clown.

Little did the Gardeners know that Shanghai would put up 14 runs in their half to make it a four-run victory for the Gardeners on the scoreboard, yet they and every one of the 41,915 fans in attendance knew that the Gardeners had crushed Shanghai, despite the close four-run score difference.

Mila Kunis is worthwhile to look at.

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Stat of the Week:

.619 vs. .586: Batting average by the Gardeners historically in the first inning (.619) versus all other innings (.586). This season shows the same trend: .648 (1st Inning) vs. .615 (Innings 2-7).

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5/11/2014

“Prove your worth Gardeners,” Gardeners Owner Donald Sterling lectured to his team in the locker room before their week six bout, “and don’t bring those types to my games.”

And answer their hero’s call they did on both ends, pushing themselves into first place in the division where they belong and not posting photos of those types on Instagram.

On Tuesday night the Savage Gardeners consistently stifled S.F. Seals’ offense en route to their solid quality 17-10 victory at KKU Field. They and pitcher Corbin Shields on the mound held their opponent to scoring no more than two runs per inning – an underappreciated feat that should be lauded for its application of quashing (for the Seals) Winning Softball Rule #3: Momentum.

The Gardeners put themselves in control from the start, putting up five runs each in both the first and second innings. Starting off hot like this easily puts into motion a few game-changers that propelled the Gardeners to victory. Mainly, getting hits and runs early raises confidence. Getting a hit in that first at-bat provides an unspoken psychological benefit that usually can translate to better play going forward, mainly because, as stated earlier, confidence rises. And confidence is key in softball. And also when confidence rises, more hits come, play improves, chicks flock, money pours in, your Folgers coffee tastes better, and you don’t have to stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night simply to be intelligent.

Playing without All-Star catcher Phil Zackler who was buying a new lacy throw pillow at Bed Bath & Beyond, the Gardeners decided to put the first-place Seals in the right place – not first – from the start. Dan Gatta also missed Tuesday’s game as he was hosting a pre-NFL draft party for Browns fans, a place where Clevelanders get together with fanciful fantasyland hopes for each year, only to be ultimately let down as always, never realizing that rooting for the Browns is a never-ending hopeless endeavor.

Consistent with the Gardeners’ Billy Beane “Moneyball” approach in heavily valuing on-base percentage, leadoff batter Ari Hersher played his first at-bat well by drawing a walk. One batter down and the Seals’ pitcher Dean Biasucci was already tiring out. Similar to Game Gear’s “RBI Baseball” where after a few innings the pitchers start tiring and throwing much slower, the Gardeners planned to wear out Biasucci with patience at the plate.

The Gardeners didn’t pour the runs on in the top of the first, however, until there were two outs, in classic dramatic action, like the drama in "Sleepless in Seattle." Waiting until two outs to start a rally does prove effective in building suspense, spiking stress, raising blood pressures, and creating emotional arousal, especially in the female fans like cheerleader Eliza Dushku who was on hand to watch the game.

Leftfielder Ryan Preston – with Tuesday’s sole Garden Hoe Marin watching – started the RBI train with a single to score Hersher from third. Second baseman J.J. Warren doubled in two, and right-centerfielder Jason Friedman behind him doubled him in. Rookie shortstop Joey Faber hit the fourth double of the inning (first baseman Dave Watters had one earlier), and the local heroes were looking at a 5-0 lead to start the game. The four doubles in the inning also bested last week’s single-game extra-base hit total of one. Yes, in one inning the Gardeners hit four times as many extra-base hits as last week’s Stat of the Week – only one extra-base hit in the entire Week Five game.

The Seals put two up in their half of the first, yet the Gardeners responded with a déjà vu five more in the top of the second. Triple-A call-up Brendan Judge’s leadoff double set the table for the pitcher Shields’ two-run home run down the leftfield line two batters later. What made the hit so inspiring was that it came from the pitcher, as historically in baseball pitchers rarely hit home runs. Except for Madison Bumgarner’s grand slam a few weeks ago. And Shawn Estes’ slam as well in the year 2000. (This pitchers-rarely-hit-homers-stat is pointed out because it's true - pitchers usually hit sacrifice bunts or strike out. Shields disproved this stat, despite the fact that he consistently hits homers and usually plays outfield. Still, it was a great hit, sharing the CNBC Kelly Evans Hot Drive of the Game, along with Judge’s solo blast in the fifth.)

Watters and Preston later scored with two outs, and Friedman added his second RBI base hit to put the score at 10-2 after 1½ innings.

Though the Seals put up two in their half of the second, Hersher made a great running catch on a fly ball to center to keep them from scoring more.

Judge proved his worth with his second straight double down the leftfield line in the third, moving catcher Doug Cole to third (Cole had singled to right-center to start the inning). Hersher’s sacrifice squeeze scored Cole from third, and Shields added RBI number three for the night with a deep sacrifice fly to left-center.

Consistent with their scoring, the Seals added two more in the third. However, each inning this was the maximum number of runs they would score – a testament to quality defense by the Gardeners. Throughout the game, the Gardeners in the field took fewer risks that proved advantageous – for example hitting a cutoff instead of launching a throw to home that flies over the backstop, at which the Gardeners are unquestionably skilled.

Upon further analysis, these small moves do prove essential in the long run. In a hypothetical example, say a runner is on second and a batter hits a single to the outfield. There may have been times where instead of holding the batter to a single, the batter gets to third because the ball has been thrown from the outfield into the tennis courts in an attempt to get the runner from second at home. The only consolation from that happening would be for the ball to hit some dumb girl sucking at trying to play tennis on a date with some dude wearing a cutoff tee on a cold Tuesday night.

Nah we’re kidding, hitting someone with a ball isn’t something to be laughed at, though it did almost happen a few times Tuesday in different circumstances. One foul ball by a Seals batter almost nailed a guy playing basketball in the head; another foul down the leftfield line juuuuuuuust flew over a fan’s head; a third hit by a Gardeners player actually nailed an outfielder on the opposite field square in the back. Balls flying everywhere like a Thunder Down Under show (they're awesome). It truly is a war zone out there. It’s about this U man. They don’t give a freaking you know what about you. They’re out there to kill you. You write that in the paper. We’re fucking soldiers.

One of the strange aspects about the night was that the crazy old lunatic with Back to the Future hair finally played in a softball game, rather than pacing the sidelines mumbling nonsense like a homeless man and yelling at Gardeners’ shortstop Marshall Kratter. A shitty thing too was that he actually hit the ball well.

Fuck it’s tough to admit that. In an embarrassing episode as well, Warren grounded out to him in the fifth inning, one of the bottom two low points in his life, along with Keira Knightley’s marriage to not him.

A pitcher’s inning described the fourth, as the Gardeners put no runs on the board, and Shields on the mound pitched a nasty curve to strike out batter Duane Bickett looking. The K was the Gardeners’ second strikeout of the season, strikeouts being the most elusive softball stat of all, besides stolen bases and punts.

Up now 12-7, Judge leading off the fifth blasted the aforementioned co-CNBC Kelly Evans Hot Drive of the Game to deep right to make it 13-7. Back-to-back triples by Hersher and Shields may have added another run…….looking at the scorebook and doing the math…….yes………it does look like mathematically back-to-back triples would score a run, which did happen. Unless of course the runner on third was Billy Bob from “Varsity Blues” or Kevin from “The Office,” and they couldn’t score from third on a triple.

See the theme with these two celebrities here?

No, the theme is not obesity with these two. It’s alliterative names, obviously. (The actor Kevin’s real name is Brian Baumgartner. Not to be confused with the aforementioned Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner, or figure skater Brian Boitano.

On a related note, Billy Bob’s weight transformation is quite impressive. Google it if you’re bored.

On another related note, R.I.P. Lance Harbor. Have to always throw that in there if we’re touching on any subjects close to him, especially as he’s the Gardeners’ left centerfielder’s favorite actor.)

With Shields on third, Watters up next easily doubled him in for the fourth of his five hits for the night, raising his average from .875 to only .905 for the season. What, you can’t hit 1.000 D-Watt? Lame.

Shields on the mound in the bottom of the fifth pitched a beautiful 1-2-3 inning, bookended by Judge at third snagging a hard grounder to his right for the throw and out to a stretching Watters at first, and ending with Moran’s catching the crazy white-haired lunatic’s flyout to right. Shields truly was dialed in towards the latter half of the game, as he added more spins and knucklers to his pitches that left the Seals’ batters off-balance and making poor contact. He almost got Seals’ batter Bickett on a strikeout again, as Bickett whiffed on a huge 0-1 fastball and looked destined to K if he kept his swings-and-misses going.

Faber’s two-run homer to left-center – the first of his career – added two more insurance runs for the Gardeners in the sixth.

With the score now 17-7, the bottom of the sixth could have turned into a major momentum-building rally inning for the Seals. However, a few key plays solidified the Gardeners as the top team in the division. With a runner on first, Watters snagged a laser line drive for the first out – a critical play that could have started something strong offensively. The second key play came when lunatic man laced a surprising triple to right with two outs. The play easily could have been a home run, yet rightfielder Johnny Moran’s hustle and subsequent relay throw kept the lunatic from scoring. The next batter Ivy Joe Hunter tried to shoot a liner over Watters’ head at first; however, Watters displayed his exceptional reaction instincts as he made the leaping, split-legs snag to get the final out and keep the Seals’ from scoring any more runs that inning, crushing all momentum. His play earned him the Bud Light Denver Broncos Commercial Web Gem of the Game.

Yet yes, let’s not forget the fact that Moran’s hustle on the play before to hold the runner deserves being pointed out, again. Major credit.

The Gardeners added none in the seventh, yet with a comfortable 17-8 lead and their incredible attractiveness, they had no worries in the world. The Seals put up two to reach double digits, yet when the final whistle sounded, the Gardeners had a 17-10 victory over the not-undefeated-anymore-suck-it Seals in their pocket.

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Stat of the Week:

42%: Percentage of runs scored by the Gardeners this year with two outs, most of any outs situation (33% with one out, 25% with zero outs)

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5/04/2014

After last week’s 30-10 victory, the Gardeners were heating up.

NBA Jam-style.

A slaughter of I’d Tap That would put the Gardeners on fire.

Two weeks before, the Gardeners had crushed Gino N Carlos, 22-2, and last week’s 30-10 domination of The Heaters put the Gardeners on the edge of climax, heating up in that invigoratingly anticipatory NBA Jam way: when you make your next shot, you’re on fire and you can fucking dominate no matter what. Especially when you’re the Washington Bullets with Tom Gugliotta and Calbert Cheaney.

We have now realized – and always known, actually – that there is no greater letdown in all of life than when you start heating up in NBA Jam…

…then miss the third shot.

Seriously, if you think about it: THERE IS NO GREATER LETDOWN IN LIFE.

Losing a March Madness game on a buzzer beater, regretting not going for the kiss on a hot date, getting a college rejection letter from ASU, or failing the bar exam doesn’t even come close.

That’s what the Gardeners did Tuesday night – miss the third shot and the subsequent perks that result from being on fire in NBA Jam, like endorsement contracts, millions of dollars, major fame, sex with unlimited supermodels and Emma Stone, an exponential burst of Twitter followers, millions of Facebook likes, appearances on the David Letterman Show, the Today Show, and PTI, two Brahman cows given as gifts, more biographies written about you than Abraham Lincoln, paid autograph appearances, Apple stock options with an $8 exercise price, free lululemon pants (the really comfy men’s ones), golf with the pope, and the best perk of all, iTunes gift cards.

Tuesday night at Stu Jackson Ballpark, the Savage Gardeners pushed their win-loss record there further in the red, losing 14-4 to I’d Tap That Dude In The Tank Top Doing Squats Over There (the softball website had to condense the name due to space constraints). The Gardeners are now a whopping 10-14 (.417) at Stu Jackson Ballpark, the only park where they have a career losing record. The loss was mainly due to the absence of All-Star catcher Phil Zackler, who was attending a transvestite dentists party.

After the top half of the first inning, the Gardeners realized this game would not be a walkover and found themselves in a pickle. Which is a bizarrely strange saying – who lives in a pickle? How do you find yourself in a pickle? Maybe as bacteria? We have no fucking clue. I’d Tap That put four runs up to start the game and the pickle was set in place to climb into. Yet, as delicious as pickles are, the saying is simply so fucking weird.

At the plate, the Gardeners got back two in their home half, with left-centerfielder Ari Hersher and third baseman Dave Watters both scoring on Tuesday.

They also scored runs in the first inning, heyyyyooo!!!!!!!!!!!

I’d Tap That DITTTDSOT pounded their balls away and followed up with six more in the second, further showing unfortunately that Tuesday night they were not a team to be messed with. Or with whom to be messed, to be grammatically correct. Manager Chris Norton’s RBI single in the second scored rookie shortstop Joey Faber, and after this the Gardeners faced a 10-3 deficit, an actual typical football score, like 7-0, 14-10, 5-4, etc. Little did your heroic Gardeners know – and nowhere could this have been predicted – that they would only score one more run the entire night, five more full innings of ball.

This was also Norton’s last Gardeners game as a single man. Historically, in their final games as single men, pre-marriage Gardeners players have batted .667 (14-for-21). In their first games back as married men, they’ve hit .529 (9-for-17). Ironically, all nine of those post-marriage hits have been singles.

Upon his return, Norton looks to buck the trend, as he is predicted to go 4-for-4 with nine RBIs when he returns for the playoffs. He’ll be back full-time for the Summer Season, when the Gardeners look to repeat as champions.

After the second inning, the Gardeners’ defense settled in and only allowed four more runs the rest of the game, with Norton hurling three shutout innings in there. However, on the other side of the diamond, the Gardeners simply could not get the bats going. Unfortunately for the entire game they left 13 men on base – almost two baserunners per inning. Marshall Kratter’s career .857 two-out batting average easily could have come in handy.

I’d Tap That added one in the third to go up 11-3; however, the Gardeners went the next four innings without scoring – a disastrous momentum slump that mathematically decreed that the Gardeners could not win the game (Winning Softball Rule #3).

First baseman Dan Gatta looked to ignite a rally in the bottom of the sixth with a hard-hit leadoff line drive double to left. With the score at 14-3, after Gatta’s leadoff hit this looked like a prime time to start some epic Gardeners history and create another legend in the annals of Savage Gardeners’ lore. Nevertheless, keeping the theme of the night going, the Gardeners couldn’t muster anything together and didn’t score in the inning, only adding one more run in the seventh with Hersher’s scoring his second run of the game. From our research department that was using a scientific TI-83 calculator, Hersher accounted for 50% of the Gardeners’ runs Tuesday night. That’s a high percentage from one player.

Another high percentage our research department discovered is injured reserve player Matt Mason’s right-swipe-to-match ratio, which is currently at 100% - every right-swipe is a match.

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Stat of the Week:

1: Extra-base hits by the Gardeners Tuesday night, a Dan Gatta double.

By comparison, last week they had 23.

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4/24/2014

The Savage Gardeners’ run differential for the past two games? Plus-40. They would’ve beaten the Warriors Monday night. Does that number sound absurd – winning the past two games by 20 runs apiece?

According to mathematics – not at all. This is expected for this season’s Gardeners team. Thus, their results in games three (22-2 win), and four (30-10), were standard. Therefore, in the first two games of the season (18-18 tie, 14-12 win), the Gardeners majorly underperformed, especially according to WAR projections.

Tuesday night in their fourth straight bout at KKU Field, the Gardeners heated up The Heaters and kept on fire, letting it burn…burn…burn...

Cause they can light it up…up…up
So they can put it out…out…out
They can light it up…up…up
So they can put it out…out…out

Cause they got the fire…fire…fire
Yeah they got the fire…fire…fire……
And they’re gonna let it burn

The Gardeners ripped apart The Heaters 30-10, which is ironic considering the opponents’ name was “The Heaters” and the Gardeners got on fire and burned them alive. The main damage done by The Heaters though occurred in the bottom of the second inning, when the Gardeners’ opponent put up nine runs, letting momentum carry them through the inning. This was the only scare of the game.

This means, though, that in the other three innings in which they batted (the game was called in the top of the fifth, same reason as last week – soaring female fans’ libidos), the Heaters scored one run. This further means that Manager Chris Norton on the mound pitched another straight brilliant game. Sans the defensive meltdown in the second, Norton only gave up one run in the three other innings – two of them shutout innings.

Thus, in the past two games (ten innings total), taking out the nine-run outburst by the Heaters (one inning), Norton has given up three runs total in nine innings.

Yowza.

Even the 12 runs total in the last ten innings is an incredible feat itself.

Starting off the top of the first, the Gardeners’ sole run came on a Dave Watters solo blast to deep left-center. The Heaters put up one in their half. And this is when the Gardeners went nutzo.

An RBI single by right-centerfielder Jason Friedman and a homer by second baseman J.J. Warren put three runs up quickly. A few batters later the Gardeners were facing two outs and only three runs so far in the inning. With Norton on second and third baseman Joey Faber on first after singles, leadoff batter and left-centerfielder Ari Hersher stepped up, still working on finding his Stella groove.

Easily enough he found it, mashing a three-run home run to rightfield that jumped the juice in the Gardeners’ dugout and in the stands, dangerously raising the female fans’ libidos again. As the crowd went crazy, there was a spike in the future birth rate exactly nine months from Tuesday.

First baseman Eric Snow followed with a double, leading Watters to once again blast a homer – this one a two-run shot to deep right that almost decapitated a player on the opposite field. The game was almost called at that moment, as that opposing game’s female fans rushed the field hoping to run over and ravage the Gardeners; however, yellow-jacketed security stopped them before they reached the outfield.

Up now 9-1, the Gardeners looked in control; however, things spiraled a bit and The Heaters put up the aforementioned nine runs in the second to take the lead, 10-9. Despite this mishap, the Gardeners put on their steely faces and "Scream" masks and turned the momentum back to their side.

After sending 13 batters to the plate in the second, the Gardeners followed up in the third by batting ten. Catcher Dan Gatta, playing the second leg of a doubleheader – technically a minor league game in the first game – led off the inning with a triple. Warren’s hit knocked him in, and Norton’s walk put two on for shortstop Marshall Kratter. Kratter singled in one, and later Hersher stepped up again with two on.

And boom, once again he pulled through with his sweet rightfield stroke. This time he slashed a double to right that scored Norton and Kratter easily, putting his RBI total to five in three at-bats so far for the game.

Snow after came through with the second of his classic doubles – liners up the middle that take advantage of the slow outfield grass, allowing him to turn singles into doubles, especially with his consistent hustle. He did this three times Tuesday, with a fourth double going opposite field to left that, yes, did take advantage of the slow outfield grass there as well.

Watters’ double for his fourth RBI so far scored Snow and like that the Gardeners closed out the inning up 15-10.

After Norton’s first shutout inning in the third – only allowing one batter on base – he followed up at the plate with a two-out RBI triple. Kratter singled him home next. Norton scored all four times he got on base, adding another triple in the fifth to his name, tying the single-game record for triples. In a classic show of humility, he did not give himself the game ball with his 3-for-3, four-run hitting stats and stellar pitching outing, despite the fact that he did deserve Game MVP honors.

In the fourth he also only faced four batters, shutting the Heaters out again, his sixth shutout inning in the past ten.

In the top of the fifth, the Gardeners struck. Big time. At 17-10, the score was semi-close, yet with the Gardeners’ recent bouts at the plate and the impeccable pitching by Norton, a 17-10 score really isn’t close at all. A seven-run lead by the Gardeners is akin to a 42-point lead by the Denver Broncos. The trailing team is not going to make that up.

Snow’s leadoff double – to the slow grass in center – led off the fifth. Watters' second of three doubles for the night easily scored him. Outfielder Johnny Moran’s single put himself on first for leftfielder Ryan Preston to knock a double to center to move Moran to third, with Watters’ scoring his third run of the night.

Friedman’s RBI single put the 20th run on the board, and Gatta’s and Warren’s hits afterwards put three more up there, 23-10 Gardeners. Norton’s second triple of the night scored one more, and Kratter once again easily knocked in Norton from third with his third hit of the night, a single.

The rookie Faber’s single once again brought Hersher to the plate with two on. And deliver like Karl Malone the Mailman he did, lining a triple to right for RBIs six and seven for the evening. Hersher pulled off the rare feat of almost hitting for the cycle, yet falling short by the easiest hit of all four, the single.

Snow and Watters followed with doubles four and three, respectively for each. On the whole for the game, the Gardeners hit more doubles (15) than singles (12), and posted the third best single-game slugging percentage in their history (1.400).

Once the top of the fifth ended with the score at 30-10, the Heaters conceded the game and went home to weep into their Powerpuff Girls pillowcases.

In addition, some notable nice numbers from Tuesday’s game that deserve attention:

4 Doubles: Eric Snow
2 Triples: Chris Norton
7 RBIs: Ari Hersher
.917: Dave Watters’ season batting average

All-Star catcher Phil Zackler missed Tuesday’s game attending a pre-party for BronyCon.

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Stat of the Week:

0: Singles, out of 12 hits, on Tuesday by the Gardeners’ 1-2-3 hitters – Hersher, Snow, Watters. All 12 hits (in 15 at-bats) were doubles, triples, or home runs.

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4/19/2014

On Tuesday night the Savage Gardeners played their most complete game in history and didn’t even realize their accomplishment. It wasn’t until Will James in the sabermetrics department at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) pointed out their completeness in the game that this underappreciated fact was confirmed.

Against Gino N Carlos, the Gardeners combined solid hitting, a stellar two-out rally, incredible pitching, and an error-free – ERROR-FREE – game to whomp their opponent 22-2 at KKU Field. The game was called in the top of the seventh with the Gardeners' batting - before they could inflict even more damage - due to a combination of first the umpires’ feeling pity for Gino N Carlos and secondly the female fans’ libidos dangerously shooting through the roof watching the Gardeners play. The umpires had to stop this before the female fans rushed the field and attacked the Gardeners players with uncontrollable ravaging desire.

However, the true determinant of the Gardeners’ dominance Tuesday was their firm application of the Three Winning Rules of Softball. Seriously – despite all the bounces, quirks, and anything strange or normal that can happen in a softball game – it has been mathematically proven that if a team applies the Three Winning Rules, they will win 100% of the time.

[As a quick refresher, the Three Winning Rules of Softball: #1 No Extra Bases; #2 No Extra Runs; and #3 Momentum Is Everything. The Gardeners in the field held Gino N Carlos to #1 and #2 in their flawless play – with #1 their opponent didn’t take any extra bases they could’ve taken (on overthrows or mishandles in the field, for example, plus outfielders' relaying the ball in quickly on hits). For #2, there were no outs that were errors instead, thus leading to extra runs (i.e. instead of an out, a runner gets on base and prolongs the inning – potentially leading to extra runs).

Lastly, a major two-out rally in the second inning with hit after hit after hit put nine runs on the board and the Gardeners up for good…an insurmountable lead against the flawless defense in the field. Number Three Momentum. One hit leads to another hit. Which leads to another hit. Confidence rises. Another hit. Confidence rises more. Momentum. America.]

No errors all game though – that’s impressive.

At the plate, outfielder Johnny Moran hit for the cycle, and no one even noticed – only the third cycle in Gardeners’ history. Manager Chris Norton, hurling from the mound, also threw the first strikeout of the year – a called-looking strike three knee-buckling hanging curveball to batter Joey Browner.

Hitting-wise, the Gardeners decided to get down to bare-ass tax quickly, whatever that means. Rightfielder Dave Watters’ two-run blast to left-center in the top of the first to score left-centerfielder Ari Hersher on second put the Gardeners on the board. Moran’s triple directly after made it easy for him to score on a base hit later in the inning for the Gardeners to go up 3-0.

After giving up one run in the bottom of the first, the Gardeners struck gold like an eighteen forty-niner, or a kid getting to stop at Sam’s Town on the way to Tahoe in the early 1990s. In the second inning with the score at 3-1 - with two outs now - after Norton’s assist RBI moved catcher Casey Cole to second, shortstop Marshall Kratter started a momentous two-out rally. His single to left scored Cole easily, and fellow left-side infielder, rookie Joey Faber, singled Kratter to third. Hersher’s second single of the night – and 121st of his career (11-squared mathematically) – moved Kratter across the plate. First baseman Eric Snow continued the trend with an RBI single to center that scored the rookie, setting the plate for the number-three batter Watters.

Watters continued his hot streak by lashing a double to left to plate Hersher and move Snow to third, another nice table-setting for the Gardeners’ cleanup man, the speedster Moran.

Cleaning up he did like Consuela the “Family Guy” maid. “Nyoooo.........nyoooooo.........Misser Griffin we nee more lemon pledge...... ...nyoooo.........nyooooo.” Moran topped his earlier triple by adding one more base in this at-bat. Which doing the math is a home run. So yes, Moran blasted a three-run home run to deep left-center to put the Gardeners ahead comfortably 10-1.

Leftfielder Ryan Preston followed Moran’s shot with a bomb of his own, pushing the score to 11-1, once again a typical football score. Right-centerfielder Jason Friedman’s RBI single two batters later scored second baseman J.J. Warren and the Gardeners were looking at a 12-1 domineering lead.

Two shutout innings pitched by Norton on the mound completely annihilated Gino N Carlos’ confidence. In reality, though, they didn’t even have any confidence going into the game either, because they knew they were facing the majorly intimidating Gardeners. Like a batter facing the 6’10” Randy Johnson with those long arms and that 100mph fastball – that shit would be intimidating. That's what it was like for Gino N Carlos facing the Gardeners. Pee your pants time.

Contributing to those two shutout innings was the Gold Glover Snow in the bottom of the second. With a runner on first, lefty batter Fuad Reveiz tried to pull a screaming liner down the first-base line. The ever-vigilant Snow dove to his left in a split second's reaction time and snagged the shot, getting the out and crushing all attempts at momentum for Gino N Carlos. Norton finished out the inning by adding the first pitching strikeout of the year for the Gardeners, the aforementioned hanging curve beauty to freeze Browner.

In the bottom of the third, Gino N Carlos at the plate tried the same thing three times in a row, yet still never got the hint. They kept making the same mistake again by trying to hit to left, flying out three straight times to Preston in the field. Kind of like a child continuing to put his hand on a burning stove. Complete idiocy.

At the plate in the fourth, the Gardeners added two more with Watters' scoring on a Preston sacrifice fly and Moran on third coming home on a Warren double. Gino N Carlos got their sole other run in their half of the fourth, yet after that they were toast. Which means shit. Garbage. Trash. Because toast is a carb.

Up now 14-2 – the 49ers’ 1989 Regular Season record – the Gardeners erupted for six more runs in the fifth to go up 20-2. First baseman Dan Gatta’s leadoff single to left and catcher Phil Zackler’s third hit of the season - a single up the middle - put runners on the corners to start the inning. Norton sacrifice-flied in Gatta, Kratter next followed with a double, and Faber’s single to left put Zackler and Kratter across the plate.

Later in the inning, Watters’ second double of the night – and fourth hit – scored two more (Faber and Snow). With two outs, Moran next up hit a nice single to score Watters. A basic hit.

Little did anyone know – except Moran and Friedman coaching first at the time – that Moran’s single added to his lore, in that it rounded up his hitting for the cycle. Yes, a simple single to complete the cycle went unnoticed with little fanfare, considering it was only the third cycle in Gardeners’ history (74 games). Moran in his first full season as a Gardener is clearly making his mark – playing unbelievable defense and adding major value at the plate.

Pinch-hitter Doug Cole batted a perfect 1.000 for the game with a base-hit up the middle in his lone at-bat.

A sac-fly by Friedman in the sixth and an RBI single by Kratter in the seventh pushed two more across for the Gardeners. After Kratter’s hit put the score at 22-2, the umpires felt pity for Gino N Carlos and called the game, ending the almost perfect night for the Gardeners. The brilliant pitching by Norton – six innings, two runs, four shutout innings, one strikeout – the error-free defense, and the quality hitting by the Gardeners all contributed to the complete victory.

Norton’s two shutout innings in the fifth and six supplemented his stellar outing, with his three-pitch sixth inning setting the record for the shortest inning ever, clocking in at 44 seconds.

Heading into Week Four of the season, the Gardeners are now clearly at the top of ESPN’s Power Rankings and have been voted #1 in the AP Poll. Not coincidentally, the 14 Gardeners players Tuesday night all took the top 14 spots in People’s "Sexiest Men Alive" issue for 2014 that hit the newsstands Wednesday. Bradley Cooper was 15th, Devon Sawa 16th.

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Stat of the Week:

0: Groundouts by the Gardeners Tuesday night. All 18 outs were either flyouts or baserunning outs.

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4/11/2014

The Savage Gardeners put themselves in the win column Tuesday night by combining two-out hits, a shored-up defense, and a flying Johnny Moran to push their record to a stellar 1-0-1 for the season.

They rode the hits pony like Happy Gilmore’s Happy Place midget, putting up a quiet 14 runs in six innings. First baseman Eric Snow, playing in his first bout this season, led the way with an easy 4-for-4 effort. The Gardeners’ opponent The Good Guys simply couldn’t overcome the Gardeners’ dominance at KKU Field, where they pushed their record there to 18-6 (.750 winning percentage).

Manager Chris Norton took the mound for the night, pitching a stellar complete game with two shutout innings. The main knock against the Gardeners was the four-run sixth inning that pulled the game too close to 14-12 after the Gardeners got a little carefree in the field defensively. However, after these runs were scored with no outs to start the inning, in a testament to their fortitude, the Gardeners kept The Good Guys from scoring any more runs in the inning, quashing all momentum and getting the necessary three outs to finish the game. The Good Guys did threaten and load the bases with two outs, yet a flyout by batter Sean Landetta to right-centerfielder Jason Friedman ended the scare to get the Gardeners the home win.

After Norton shut out The Good Guys in the top half of the first, the Gardeners pushed two runs across the board on shortstop Marshall Kratter’s two-out double to left that scored Snow and rightfielder Dave Watters. Second baseman J.J. Warren’s double to center scored Kratter, and catcher Casey Cole easily hit an RBI single two batters later to put the Gardeners up 4-0.

In the bottom of the third, with two outs and the game now tied 4-4, Friedman’s second of three hits for the day scored one. Cole’s single moved Friedman to second, and Norton followed up with a laser single to left to plate Friedman and put the Gardeners back up for good at 6-4.

The eruption of runs followed in the next inning when the Gardeners loaded the bases with one out. Up stepped cleanup batter Johnny Moran, whose death-defying diving catch in leftfield earlier topped all SportsCenter Top Plays for the year 2014 – past and future plays. Seriously, his Web Gem will never be topped by any future play this year in professional baseball, in college baseball, in high school baseball, Little League, Tee Ball, dyke women’s softball, old men’s softball, SF softball, MLB 14 The Show, Ken Griffey ’94 for SNES, Mario Baseball for Gameboy, Sandlot ball, Strat-O-Matic, Fantasy NASCAR, skee-ball, Pakistani cricket, and pogs.

His play was that good. No play will ever top it.

In a nutshell, batter Pepper Johnson lifted a flyball to short left-center. Moran in leftfield called for the ball almost immediately, hustling as usual with the 100% effort he never lets up on, even when he’s sleeping. With the ball dropping fifteen yards from him, Moran left his feet and flew horizontally through the air like he was swan-diving from one end of a pool to the shallow end. His hat flew off behind him as his hair unfurled and blew in the night air like a model cruising in the passenger seat of a convertible. And somehow – the TV show “Sports Science” still hasn’t proved this impossibility – he cleared the fifteen yards and made an incredible diving catch, not even knocking the wind out of himself either.

Back to his turn at the plate. Bases loaded, 6-5 game. He then turned on a slider from pitcher Dave Meggett and cranked a shot to deep left-center, clearing the bases for the fourth grand slam in Gardeners’ history, and the CNBC Kelly Evans Hot Drive of the Game. With the score now 10-5, Kratter up next wearing his classic light blue clothing laced a shot over the leftfielder’s head for a round-tripper himself to push it to 11-5.

Norton’s shutout fifth inning gave the Gardeners more momentum (Winning Rule #3) heading into their half, as Norton and rookie third basemen Joey Faber led off the inning with singles. Outfielder David Yanover added an assist RBI with his flyout to left that moved both runners up one base each. Left-centerfielder Ari Hersher, looking to find his stroke, then laced a single up the middle to center to score Norton and Faber. Despite his slow-going pace to start this year at the plate, Hersher, according to AccuScore’s 10,000 simulations, is predicted to pick up his hitting stats and go 37-for-37 for the remainder of the season.

Snow’s double and fourth hit of the night moved Hersher to third, and Watters’ deep sacrifice fly to left-center easily scored Hersher for the Gardeners’ 14th run of the game.

As mentioned, The Good Guys quickly put up four runs in the last at-bat to bring it waytooclose to 14-12, yet the shutdown defense of the Gardeners held put and finished the job, like Li Jing always does at the Perla Spa Massage Parlor on Kearny in Chinatown. What?

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Stat of the Week:

.800: Casey Cole’s batting average at KKU Field, best of any player at a specific field

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3/23/2014

The Savage Gardeners started their 2014 Spring Season with high hopes Tuesday night…only to quickly fall into a deep hole early against their opponent the Cheapshots. They found themselves in an 18-8 disaster heading into their bottom half of the last inning, facing a sure loss to start the season. Fortunately, they rallied courageously and effortlessly, and Bud Selig was in attendance in the season opener to call the game a tie after the Gardeners had rallied to finish the inning tying it up at 18-18.

So, yes, it was the first tie in Gardeners’ history – yet the Gardeners braved it wisely as they took six innings to dust the rust off their gloves and bats to salvage the game instead of experiencing a demoralizing first-game loss.

Arriving Tuesday night at the newly christened KKU Field, the Gardeners had gone five months – since October 2013 – since they had last played a game. With no Spring Training and the requisite trips to Talking Stick Casino outside Scottsdale, the rust definitely showed itself a bit, yet all-in-all the ten-run comeback brought the Gardeners into full swing and simultaneously raised their confidence and sex appeal for the rest of the season.

[Side note: KKU Field had long been named Bob Vila Moscone Stadium. However, due to…

1) The Gardeners’ stellar .727 win percentage there heading into the game (16-6)
Their win percentage combined at the other three fields: .563 (27-21)
2) The proximity to KKU, giving it home field status
3) The abundance of KKU players on the team - ten historically, including seven Tuesday night
4) MLB’s best fans – the Garden Hoes – have lived at KKU
5) The most glorious walk in SF (GG Bridge? Fuck that), from the countless pregame treks from KKU to the field to the postgame walk to the Bus Stop or Roam

…the MLB Executive Committee and Congress changed the field’s namesake to KKU Field.

In an unrelated coincidence, the initials written backward spell FUKK.]

Nevertheless, after Jana Kramer sang the national anthem (visiting SF, she stayed in the master suite of the KKU hostel) the Gardeners had a game to play. Falling behind quickly 4-0 after the top of the first, possibly – no, mainly – due to eight errors at shortstop contributing to extra runs, the Gardeners brought out their speed to start their hitting lineup off. And by speed we don’t mean the drug, or the peak of Sandra Bullock’s hotness. We mean the 1-2 outfield combo of Ari Hersher and Johnny Moran, whose 40-yard dash times added together equal 7.50 seconds.

And by peak we don’t mean Bullock is on the down slope—on the contrary she has maintained attractiveness basically forever. Her peak is simply an incremental step above where she usually resides and currently is now, consistently at a 9.9 (if peak is a 10.0).

Unfortunately Hersher the career .684 hitter had a rough hitting start to his season, and his average only dropped five points to .679 after the game. Nevertheless, he made it up with two singles in the ten-run sixth that instigated and then later in the inning kept the Gardeners’ rally going.

The speedster and sparkplug Moran however led off his season with a mashed triple to right, scoring the next batter on rightfielder Corbin Shields’ single to left. Moran only finished the game 5-for-5 with a triple, double, three singles, and ten stolen bases. He raised his career average dramatically from .571 to .684 in the process.

Pitcher Doug Cole added an RBI single in the second to score second baseman Mike Gorman and followed up later in the fourth by blasting a deep leadoff triple to right-center.

Defensively, the Gardeners gave up several runs each inning, never finding their stride to complete a solid inning defensively. That’s what a lack of Spring Training and blacked-out gambling at Talking Stick will do to you – make you rusty defensively.

Down 9-2 going into the bottom of the third, the game was snowballing downhill fast like Mark Sanchez’ career. However, back-to-back leadoff singles by Moran and Shields set the table for first baseman Dan Gatta to hit a clutch two-out, two-RBI double down the line in left to get momentum in the Gardeners’ favor. Gorman singled him in two batters later.

To quickly recap the three tenets of winning a softball game, there’s no surprise the game ended in a tie. Softball Winning Rule #1 (No Extra Runs) turned a few key errors and sure outs into extra runs for the Gardeners’ opponent. Advantage: Cheapshots. Number Two (No Extra Bases) came out even, as both the Cheapshots took advantage of Gardener miscues, and on the other side the Gardeners used their speed to take extra bases each chance they got. Rule #3 (Momentum Is Everything) started with Gatta’s hit and followed up later in the sixth inning when the Gardeners got hit after hit after hit. Advantage: Gardeners. Thus, the tally came to Cheapshots 1, Gardeners 1, Even 1. Hence a tie. A bettor could have seen this and placed in-game bets on Bovada accordingly.

After Cole’s leadoff triple to lead off the fourth, All-Star catcher and ladies’ man Phil Zackler hustled to second for an RBI double and later scored on Shields’ sacrifice-fly to left, one of Shields’ four RBIs for the game. Shields also batted 1.000 for the game, adding as well only the third walk of his career (in 140 plate appearances) in the sixth inning after receiving a couple of shit pitches from pitcher Quinn Early.

Heading into the bottom of the sixth, the Gardeners faced a disastrous deficit and a strong likelihood of losing and going home demoralized to eat ice cream on the couch and masturbate to Jonathan Taylor Thomas “Home Improvement” Google Images. With one out though, the top of the lineup in Hersher and Moran decided to alter that potential outcome. Back-to-back singles and a walk from Shields loaded the bases for leftfielder Ryan Preston. Preston’s infield single scored one, and shortstop J.J. Warren’s homer to right scored a few more. Gatta hit a two-strike pitch to left to keep the rally going, and right-centerfielder Jason Friedman followed with a single as well.

With two outs now, third baseman Chris Norton’s walk loaded the bases for Zackler. Facing the intense pressure of two outs, the bases loaded, and the guillotine if he ended the game with an out, Zackler braved the elements and faced the demons like the warrior he exemplifies. His single to left brought the score to 18-13. Hersher’s second single of the inning scored another and kept the bases loaded again. Moran then contributed his fifth hit of the night – a clutch double down the line in left – to score two and put the score at 18-16.

Reminder that all of these runs are being scored with two outs. That’s called facing up to pressure, stepping up to the plate—literally and figuratively—and being a postman and delivering like Karl Malone.

Shields then did what he does best (which is everything) and knocked a double to left to score Hersher and Moran to tie the game and keep the Gardeners in the non-loss column.

Unfortunately after the inning ended, Selig sitting behind the dugout conferred with himself and consulted Yahoo! Answers to declare the game a tie. It was kind of a weird feeling to end the game in a tie, yet overall it was more positive than negative given the belowish-average play in the field by the Gardeners as well as the absence of both slugger Dave Watters and music evangelist Matt Mason.

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Stat of the Week:

.633 versus .593
1.002 versus .917

KKU players – past and current residents – historically have batted .633 at KKU Field versus .593 at the other three fields combined. Their slugging percentage is much better as well (1.002 versus .917).*

*Both results were statistically significant at the alpha = 0.05 level. A paired two-sample t-test with unequal variances was run for both batting average and slugging to prove the statistical significance. This means that mathematics proved there is an actual difference in playing at KKU Field versus any other field, and the difference is not due to chance.
**We know that no one cares or has a clue what the above means, including us at USASSY (USA Softball Statistics Yearly).
***Seriously though, we did run a statistical significance test. Somebody stop this nerdfest.

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10/14/2013

October playoff games. Glorious. Life can’t get better. Beer, brats, baseball, beets, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts.

Nevertheless, Tuesday night was planned to be a one-and-done playoff game for the Gardeners, at least according to a few people. Fans and maybe a scorekeeper prepped for the night wearing light clothing, in anticipation of a quick one-hour game, then drive home to catch the last quarter of game two of the Minnesota Lynx-Atlanta Dream WNBA Finals. However, the San Francisco night turned frigid and the Gardeners earned a spot in the “championship”/semifinals game with a solid 17-26 victory, scoring 17 runs versus the Free Agents’ 26 runs, which makes total sense.

What makes no sense at all is what occurred in the top of the seventh inning with the Free Agents batting and comfortably ahead, 26-17. Leadoff hitter and pitcher Shooter McGavin comes to the plate and knocks a single. Typical play. Except that he had taken an illegal bat out of his backpack – which umpire Wi Tu Lo had clearly outlawed before the game, telling him explicitly, “YOU CANNOT USE THIS BAT IT IS ILLEGAL.”

Well true to the general IQ of the Free Agents, McGavin used the bat with his team winning in the seventh, the umpire Tu Lo caught on, and the game was subsequently called a forfeit for the Free Agents and thus a victory for the Gardeners.

Sometimes when you think people can’t get any dumber, they prove you completely wrong.

In addition, on the softball website, at the top, in bold and all CAPS letters, is a message about illegal bats and forfeits:

“ANY PLAYER STEPPING INTO THE BATTERS BOX WITH AN ILLEGAL BAT WILL AUTOMATICALLY BE SUSPENDED FROM THE NEXT GAME AND THEIR TEAM WILL AUTOMATICALLY FORFEIT THE GAME.”

Wow. Some people really are dum. Shootah……..

Thus, the Gardeners were pushed into the “championship” game next versus 12 Angry Men, who had won their semifinal match earlier. We write “championship” in quotation marks because for some reason – and the first time we’ve heard this rule – the Free Agents had a double elimination clause, and thus had to be beaten twice by any challengers for the championship. Therefore, the winner of the Gardeners versus 12 Angry Men game would meet the following evening at 8:30pm at probably Jackson 2 or Reno for the real championship game.

Unfortunately the Gardeners could not get over the playoff hump and found themselves on the losing end against 12 Angry Men. They should actually be named 12 Angry Men And One Crazy Fucked Up Homeless Lunatic Who Looks Like An Older Christopher Lloyd In “Back To The Future.”

Fortunately for the Gardeners, they had their own drunken homeless fan on the first base side watching the game, and he easily won the postgame bum fight against the lunatic, earning major profits for the Gardeners’ players who had bet on the fight. The Gardeners’ bum was subsequently kicked back onto the street.

He was last seen washing car windows then becoming Happy Gilmore’s caddy.

Against the Free Agents in the semifinals, the Gardeners trailed the entire game before mounting a massive comeback in the sixth inning. Before that, they had given up 20 runs in the first four innings and were looking at a 20-9 deficit heading into the sixth. Rightfielder Corbin Shields (3-for-3, three RBIs) had provided a few of those runs with a two-run homer in the first and scoring after a leadoff double in the fourth. He also found himself getting (yawn) the second walk of his career in the sixth.

Shields in the fourth scored on a sacrifice fly from catcher Matt Mason, who despite what he says, had a strong day in both games, going a combined 4-for-6 with six RBIs – and all four of his hits being doubles.

Cy Young pitcher Kevin Dickenson also added two RBIs in the fourth with a bases loaded, one-out double to right-center.

In the bottom of the sixth, facing a now 21-9 deficit – Shields added another RBI in the fifth off a single to score third baseman Dave Watters – the Gardeners looked like toast. Which is unhealthy any way you look at it, because it is carbs. And carbs are the devil. And water is better than Gatorade. And we’ll leave the light on for you.

Left-centerfielder Ari Hersher led off the RBIs with a triple to right-center that scored shortstop Marshall Kratter and Dickenson. First baseman Eric Snow easily doubled him home next, and Watters did the same to Snow, tick tick boom.

Later in the inning, now with two outs and the bases loaded after right-centerfielder Jason Friedman’s fourth single of the night, Mason stepped to the plate again with RISP.

RISP as in Relentlessly Instagramming Schmoopie Pics.

His first three at-bats had been a smorgasbord of randomness – walk (doesn’t count for an AB), sacrifice fly (still 0-for-0 after two plate appearances), and double play (we all have one so at least he got his out of the way).

He added to the drama in at-bat number four – bases loaded, two outs – by working a full count. The next pitch was a laser 98-MPH fastball inside. Which he turned on Miguel Cabrera-style. The ball was shooting down the leftfield line – curving.................................. curving..................................POOF! Chalk flying up in the air as the ball landed on the foul line. First chalk hit ever in Gardeners’ history. And seriously that chalk flew. Like LeBron throwing chalk in the air making it rain. Like a teacher erasing a chalkboard in a puff of chalk. Like our writers drawing hopscotch squares with chalk at the local elementary school, then having candy parties with the kids in our van parked in the abandoned alley down the street.

Two-run double for Mason. Kratter scored the champ Mason and Friedman with a single of his own, and the Gardeners were back in the game like a now-single Dan Gatta, score now 21-17.

And apparently Gatta chose to play in his coed league Tuesday over playing for the Gardeners. Kinda like passing up free tickets to the Super Bowl to go to a women’s Division II college softball game. Kinda like being drafted #1 in the NBA draft then choosing to take a “real” job selling used cars. Kinda like breaking up with Jennifer Love-Hewitt to date Michael Moore.

Hey, maybe D-II chicks can hit well, and selling used cars is rewarding, and Michael Moore is an animal in bed. Then fine, we stand corrected.

This led to the top of the seventh where the Free Agents got their hitting stroke back after only scoring one run on four hits in the previous two innings. They promptly scored five runs to take a 26-17 lead over the Gardeners before McGavin stepped in with his idiocracy that led to equation JE = WSGO, or JEWS GO: Judgment Error = Win Savage Gardeners, Obviously.

Kratter provided a highlight at short in the second with a diving stop up the middle and flip to Manager Chris Norton at second for the force. Norton also participated in four of the Free Agents’ other 18 outs on grounders to second, easily filling in at the new position for him. Especially in a position in which All-Star Phil Zackler had locked down, yet since Zackler chose not to play in the playoffs for some fucked up reason, his job could be in jeopardy now because his priorities are, yes, fucked up. Even though Zackler was second in batting average this season after leading the team in home runs last season.

The “championship”/second semifinal game against 12 Angry Men And One Crazy Fucked Up Homeless Lunatic Who Looks Like An Older Christopher Lloyd In “Back To The Future” started out not as propitious for the Gardeners. In the top of the first, 12 AMAOCFUHLWLLAOCLIBTTF put up seven runs. To shut them up, Dickenson did add a strikeout to batter Lafferty Daniel. Kratter at shortstop also jawed at the homeless Christopher Lloyd lunatic who was mumbling nonsense, like all homeless people do.

The Gardeners didn’t score until the second inning, now down 8-0, when outfielders Ryan Preston and Friedman both doubled, Friedman scoring Preston. Mason then doubled in Friedman (duh, he only hit doubles all night), and the Gardeners were on the board.

After a scoreless third for both teams, the Gardeners added two more on Snow’s leadoff single leading to Watters’ blast of a homer to left that hit the bleachers on the opposite softball field. In typical whiny fashion, which seemed to be the theme of the Gardeners’ opponents all night, 12 Angry Men And One Crazy…etc., started complaining, “Isn’t that foul?!?! Foul ball!!?!?!? Foul foul foul waah waah waah” shut the fuck up. The ball landed, um…….say – 50 feet fair? Is that proof enough? Stop pouting and whining ya jackass.....................

Mason chalked up another double in the fourth inning – seriously, he hit the chalk again – and scored later on Norton’s (3-for-3) second single of the game. Snow also had three singles and later scored Norton with his second as well. Mason doubled once again in the sixth inning for two more RBIs. Heading into their last plate appearance in the seventh, however, the Gardeners were facing a 20-8 hole. Ain’t no thang though – the Gardeners have scored double digit runs in one inning plenty of times, the last time scoring 16 runs only a few weeks ago during Week 5 of the regular season.

As usual, the Gardeners did not lie down and play dead like Randy Moss on a run play. Three singles by Norton, Hersher, and Snow scored one (Norton), and then Watters slipped a double in there (to score Hersher). Preston’s shot of a triple after Watters added two more and the Gardeners looked in business. He scored again on a Friedman RBI, yet that was all the Gardeners could muster for the night, and they found themselves on the losing end, 20-13.

Preston extra-based hit his way through 12 Angry Men And One Crazy…etc., by hitting two doubles and a triple for the game, adding to his career team-leading doubles total. Actually, looking at the career stats, after 50+ games each, Preston and Watters now both have exactly the same number of doubles and singles – 36 and 81 apiece. Weird.

Preston bests Watters in walks though, with one versus Watters’ four walks. How you like them apples now Watters.

If you take out the seven-run first inning, the game would’ve technically been tied. Unfortunately, games don’t work like that, and next season the Gardeners need to find the way to be the seven-run first inning implementers instead of the victims. Hmmm.........maybe someone should do some statistical analysis looking at Gardeners’ first inning runs production and correlation with win percentage, obviously cross-referenced with the covariance matrix of the antiderivative linear residual sum of squares chi-squared test for approximate deviation from historical regression beta values. Yeah, we’ll find someone at USASSY (USA Softball Statistics Yearly) to do that. Probably some Asian nerds in the IT department. Sum Ting Wong and Bang Ding Ow, where you at playuhs.

After the game, the Paleo MVP of the Season Award was handed out to the clear winner, the leader in games attended and the instigator and fire behind plenty of the Gardeners' rallies this season - Garden Hoe Meredith Tillner.

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Stat of the Week:

29%: The Gardeners have a 29% more chance of flying out with the bases empty than with runners on base.

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10/01/2013

Tuesday’s regular season finale for the Savage Gardeners showed the Gardeners’ mettle, as the team crushed their way into playoffs after being left for dead like Spanish roadkill a few weeks ago. Against the Screwballs at Bob Vila Moscone Stadium, the pitching battle later turned hitter’s day for the Gardeners in the 17-9 easy victory.

The game started out very crowded for the team, with 70 players showing up and Manager Chris Norton paring the roster to 14 players – technically 13 considering Doug Cole’s sacrifice to coach third all day, which he does expertly. And true to his word, he provided a definite third-base coaching highlight in the fifth inning when shortstop Marshall Kratter was heading to third from first on Norton’s double to right.

As Kratter was headed towards third, in a classic “I make the coaching decisions at third” move, Cole started asking the dugout, “Should I send him…Should I send him…”

No response. Then right after Kratter rounded third, Cole commanded, “OK, score.” Fortunately Kratter scored to barely beat the throw home, and Cole’s third-base coaching record is still intact, as no baserunners have ever been thrown out under his watch.

Cy Young pitcher Kevin Dickenson kept the Screwballs at bay throughout the game, with the first four innings acting as a pitching battle on both sides. The Screwballs scored four runs total in the first four innings, as did the Gardeners. The end-of-inning scores looked like a classic baseball game: 2-1, 3-1, 4-3, and 4-4 after four.

With 14 players in the lineup, the Gardeners looked to maximize the talent and rumble into the playoffs with pride, like a pride of lions chasing down zebras then eating their fucking brains out.

In addition, a swarm of Garden Hoes showed up in attendance, sitting in prime seats behind the dugout in typical players’ wives fashion, drinking wine at the game in classic city of San Francisco ballgame style.

Cutting his honeymoon short to play in Tuesday’s game was none other than leadoff left-centerfielder Ari Hersher. Truly does show commitment and loyalty to the team to perform such an act, and he was rewarded with a crushing leadoff walk to start the game, the 1000th of his career.

He ended up scoring the sole run of the inning a few batters later when rightfielder Corbin Shields doubled him home.

Shields played his consistent defensive self in rightfield all night and also provided the Trader Joe’s Cheap Delicious Wine Defensive Play of the Game in the fourth inning with batter Ricky Proehl at the plate. In a previous at-bat, Proehl had hit two successive foul balls sliced over the fence on the first-base side. Thus, he clearly preferred to hit Hersher-style and hit to right. Well, unfortunately for Proehl yet propitious for the Gardeners, Shields spotted this tendency in the fourth inning and planned accordingly. Proehl at the plate then knocked a slicing liner that looked to drop right on the foul line in short rightfield. Even with the ball in mid-flight, a comment was overheard in the Gardeners’ dugout: “Oh boy, that’s going to be a good hit.”

Well unbeknownst to everyone except Shields, Shields in rightfield had pretty much planted himself on the foul line during Proehl’s at-bat, in preparation for this hit. The scouting and thus positioning came in handy, as Shields didn’t even have to move from his spot to catch the liner that went straight to him.

Adding to this defensive stalwartism – which is a new word – was Shields’ earning the Co-Redwall Player of the Game Award by going 3-for-4 with five RBIs. Oh yeah, and two of those hits were home runs – a solo bomb in the fourth and a three-run shot in the seventh.

Down 3-1 heading into the top of the third, Norton led off a nice rally with a double, his first of three extra-base hits of the game. His feats helped him earn the Co-Redwall Player of the Game Award as well, yet due to his humility and team-first mindset, he didn’t give himself the game ball. His leadoff double paved the way for Dickenson after him to single him home. Dickenson moved to third on second baseman Brendan Judge’s single and easily scored on right-centerfielder Johnny Moran’s sacrifice fly to left.

Shields’ solo shot in the fourth tied the game at 4-4 and Dickenson mowed down the Screwballs’ lineup in their half to preserve the tie heading into the fifth.

Top of the fifth: right where things start getting fun, be it softball or Jack Daniels drinking. Kratter led things off aright by singling to center. Norton later then doubled him in with his double to right-center, the play where Kratter hustled home from first with the help of Cole’s unequivocal coaching at third. Dickenson then hit a liner to left and took second base when the relay throw went straight home to hold up Norton at third. Runners now at second and third made it easy for Judge to double them both home with a hit to center, putting the Gardeners up 7-4. Moran and Hersher’s back-to-back walks loaded the bases for first baseman Eric Snow, who hit a lined shot unfortunately straight to Proehl in left. Nevertheless, Judge tagged from third for run number four of the inning. Outfielder Dave Watters’ single then scored Moran to put the Gardeners up 9-4.

After a scoreless fifth for the Screwballs, the Gardeners added four more to go up 13-4. Leftfielder Ryan Preston’s double led off the inning, followed by subbed-in All-Star Phil Zackler’s double to left to score Preston. Simply magical how Zackler came up to bat with no warm-up and hit an easy double like it ain’t no thang. Infielder Dan Gatta singled Zackler to third, and Norton came through after Gatta with the clutch hit of the night, the Body by Gatta Jack of the Game, with a slicing triple down the rightfield foul line for his third hit of the night – and third RBI as well when Zackler and Gatta both scored.

Dickenson’s sac-fly sent Norton home, and the Gardeners looked very comfortable at this point, like wearing a snuggie on your couch on a rainy Saturday morning. Watching porn.

The top of the lineup added four more insurance runs in the seventh, with Hersher’s first hit as a married man – a single (ironic, yes) – followed by Snow’s single as well. Watters’ double to left scored Hersher as Snow hustled to third, beating the throw by a hair by sliding in under the tag at third, Willie Mays Hayes-style. Except Snow made it all the way to the base, whereas Mays Hayes had ended up three feet short.

Second-and-third now for Shields? Yeah, that’s an easy answer. Three-run home run.

Gardeners now up 17-4. They ceded five garbage runs in the bottom of the seventh, yet when push came to shove the Gardeners were in control the whole game. You get a solid array of runs throughout the lineup and you’re bound to win. All 12 lineup spots scored for the night, and they kept the scoring going at Bus Stop later in the night when the strippies finally showed up.

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Stat of the Week:

Three…Two…One…Zero:

3: Consecutive shutout innings once Kevin Dickenson and Phil Zackler reunited as pitcher-catcher combo Tuesday night
2: Number of 1-2-3 innings for the Dickenson-Zackler combo
1: Total hits against Dickenson in those three innings combined
0: Runs scored

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9/21/2013

Manager Chris Norton, after hitting up a lesbo bar pretty hard pre-game with rightfielder Corbin Shields, gave a rousing speech to his team Tuesday night before his Savage Gardeners faced Pop’s Sandwich Shop. The season could be salvaged, the message stated, and it was not in the Gardeners' spirit to roll over and die.

At Steven Jackson Memorial Field, your heroic Gardeners came alive after the speech like Miley on molly in a 27-7 thrashing of their opponent to keep their playoff hopes alive? I’m Ron Burgundy?

Leading the way was Triple-A call-up Trey McCalla, who for the second time in his career was filling in for the absent Ari Hersher. As mentioned before, Hersher had decided to put team first and miss the last couple of Gardeners’ games – with the Gardeners in the thick of a playoff race – to go to Europe and have tons of crepes and croissants and fill his ripped Ryan Reynolds body with his first carbs since June. Or maybe he'll take Body by Gatta further and soon enter some body competitions.

Seriously though, some fucked up priorities. “Oh look at me, I’m Ari, I’m gonna get jacked, have a kick-ass wedding, then bounce to Europe. How dat sound..…mmmmmm pschewww. So lohngg gayboys.”

Europe doesn't have Wi-Fi or internet yet, and the USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) newspaper is not distributed internationally, so there’s no chance that Hersher will get to read about the Gardeners on his trip abroad. McCalla filling in as “Hersher” on the official scorebook did decent enough to warrant a further look from the Gardeners’ pro team front office. In respect to Hersher though, Norton slotted McCalla at the bottom of the lineup as the tenth batter, forcing him earn his way in the lineup.

And good, we're glad you can't read up on the Gardeners in Europe. You left us, so na-na na-na boo boo, stick your head in doo doo, we don't need you, even if you are the all-time singles and runs leader. We'll get along just fine............(sobbing breakdown occurring)...............Ok come back, we need you.

McCalla did fill in only decently, getting a hit in his first at-bat of the game.

He then added four more hits. And not just hits. After two measly singles, the lefty McCalla in his third at-bat knocked a two-run jack over the taller fence in rightfield.

The location in Canada where the Gardeners play a fair amount of games has always been called Steven Jackson Memorial Field, yet with actually two fields at the complex. However, the name is now being split, with each field garnering a name individually. The field with unlimited homers in right will still be called Steven Jackson Memorial Field. The other field - the "home" field with bathrooms and the parking lot - has now been christened Stu Jackson Ballpark, in honor of the recently retired Gardener.

Jackson in his career at his now namesake field had done pretty darn well, putting up a career average number of .750 (27-for-36) with eight homers (1.611 career slugging) and 30 RBIs in his 36 at-bats there. And yes, weirdly enough, Jackson had more homers at the field with limited homers in right (in 36 at-bats) than Steven Jackson Memorial Field (though only 31 at-bats) with unlimited rightfield homers.

Side note: Looking further at Jackson's career overall stats, he batted 100-for-150 as a Gardener. Of those 50 outs, guess how many were groundouts? Yep, if you guessed nine (9), you are correct. Fifty outs total, 41 of them flyouts (82%), nine groundouts.

And Goddam this Steven Jackson injury as another side note; free-agent pickup James Starks you better pull through tomorrow.

With unlimited homers at Steven Jackson Memorial Field Tuesday, McCalla kept this in mind at at-bat number four.

Where he crushed another one over the porch.

He got one more chance in the sixth inning with two runners on..........................where no one has hit three homers in a game since Stu Jackson in the Summer 2011 season against Blooms Kamikazes.....................and he crushed one to deep right................................(cue Chris Berman) backbackbackbackbackbackbackback...........................and..............................it hits the top corner of the larger fence in right. One foot to the right and it would’ve gone over the shorter-in-height fence for home run number three. Nevertheless, he had to “settle” for an off-the-fence double and his 5-for-5, five RBI night.

We also all do remember the first time McCalla took Hersher’s place in the Summer 2011 season, where he led off the game as “Hersher” in the scorebook with a double. His next at-bat he then hit another double. After this though, Hersher – who had been running late – showed up at the ballpark and subbed in for McCalla, who was then told to hit the showers. Apparently going 2-for-2 with two doubles isn’t enough.

Providing added spunk at the top of the lineup was left-centerfielder Johnny Moran, the fastest human alive, playing in his second straight game and third this season as a Gardener. He served his spot in the leadoff position well, going 4-for-5 and scoring all four times he got on base, in perfect leadoff fashion. In fact, the consecutive 10-1-2-3 spots of the lineup (McCalla, Moran, Eric Snow, Dave Watters) did so-so at the plate, only going 19-for-20 with 17 RBIs and scoring 16 runs. Snow – back on the field after a strange absence, and also a late-day addition due to some bullshit excuse like work – sweetly scored all five times he came up, hitting three singles and two doubles, two hits surprisingly going opposite field for the consistent lefty.

He’s kind of on fire Boomshakalaka NBA Jam style, batting – counting the World Baseball Classic in Huntington Beach – 20-for-his-last-24 (.833).

Following Snow in the third spot was the right-centerfielder Watters, who earned co-Redwall Player of the Game honors with his 5-for-5 (two singles, two doubles, one homer) night, with a whopping nine RBIs. McCalla easily earned the other co-Player of the Game Award with his pizzazz in his two (almost three) homers, and Watters easily slipped in there to share the award with his crushing stats. Funny that these stats are expected of Watters and his efforts often go unnoticed. “Oh, another homer for Watters? Ho-hum, expected. Yawn. Why don’t you boys go dig a hole, and I’ll get another beer.”

The away team Gardeners provided consistency all night and started off in typical Gardeners fashion – hit, hit, Watters RBI(s). This sequence was in the form of Moran single, Snow double, then Watters single to knock in both. Later in the inning with two outs, the Gardeners got one more run after catcher Matt Mason’s blast of a triple to center put him on third. (It may have been a high pop-up that was dropped, we’re not sure though, and the stat book simply says “triple.”) Shortstop Marshall Kratter easily then scored him with a double to center, one of his two doubles for the night.

Despite ceding four runs to Pop’s in the bottom of the first, the Gardeners roared back in typical Simba fashion. Norton’s leadoff single to left and Cy Young pitcher Kevin Dickenson’s subsequent single to center led the way for McCalla to garner his first RBI of the night on a single. Moran’s laser down the line in left next scored Dickenson, and Snow similarly followed with an RBI single as well to plate Norton. With runners now on first and third, Watters cranked a rocketship blast to deep left-center for his – surprisingly – first home run this season.

Mason after a double then scored later on All-Star second baseman Phil Zackler's line drive single to left.

Zackler also provided some great gems at the Ryne Sandberg position, snagging a tough one-hopper on a grounder from Chris Spielman in the first. He had three putouts overall for the night, and zero frustration slamdown hat throws.

The Trader Joe’s Cheap Delicious Wine Defensive Play of the Game for the Gardeners came in the third inning when the Gardeners didn’t even get an out, a first for a Defensive Play of the Game.

How’s that you say? Well, let’s just say thank God for safety equipment. In the third, Pop’s batter Bennie Blades hit a hard grounder to Norton at third, which Norton played very well, gauging either to charge or to back up - which he did - to get the ball on the right hop.

Unexpectedly on the last bounce, the ball took a nasty hop upwards and bounced straight into Norton’s mask, right where his left eye was covered.

Ho-lee-fuk. That shit came in handy. Lesson learned is that it pays to be safe, like wearing masks, ankle braces, or mouthguards. And another lesson is to always use a condom children. Especially under the slide during 3rd grade recess.

Pop’s scored three more runs in the second to put the score at 10-7 Gardeners, yet after that, Dickenson on the mound was in lockdown mode. Pop’s only managed three hits combined – yes that’s three hits combined – in the final three innings, scoring (obviously) no runs in that stretch. Pure domination, plain and simple.

Watters' double in the third scored McCalla and Snow for two more, and after a scoreless fourth, the Gardeners decided to put the game away for good, like throwing that addicting computer game in the trash can because it’s so fucking addicting and it’s better if it’s gone. Like Oregon Trail.

In the fifth, every player in the Gardeners’ lineup batted, with Dickenson’s walk leading to McCalla’s first bomb of the night. Moran, Snow, and Watters all followed with singles (Moran scoring on Watters’), and Shields broke the single chain with a line drive down the third base line for a beautiful double that scored Snow. He really did have the sexiest 2-for-5 night as Norton stated during the game, as in the sixth he hit almost the exact same double down the line for two more RBIs.

Mason sacrificed his life and his bat by sac-flying in Watters from third, and Shields scored next on Kratter’s single for the Gardeners’ sixth and final run of the inning.

After Dickenson’s shutout fifth and the Gardeners up 18-7, the team said fuck the Soviets and put the game away for good for the second time. McCalla’s leadoff solo homer led the pace for the sixth inning nine-run onslaught. Watters added RBI number nine with a double to score Moran, and Shields as stated above doubled, scoring Snow and Watters.

Mason - who decided to only have extra-base hits for the evening - doubled in Shields next and easily scored after on Kratter’s double. Zackler added his second RBI – and fourth hit of the night – with a single, and later scored on McCalla’s almost-homer double off the rightfield fence. Moran’s sacrifice fly to left to plate Dickenson put the score at 27-7 and Pop’s finally pulled out the white flags in surrender.

It remains to be seen if the Gardeners can still pull off the playoffs, yet Norton has the deets and scenario rockin’ and ready, like the Jason Aldean concert after the snowboarders have delivered the Coors Light. Or like Hersher in his element on the dance floor at the Saddle Rack.

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Stat of the Week:

16.0: At-bats per home run (AB/HR) with two outs for the Gardeners, best of any outs situation

AB/HR, Gardeners’ History:

18.6: Zero outs
23.0: One out
16.0: Two outs
18.8: OVERALL

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9/16/2013

Tuesday night’s rematch for the Savage Gardeners against 12 Angry Men looked to be an epic battle from the start: revenge from week one’s 22-2 shellacking for the Gardeners, playoff hopes still alive, and a classically tied 0-0 score heading into the top of the first.

Unfortunately at Steven Jackson Memorial Stadium in Canada eh, 12 Angry Men ended the love-love tie in the first inning by scoring five runs. This also happened to be five times the Gardeners’ total.

For the night.

In disastrous fashion, the Gardeners scored a total of 25 runs, minus 24 runs, (25 – 24) or one run, in the 16-1 loss.

The lack of scoring was reminiscent of Los Angeles Triple-A player Matt Cordova at a recent wedding, when post-ceremony he had multiple female options, his cabin all to himself, and his high status as a groomsman and movie celebrity clearing the way for a night of romance.

The next morning, antsy to get the gossip about Cordova’s romantic night, a certain Gardener ran into Cordova’s cabin to get the juice of the Cordova-female couple that spent a lovely night together. The attempt to get gossip was also to pass on to the groom Ari Hersher, who loves hearing that shit. And TMZ, US Weekly, etc., and any type of juicy stories.

Ah, let’s be honest we all love that shit.

Upon entering said cabin, there was Dova’s cute face and flowing hair peeking above the bed covers and a human-sized lump next to him under the covers.

“Dova!!!!! Who’s the lady!?!?!?!?!?!?! Give us the goss!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“It’s Vern.”

Actually a better option if you think of it.

This was the first of a few games for the Gardeners without the mainstay leadoff man and left-centerfielder Hersher, who decided to take a few games off and go on a honeymoon. Obviously his priorities are backwards.

In the field and on the mound the Gardeners performed admirably after the second inning, after allowing five runs both in the first and second. They only allowed six more runs in the final five innings – with two shutout innings in there – to keep themselves in the game defensively. However, on the other side of the line of scrimmage – offensively – literally almost nothing could get going and their attempted rallies fell short, like a girl trying to kick a field goal.

The Gardeners flew out to the lone not-white player Brandon Phillips in leftfield eight times, with 14 flyouts overall for the night, two-thirds of their outs.

The most action in the night came when said Phillips for 12 Angry Men came to the plate in the second inning. He hit a shot to deep center and ran around the bases at a pace in between a jog and a sprint, thinking he had an easy home run. (They’re mainly sprinters, so watching a not-white man jog was a first in the history of humanity.)

Then hold that home run thought cocky man, because chasing the ball down in the outfield was Dave Watters, who would relay to shortstop Marshall Kratter to throw home. Yeah – two former college baseball players with guns hustling to still get the out, playing until the refs blow the whistle like you’re supposed to.

Watters relayed a strike to Kratter who quickly threw home, barely missing getting Phillips by half a second. Phillips then screamed out to Kratter, “Really?”

Yeah dude, really. Gardeners don’t give up, and they still had a shot at nailing you. Phillips’ comment led to a slew of lashbacks from Kratter at short, some of which we cannot repeat here due to censorship issues.

Kratter also made two great plays at short – the first one a tag-second-and-throw-to-first double play in the fourth, and the second a nab up the middle, spin, and get batter Mike Rozier at first for the final out of the seventh.

The Gardeners’ struggles at the plate were apparent, as they only garnered 11 hits in the game – nine singles and two doubles. Only four players touched second base all day: it was that kind of game.

Left-centerfielder and leadoff batter Johnny Moran went a perfect 3-for-3 for the game and rightfielder Corbin Shields provided the lone RBI in the third inning, scoring Doug Cole from third with a single.

First baseman Dan Gatta kept the ball down at the plate with two of his classic laser singles to left, both facing the supreme pressure of two outs. Pitcher Kevin Dickenson followed suit of low-lining base hits with a nice single down the third base line, also a hit with two outs.

Nevertheless, the scorekeeper’s pen stayed wet with ink as not many diamonds – specifically, one – were filled in on the scorebook, representing the lone run of the night. Fortunately the game was over in 16 minutes, allowing the Gardeners to get back in time for 7:30’s epic Wheel of Fortune episode.

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2.8: Flyout-to-groundout ratio for Tuesday’s game (2.8 flyouts per each groundout). The historical average is 1.7. Whatever that means.

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9/01/2013

A week after forfeiting a game for the first time in forever, or history, the Savage Gardeners’ season outlook looked very bleak, like a winter to an Alaskan homeless naked peg-legged blind man. With one win, three losses (counting the forfeit), and the imminent departure of leadoff batter Ari Hersher, the Gardeners looked destined to shittown.

However, at Bob Vila Moscone Field Tuesday night against the bombastic Liquid Therapy, your heroes pulled their socks together, clicked their red heels, stamped their passports, and bought the milk and cereal home for the kids by putting liquid therapy a.k.a. penises down Liquid Therapy’s throats in a 24-16 victory.

Nevertheless, the win did not come easily for the Gardeners despite the presence of two Garden Hoes – the Gardeners’ magic charm. After Cy Young Pitcher Kevin Dickenson shut down the opponents in the bottom of the first, Liquid Therapy erupted for a ten-spot – ten runs – in the second inning, a mix of hits and other hits that were hits.

Oh boy.

And this is where the wheels come off. The other team has Momentum (Softball Winning Rule #1), confidence deflates in the Gardeners’ dugout, in the stands, and on millions of TV sets across the country, and all looks as hopeless as Tom Hanks’ losing Wilson the volleyball. And yes, disaster set in, as the Gardeners’ opponents put up 20 more runs in the next three innings to take the game and victory.

Nah, fuck that…my mama’s been doin’ my recruitin’. The Gardeners did not let 20 runs happen. Liquid Therapy only scored a measly two more runs in the third and Dickenson added two more shutout innings. They also scored four garbage runs in the sixth; however, the game was already out of hand. And why was it out of hand you say?

Because this time the Gardeners fought like the champions they are. They dug into the innermost recesses of their hearts and souls and scars and rose up like men. Like Spartans. Like a vomiting MJ in the finals. Like Kelly Clarkson blowing up now after having basically no hits since “Since You’ve Been Gone.” In the fourth inning for the Gardeners, all this shit went down.

Before that, they had peppered around a few runs here and there to keep the fans happy before Liquid Therapy’s second inning blowup.

They scored one in the first and three in the third – two on a Dave Watters RBI single and the first on Hersher’s single to right-center to score Manager Chris Norton from second.

Heading into the top of the fourth, the Gardeners looked at a 12-4 deficit and an almost hopeless situation. Liquid Therapy had their ten-run onslaught in the second and added two more in the third for a total of 12.

Yet the Gardeners started off the top of the fourth aright, cause the kids are aright. Catcher Matt Mason’s leadoff double set the table for shortstop and Triple-A callup Marshall Kratter to knock him in with a single to left. A few batters later, Norton (3-for-4, three RBIs) singled classically in typical Norton fashion up the middle to center to score Kratter and leftfielder Dan Gatta, who had followed Kratter with a single as well. Kratter finished his trot home with a graceful 360-degree spin to land on home plate, a play that made SportsCenter’s Top 10 plays and is being tweeted about like no thang from the likes of Ashton Kutcher, Jay-Z, T-Swizzle, Ben Bernanke, and Kate Middleton, among others.

In reality, Kate Middleton deserves her own individual sentence as she is the most perfect human to ever walk the planet, yet due to word count restrictions, we had to include her in the same sentence with all the other lesser humans (lesser than her at least, you can’t knock T-Swizzface) above.

Kratter also added two more spins at home on subsequent baserunning scores, which made Twitter blow up even more (“Oh sheeeett!” was the main phrase being used based on the tweeted reactions to Kratter’s home-plate spin moves. "Hello!" - from that high school football commercial where the guy lands a flip, came as the second most-tweeted reaction).

After Norton’s single, and now with two outs, first baseman Eric Snow hit an RBI single to add one more run, yet the walk to the slugger Watters really didn’t add much value and a random unnamed scorekeeper started booing him. It was walk number four of his 215 at-bats, or one every 53.75 at-bats. He's due for his next walk in Week 8 of the Spring 2014 season if he keeps up this pussy shit.

Then the turning point occurred. The Gardeners down 12-8 with two outs and the bases loaded. They had already scored four runs in the inning, and now had the bases loaded, so in a way you could say they got some good hits and runs and the inning was a success, let’s put the cards away and hit the field for the bottom half, cause we’ve done our duty this inning.

Not so rapido Pepito.

Designated hitter Ryan Preston then stepped up and hit a grounder straight to second for out three…yet second baseman Brooks Conrad bobbled the grounder, Preston was safe, a run scored, and the inning was kept alive. So instead of ending the inning with a decent, respectable four runs, the Gardeners got one more.

Then they rolled off 11 straight more runs – all with two outs. Two of them came on bases loaded walks by Mason and Kratter. Pitcher Dalton Hilliard started to get real steamed up. He was bitching and moaning and complaining to umpire Hoby Brenner that he couldn’t throw strikes…................which obviously wasn’t the pitcher Hilliard's fault because he wasn’t the one throwing balls........................or maybe he was..................which he was, according to the statbook and game film.............…so he’s an idiot.

After Preston’s single, the next five batters all came up with the bases loaded and moved runners up one base. Corbin Shields singled in one…and the bases stayed loaded. Mason walked in one…bases still loaded. Jason Friedman singled in one…bases loaded. You get the picture. Another on Kratter’s walk. Then a Gatta single. Dickenson broke the one-RBI chain with a two-RBI shot to right-center, and Norton followed him with also an RBI single to center. Hersher – who had made the second out of the inning and found himself up again, ten batters later – made up for his last at-bat by knocking a round-tripper to rightfield to round out the final runs of the inning.

All in all, the Gardeners scored 16 runs total in the inning, 13 of them with two outs. Advantage (and Momentum): Gardeners. With the score now 20-12, the Gardeners were surely in hand, and they kept it that way as it should be, unlike the mistake of creating the 19th Amendment. Should’ve kept it only males. "Lean In" shmean in.

Dickenson as noted shut down Liquid Therapy in the fourth and fifth, allowing two hits total in the innings.

The Gardeners followed up their 16-run inning outburst with a few more in the fifth for good measure. Shields’ and Preston’s singles set the table for Kratter to knock a whopper of a triple to deep left-center to score them both. The shot easily could have been a home run, yet Kratter’s speed running the bases didn’t look so sprinty. He claimed he wanted the “rarer” triple, so guess we’ll just leave it at that, because, yes, triples are a rare breed, like snow leopards, Lululemon pants in the Midwest, and girls who like softball statisticians. In effect, Kratter's stopping at third could be looked at as a altruistic move, as he allowed Gatta to earn an easy RBI as the next batter, when Gatta knocked his third single of the day. And yes, Kratter pulled off his third jump-and-spin-and-land-on-home-plate move of the night, avoiding any Kendry Morales aftermath.

Shields plated Watters in the sixth for one more insurance run. Snow also got out in the sixth somehow. Yeah, read that again...Snow got out, a strange rarity. We still can’t believe it, considering he's batting .730 for the Gardeners in 2013 and was one of the few hitting bright spots in the recent World Baseball Classic in Huntington Beach. Still thinking that the scorebook has a typo…

The best thing about Tuesday’s game was that there were no references to Miley Cyrus and twerking thank God, cause that shit is getting old. And Miley Cyrus is a saint. Just like St. Agnes, Drew Brees, and Dorothy Mantooth.

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Stat of the Week:

.768: Savage Gardeners’ team batting average with the bases loaded, best of any situation

Team Batting Average by Situation:
.622.......Bases empty
.565.......One runner on base
.585.......Two runners on base
.768.......Bases loaded
.592.......OVERALL

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8/19/2013

The wheels gradually came off the Savage Gardeners’ wagon Tuesday night in the fourth inning when disaster, lurking in the bushes like a pedophile in a schoolyard, jumped out and took the team by a flash flood.

At Bob Vila Moscone Field, where the Gardeners heading into the game posted a 15-3 (.833) record, the Free Agents put up 14 runs on 13 hits in the fourth inning to ultimately punish your local heroes, 24-11.

Things looked great to start out for the Gardeners........and then gradually got worse. Kind of like reverse drinking in that the girl started out pretty when looking at her sober then got uglier as the night wore on. After the first three innings the Gardeners were up 10-3. Then it started getting ugly and the Gardeners soon were facing a 17-10 hole.

With the Gardeners up 10-3 heading into the top of the fourth, all did look groovy, baby. Then a Jim Everett to Henry Ellard touchdown (Mike Lansford PAT) put the score at 10-10, followed by an Everett to Flipper Anderson bomb (Lansford PAT) that found the Gardeners in a 17-10 ditch after the two quick strikes. They literally didn’t know what hit them and were slapped hard fast. Kind of like after you’ve played aggressive drinking games for an hour, taken two pulls of Jack, and then say, “I feel pretty sober, guess my tolerance is getting better.”

Then WHAM – it hits you hard ten minutes later and you’re fucking hammered, stumbling around with half-closed eyes and slurring shit like, “I need ta…….......….I need ta.....................wherve’s my phon go…………......…I swearing I had a jacket witme urrlier……....…..neyone wanna goto busstop an pway pacman???”

So yeah, Momentum (Softball Winning Rule #1, capitalized on purpose as it is a deity like Father Time and Zeus) took the Free Agents from chumps to….....….well, still chumps, yet we guess for Tuesday night we can concede that they were victorious, only based on the mathematical fact that their number of runs (24) was greater than that of the Gardeners (11), an indisputable proven equation (24 > 11).

This wasn’t the case earlier, as the Gardeners shut down the Free Agents for one run apiece in the first three innings, putting up a 3-4-3 inning-by-inning run spot on their own.

Predictably in the Gardeners’ bottom half of the first - after two Corbin Shields catches in rightfield in the top half held the Free Agents to one run on one hit - the Gardeners and leadoff outfielder Ari Hersher started off promisingly. Hersher easily singled to right to lead off the Gardeners’ batting and get the ball – or should we say bats – rolling, like everyone at an electronic music festival. The big hit of the inning was Shields’ one-out triple that scored the Gardeners’ first two runs. He easily scored two batters later on Cy Young Pitcher Kevin Dickenson’s single to put the home team up 3-1.

After ceding one run on defense in the second on a sacrifice fly, the Gardeners kept their bats rolling like a carb-eater’s stomach in their half, all with two outs. Manager Chris Norton (3-for-3 for the night) after a solid single to right found himself on first with two outs, goading on his team to score some damn runs and start crushing life. Hersher responded to the call by hitting his second single to right, moving Norton to third. Right-centerfielder Jason Friedman’s walk loaded the bases for number-three hitter Dave Watters to step to the plate and crush one of his rocket ship blasts onto Marina Green. Watters answered the call by doing just so, except his hit was a grounder single up the middle. Look, not every one of Watters’ hits is a 400-foot blast so stop being all disappointed and shit. He’s got to pepper the ball around and keep the defense on its toes. Any athlete knows you can’t simply hit bomb after bomb after bomb because the defense will start adjusting and putting guys behind the outfield fence to catch his homers for outs.

Watters is also an all-around five-tool player (hit for average, power, fielding ability, woodworking, and masonry skills), and he displayed them with his single up the middle and subsequent maplewood cabinet that he constructed while playing leftfield and getting zero outs hit to him all night.

Norton scored from third on Watters’ hit, keeping the bases loaded for Shields, who also hit an RBI single to move each runner up one base again. Catcher Doug Cole then pulled through with his graceful easy swing, hitting a dashing liner into center to score Friedman and Watters, putting the score at 7-2, advantage - Gardeners.

Consistency seemed the key for the night as the Gardeners held the Free Agents – who surprisingly did not have the ubiquitous Tomahawk Todd on their team – to a single run again in the top of the third.

First baseman Dan Gatta led the runs in the bottom of the third by singling to lead off the inning, moving to second on Norton’s second single, cruising to third on second baseman Phil Zackler’s sweet-swinging single to left, and scoring on a very hard-hit sacrifice bunt to second from Hersher.

Friedman’s second walk loaded the bases again for Watters, who followed through with his third hit of the night, a double to left-center to score Norton and Zackler.

Sitting comfortably at 10-3 heading into the fourth inning, the Gardeners looked primed to coast to victory. Unfortunately, the Everett-Ellard and Everett-Anderson touchdowns ensued in a snowball fourth inning and everything got turned upside its head. Boom-boom, up 10-3 to down 10-17. Even with two Garden Hoes in attendance, the Gardeners could not muster up much more production at the plate, only adding one more run total in the last two innings on Norton’s third single of the night that scored shortstop Marshall Kratter from third, after Kratter’s deep leadoff triple to left in the fifth.

Where did the triple come from? After the Free Agents had scored another touchdown in the fifth (Cleveland Gary sweep, Lansford PAT) to add seven more and go up by 14 at 24-10, Kratter leading off the fifth basically looked at pitcher Pete Holohan, said “Fuck you and your momentum, we’re coming back,” and laced his triple to left to get the bats potentially rolling like Naomi (that's "I Moan" backwards) seducing Taj Mahal Badalandabad at the roller rink party in Van Wilder. Norton liked Kratter’s hit and followed with the aforementioned single, yet after that the bats rolled like a stone gathering no moss, and by no moss we mean no runs. There might have been a 5-4-3 double play in there that killed momentum and the hopes of America, yet we’re not really sure who hit it and our scorebook is all scribbles so we’ll just say that that supposed “double play” may or may not have happened and put an asterisk next to it.

Despite Watters' and Norton’s combined 6-for-6 night, the Gardeners weirdly couldn’t put the ball in the end zone and basically ended up with a few field goals for the evening versus the Free Agents' touchdowns.

In the field, only a few players got in on the action, with eleven of the fifteen Free Agents’ outs (73%) going to three outfielders (Shields six putouts, Hersher three, Friedman two). Gatta participated in three of the remaining four outs with two unassisted putouts and receiving a 5-3 groundout throw from Norton at third. Dickenson provided the other out by getting batter Jackie Slater to foul out in the second on a hanging curveball.

The Free Agents did hit well, and we'll give them credit for that. They batted an unbelievable .700 for the game (28-for-40), simply getting hit after hit after hit, like a bong in a frat party closed-door bedroom or like Chad Ochocinco’s wife.

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Stat of the Week:

7-2 (.778): Savage Gardeners’ record when Doug Cole plays (a.k.a. doesn't take himself out of the lineup). Hmm.............

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8/01/2013

The Savage Gardeners, after their week one embarrassing two-run output, demonstrably proved the critics wrong Tuesday night at Steven Jackson Memorial Field in their week two matchup.

“They’re soft this year,” one national news writer for the New York Times wrote. “It’s over – I don’t see the [Savage] Gardeners reaching .500 ever again,” wrote another. Rick Reilly deemed them toast. Emily Dickinson wrote a poem about their poor prospects. Tim Kurkjian quoted them on SportsCenter in his nasal voice the night of their week one loss: “I just don’t think they have it in them to do anything. Too many flameouts, playoff losses, and momentum burners signify this team. No fan wants to be seen wearing Gardeners’ memorabilia anymore – they were a fad like pet rocks, backbumps, and Zynga.”

Actually, Tim, they’re a permanent fad like Fireball. They’ll never go away - they'll only grow in popularity and deliciousness.

With slugger Casey Cole leading the charge, the Gardeners clawed back from an eight-run hole in the first inning to clearly dominate Pop’s Sandwich Shop in their first victory this season, 25-12. Slipping under the radar, Cole in his infrequent action as a Gardener over the past six seasons has made his presence felt every time. He easily earned the Balboa Café Player of the Game Award by slugging two – yes, two – three-run homers in consecutive at-bats. He added a single and a sacrifice fly, finishing 3-for-4 with seven RBIs for the night.

With his stellar performance, he brought his career numbers to 26 RBIs on 25 hits while boosting his slugging percentage to 1.273 and keeping his career average above a healthy .750. Both of his shots were straight wrist-action blasts to deep left-centerfield that Pop’s outfielders had no chance of catching or running down even if they had Kenny Lofton’s speed and Jim Edmonds’ fielding ability combined. Those balls were untouchable.

One of our writers had a huge boner the whole game watching Cole and the Gardeners crush run after run, filling up the scorebook as well as the blood in said writer’s platano. And as any gentleman knows, having a hard-on for an extended time period results in pelotas azules. So, yes, that was another case of untouchable balls. A.K.A. blue balls. No touching. That shit hurts.

The other Cole in the lineup – Doug Cole – had a different night, simply deciding to be the number one man Tuesday. Literally.

He made one appearance in the field in the first, then had one at-bat, in inning number one, with one runner on base, where he hit a single – one base – for one RBI before taking himself out for the rest of the night, retiring from the night in style. He now leads the team in hitting with a perfect one-point-oh-oh-oh batting average to go with his 1.000 slugging percentage.

Fighting also in a dead heat for batting average leader this season is All-Star Phil Zackler, who also is batting 1.000 (2-for-2) for the season, yet who missed the game because he was feeding the homeless, sweeping Polk Street clean, or some other useless deed for humanity. Cole and Zackler now have an incredibly close race for the batting title, both hitting at their relentless 1.000 clip. So yes, this shit is heating up fast. With their combined three at-bats in two games, they’re both on pace to shatter batting records and be the first players to bat a perfect 1.000 for the entire season. We’re estimating, for the season, a combined 5-for-5 for these two. A perfect 1.000.

Mathematically, you could also say that leftfielder Ryan Preston is in the race as well, even though he is only 7-for-7 this year. Against Pop’s Sandwich Shop, the doubles master quietly went 5-for-5 in the cleanup spot, adding three RBIs for good measure. Four of these hits were singles. He usually hits doubles – as shown by his career team-leading 33 doubles, yet now that he’s married, he’s paradoxically now a single man.

Hahahahaha so punny and clever that play on words.

Somebody fucking kill that writer.

Pop’s provided precocious pop to start the game in their top of the first inning, portending possible doom for the Gardeners. They popped eight runs onto the board, and this game looked headed towards another disaster. Like Amanda Bynes. Disaster.

Fortunately, with Manager Chris Norton finally back in the lineup, a Hunter Pence-like motivational speech to the team by the manager turned everything around. When the players trotted into the dugout looking at the 8-0 hole, Norton fired up the team – minus the crazy eyes – and the team responded with fire. Like the girl who played with fire. Which isn’t really smart though if you think about it. That shit can cause permanent burns if you’re putting your hands in it. Pretty dumb move.

Now it was bottom one. Down eight-nil. Maybe it was the do-or-die feeling the Gardeners felt now in the CC division that sparked their competitive juices to take charge and dominate. Maybe they didn’t want to be a nobody no more. Maybe it was the new bat that they couldn’t use yet. Maybe it was silk panties, maybe it was a thong. Odds are it was probably basic white, cotton underpants. Yet maybe it was something really cool we don’t even know about.

In all likelihood, it must have been the supernatural presence of African-American Steve Smith back in the lineup that spurred the Gardeners to life. And that statement can't be contradicted – Smith literally is an African-American. Lived in Africa, lived in America. African-American.

When word spread that he’d be coming back to America, his return into the Gardeners’ vaunted lineup ended up being one of the most widely anticipated events in America – no, take that back, not just America – in history. Chicks dumped their boyfriends. Stocks soared. Taco Bell gave out free chalupas for a day. This shit was insane. Smith’s return was more anticipated than Michael Jordan’s comeback from professional baseball. More anticipated than Jordan’s second comeback. More highly anticipated than the 2008 Presidential Election results. Bigger than the Emancipation Proclamation. Landing on the moon. The Royal Wedding. The Royal Baby. Jesus’ rising from the dead. Historic inventions such as the light bulb, the wheel, the DNA helix, Google, Facebook, sunglasses, Cinderella, sexting, parking meters, the Wynn, electronic fly zappers, shampoo and conditioner in one bottle, Uber, self-serve fro-yo, Lululemon pants for men, electricity, the airplane, Journey, eggs, the automobile, the ink pen, color TV, Subway’s five-dollar footlongs, and even the discovery of water. In a nutshell, Smith’s return was deemed to be epic.

And the anticipation kept building and building and building up to his first at-bat as he stepped up to the plate………two ten-minute standing ovations……..…thousands of tears flowing in the crowd with happiness……...….cameras flashing everywhere………..women with beads flashing everywhere………..all to culminate with……….…..

A walk.

Pretty darn climactic.

Regardless, whatever spurred the Gardeners in the first inning was hott with two "t's," and left-centerfielder Ari Hersher led it off with a leadoff double to center.

Defensive gem Eric Snow – who will be the sole lefty in the lineup now with the defection of Stu Jackson – did what he does best by knocking in Hersher with a single to center.

Later in the inning, Smith’s walk loaded the bases for right-centerfielder Jason Friedman to hit an RBI-single and Cole – Casey – to knock in his first RBI for the night with his sac-fly to left. With two outs, two runners on, and the score now 8-3, Hersher was overheard on the dugout camera commenting as he sipped his Orange Gatorade G2, “A clutch hit would be huge here: 8-5 going into the second is a lot better than 8-3.”

Never were words spoken - and followed through with - more truly. Cy Young pitcher Kevin Dickenson clutched hit all right, smashing a double down the line in left to score two runs and put the score at 8-5. He scored next on Doug Cole’s one hit – and lone appearance for the night. Norton followed Cole’s hit with a single up the middle, Hersher drew a walk to load the bases, and Snow hit his second and third RBIs of the inning with another single to center to score pinch-runner Dickenson (running for Cole, who had retired for the night and was watching the game in a gold bathtub in the locker room sipping a margarita and with servants fanning him with large palm branches and feeding him grapes) and Norton.

Eight-all, heading into the second. Once again, typical first quarter NFL football score. The Gardeners were alive and they never looked back. Except when they were rounding base after base and taunting Pop’s infielders with threats like, “You suck!.........Ya jackass,” “Your mom goes to college,” and “Na-na na-na boo-boo, stick your head in doo-doo.”

The Gardeners added six more in the second inning, half of them on Cole’s three-run home run that also scored Preston and Smith, who had both singled. Dickenson’s deep triple to left-center led to Triple-A callup John Moran’s sac-fly to left for run four of the inning. Norton’s second single up the middle then preceded Hersher’s perfectly placed tailing home run lined shot to rightfield to put the Gardeners up 14-8 after two.

On the mound, Dickenson squashed Pop’s for the rest of the game, giving up one run total in innings two through five, bookended by 1-2-3 innings in the second and fifth. Snow provided his usual stellar defensive play with a few key stretches at first and a great unassisted putout in the fifth to end the inning.

The Gardeners played fairly flawlessly in the field, a testament to their watching Ozzie Smith and a young Ken Griffey defensive videos nonstop all week.

The Gardeners’ third inning produced five more runs, led off by shortstop Dave Watters’ immaculately placed pop-up double to short right field. Preston, Smith, and Friedman all singled in order, setting the table for Cole’s second three-run jack of the night to put the Gardeners up ten, 19-9.

They added five more insurance runs in the fifth inning, and all with two outs. In ascending base-hit order, Hersher singled home Dickenson, Snow doubled in Norton, and Watters tripled to complete the trifecta pattern. Preston’s fourth single and third RBI of the night scored Watters for the Gardeners’ final run.

A 25-12 shellacking. The Gardeners are back. Back in black baby. Back that ass up. Backstreet’s back alright.

Backstreet should come back come to think of it. Let’s be honest, we all know the words to their greatest song:

Tell me whyay?
Ain’t nothin’ but a heartache
Tell me whyay?
Ain't nothin' but a mistake
Tell me why...

“I play their Millenium CD on shuffle each morning before work - gets me pumped for my day," a Gardeners’ leadoff left-centerfielder whispered to one of our writers in confidence the other night. "Don't tell anyone."

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Stat of the Week:

7: Number of Chris Norton’s last eight at-bats that have been with two outs

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7/27/2013

HI!!! My name is Britney Barbsie and I’m a new intern here at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY)!!! I gradumacated from Arizona State University (love my Sun Demons!!!) and really want to be a writer for US Weekly someday!!! The usual writers deemed the Gardeners’ first softball game of the 2013 summer season not worthy of a write-up, so I happily and smilingly and gleefully volunteered to right it!!! Gonna be famous like Kristin Cavallari!!! Hope you like my righting as much as I love my highlights in my hair!!!

So, like, it’s the weak 1 of the Savage Gardeners 2013 summer season. Their playing another teem of players, which would be the opponent. Gosh these terms are soooo funny!!! Um, so there totally are ten players on the field, all in seemingly random places on the dirt and grass, yet in every quarter they’d go back to the same place on the dirt and grass!!! It was so weird!!! So funny!!! Uggh, George Alexander Louis…really?!?!? I totally would’ve done like Grady I LOOOOVVVVVVEEEE that name. Heehee I giggle too much.

So all these players get on the field, and the opponent doesn’t go on the field – how weird is that?!?! They like sit on the bleachers or stand behind the large fence protecting the field from the people watching. OMG SO FUN!!! I love sports. Like when I grew up my dad was like the BIGGEST 49ers fan. OMG I used to wear his 49ers Michael Jordan jersey like every day. Except for Wednesdays, when we wear pink.

Oh I’m so flustered and excited getting to right this!!! This is like big time!!! The Gardeners team did so good!!! They scored two points!!! Ok, so they and the other team switch off with the bats and the funny gloves on their hands, like every ten minutes. I never could figure out who had the stopwatch to make them switch places every ten minutes yet they like all knew when to do it!!! So crazayy!!!!!! Ugh Jimmy Fallon’s new baby is so not hot. Gram it!!! OMG my Facebook is blowing uppppppppppppp. I wonder what my high school Geometry teacher is up to…oooh hey Mr. Simpson.

Ok, so like the team was batt….

[Editor’s note: at this point in reading Britney’s rough draft, we in the editing department fell over, mouths agape in disbelief at the fucking terrible grammar and education of this ASU idiot. She immediately was told to pack her shit up (“Oooh, fun, am I going on a business trip?” was her honest-to-God response) and no longer is employed here.

Well that hiring was a mistake. We’ll stick now to employing overweight middle-aged men who think their sports opinions are genius (see Ratto, R.), men who never made it past Freshman basketball yet think they’re the greatest athletes ever and know everything about sports (most sports writers), and washed-up former athletes who are handicapped and have nothing else to do except write softball write-ups and keep track of obscure statistics like Savage Gardeners second inning doubles at Moscone 2 with one out and runners on first and third.

Not sure who made the mistake of hiring any ASU grad, lest of all any kid who graduates these days cause they’re all too focused on Twitter and Angry Birds. Kids have it so easy these days. Whatever happened to going to your local library to get access to a world atlas simply to find out where Rhodesia is? Education sucks these days. Fortunately it’ll be overhauled soon enough nationally by future San Francisco Mayor Phil Zackler, yet that’s for another discussion. Vote Zackler for Supervisor.

At this point now we had one of our more senior writers take over and write the game recap of the 22-2 ugly loss for distribution across the AP wire. Why didn’t we edit out that complete babbling nonsense of a writeup above by the illiterate ASU grad – and therefore keep it in our nationally syndicated newspaper? Simply to show how dum kids are these days. And yes, that’s “dum” with no “b.”]

Your heroic Gardeners took Steven Jackson Memorial Field Tuesday night against 12 Angry Men with a sorely depleted lineup, due to, among others, injuries, contract negotiations, expired visas, defections to Philadelphia (Jackson, S.), saving lives (Cole, C.), dates, sex, sex with dates (the fruit), fruity sex in the Castro, Fidel Castro rallies, pep rallies, tennis rallies, rally committee nerds (Kubey, A.), and an unknown reason (Cole, D.). With the Gardeners’ Triple-A team en route to Omaha to play the Storm Chasers and the Double-A affiliate stuck on a bus to Altoona, team management had to scramble last-second to fill roster spots from the Single-A club. Four Single-A callups joined the team to make an even eleven for the night’s matchup.

We won’t mention how the Single-A callups did at the plate in their big-league appearance for fear of harming the organization (1-for-8). This does prove though how mentally tough it is for a new player to perform in his first big-league Gardeners’ appearance. Each newbie usually swings too hard to prove himself and usually ends up with groundouts. Someday someone will come along, swing easily and lightly like Doug Cole did in his first big-league game (2-for-2, a double and a triple with three RBIs), and make a splash in his first appearance. Like Will Clark in his first at-bat as well. Ding-dong off Nolan Ryan. Clark also is the player with the most homers off of Ryan out of any batter in Ryan's career.

By the way, the three-part segment on Will the Thrill on CSNBA was pretty sweet. Number 22 was pretty badass, and possibly one of our writer’s favorite player of all-time.

[Little known fact gleaned from the segment: Clark and Ryan, in their five years with the Texas Rangers together as player and Special Assistant, respectively, rarely said a word to each other.]

In the vaunted CC League this season, the Gardeners looked to take the division by storm, and they started off their game against 12 Angry Men in style. With Cy Young pitcher Kevin Dickenson absent, DL-activated Corbin Shields – the slugger is back thank God – took the hill for the Gardeners. And first batter of the game – strikeout of batter Kyle Moxon. The Gardeners were off to a hot start.

Unfortunately the league righted itself and proved why CC stands for Crushin’ Crushballs. 12 Angry Men rode a two-out rally in the first inning to victory, putting up seven runs and never looking back. They crushed the ball everywhere, ultimately putting up 22 runs in the 22-2 five-inning mercy-rule victory for them and defeat for the Gardeners. We won’t go into the details of the Angry Men’s runs, yet they scored a lot, aided by the ubiquitous tomahawk swinger – Tomahawk Todd – the tall guy who plays on every softball team the Gardeners face.

Despite the crushing of the ball by the Gardeners' opponent, 12 Angry Men's game batting statistics would've not even cracked the top 15 single-game performances of the Gardeners in their history. The opponent batted .658 with a 1.053 slugging percentage. In single-game statistics, that would've placed them only 16th best in average and 20th best in slugging when compared with all of the Gardeners' 62 career games. Thus, this shows that the Gardeners are clearly capable of replicating the Angry Men's crushing success at the plate, as they have done it better than them more than 15 times in their history.

With Stu Jackson retired, the Gardeners lost a major slugger and lefty presence in their lineup and also a vacuum in the field at shortstop. The likely candidate to take over at short this season though is Doug Cole, who did a shitload of agility drills and speedwork at Athletes’ Performance in Arizona over the offseason to prep for his duty in Jackson’s old spot.

Starting their home half of the first inning, nevertheless, leadoff batter and interim coach Ari Hersher picked up where he always leaves off by singling to right to lead off the Gardeners’ batting. He moved to second on leftfielder Ryan Preston’s single and scored on designated hitter Matt Mason’s single to left.

Unfortunately, this was in a nutshell the peak of the Gardeners’ production for the night. Second baseman Zackler co-led the team for the night at the plate. He went 2-for-2 with two singles, tying for the team lead for the night in hits: two. Preston also had two hits, a single and a double and the other RBI. That pretty much describes the highlight performances of the night.

Right-centerfielder Jason Friedman provided the other run of the night by scoring from second on Preston’s double in the third inning.

Sad to say it, yet this was probably the lowest game in Gardeners’ history. Two runs, eight hits total, no Garden Hoes, crying babies, spoiled milk, no water, cracked skin, chapped lips, hypothermia, dealer’s five-card 21 beats your two tens, unwanted pregnancies, tsunami, the Black Plague, and getting dumped on your birthday. All this shit happened Tuesday night for the Gardeners.

The last time the Gardeners only scored two runs was in the Summer 2010 playoffs when they lost to Blooms Brothers 14-2 in a cold, lethargic dead loss, which actually – now that we look at it – was a worse game statistically than this one. They only had seven hits in 21 at-bats (.333 average) in that game, versus eight in 23 (.348) in this. The fortunate part about Tuesday’s loss is that there has to be a bottom somewhere, and the team can only go upward from here. Immediately after the loss, the Gardeners motivated themselves by watching inspirational movies like Hoosiers, Rudy, Remember the Titans, Miracle, Rocky, Mean Girls, Can't Hardly Wait, and Uncle Buck.

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Stat of the Week:

.660: Gardeners’ winning percentage with 10 or 11 players in the lineup
.500: Winning percentage in all other situations

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6/09/2013

Momentum from another division title and an epic season-finale comeback unfortunately couldn’t carry the Gardeners through the first round of the playoffs. At Steven Jackson Memorial Field in Canada eh, the Free Agents batted their way past the Gardeners Tuesday night, 23-19.

The high-scoring matchup was punctuated by shortstop Stu Jackson’s home run over the porch in right, which, however, unfortunately limited his future at-bats to opposite-field slap shots because of the dumb one-homer-over-the-fence rule.

This Gardeners’ string of playoff appearances with no ring is like the early 1990s Buffalo Bills. Do they need some Tecmo Thurman Thomas speed to put them over the hump? Or does a 2000s Phoenix Suns reference ring more bells. The 1991-2005 Atlanta Braves (save for the '95 World Series win)? Does the Thurman Thomas speed reference fly over heads? Was everyone too busy being the dominating Niners or running Barry Sanders sweep rights?

What made the quarterfinals playoff game fun against the Free Agents was the fact that the opponent was legit. Always more competitive and rewarding, win or lose. Except for the losing part of course.

The Gardeners batted fairly consistently all game, peppering a few runs into each inning. Yet their opponents did the same, except for scoring a few more, thus making them the victors - at least for Tuesday night though. Joaquin Phoenix as Commodus from "Gladiator" came in the next morning, rounded up the Free Agents, and threw them to the lions, so they’re mutilated now.

Your heroic Gardeners hit a league-record six sacrifice-flies in the game, led by first baseman Dan Gatta’s two and catcher Phil Zackler’s two as well. One of Gatta’s was well-planned - in the fourth inning fouling out to the first baseman who wandered into out-of-play land, allowing outfielder Jason Friedman to score from third and Zackler on first to move to second. This baserunner movement ended up helping the Gardeners in the inning, as Cy Young pitcher Kevin Dickenson singled to left next – with Zackler wisely being held up at third by NL All-Star third base coach Doug Cole due to leftfielder Gunnar Stahl’s very strong arm. Zackler at third made it easy for next batter and outfielder Casey Cole to sacrifice him in with a sac-fly to left. A couple of runs in, no batting averages harmed. Win-win.

The younger Cole provided a nice addition in his first Gardeners game since 1984, going 3-for-3 with four RBIs.

In related news, Connie from the Mighty Ducks turned out way hotter than Julie the Cat. Roles were definitely reversed in their younger days, especially with Julie as Becky in "Rookie of the Year" - she was cute as shit there. We also recently realized Connie is Andy's girlfriend, because Andy is like, cut. From marble. And she genuinely doesn't care that's he's kinda lame and that he cheats on her. Yet she's 16, and right now she's entirely about sex. Specifically with Andy and not with Coop.

The Gardeners looked in control from the start, with the opening line at -120 and all ten players being voted In Touch’s Top Ten Sexiest Males of the Year, beating out Bradley Cooper, Liam Hemsworth, and Chris Pine, among others.

Again without mainstay leadoff hitter Ari Hersher, who was overseas bringing clothes and food to third-world families and a white rugby preacher in South Africa, the Gardeners improvised wisely by putting rookie third baseman Alex Solomon to bat leadoff in Hersher's absence. Solomon pulled through easily to start the game, singling the first hit in the bottom of the first. And easy as that, the runs perpetuated. Shortstop Stu Jackson doubled to right-center next – shocking, right – and rightfielder Dave Watters with hands tied behind his back doubled them both home to left for the Gardeners’ first two points. Or runs. Apologies, the Lynx-Mystics game is on our office TV right now and we’re getting our scoring classifications mixed up. Damn Maya Moore’s got a sweet stroke. So did Jim Courier in tennis. And some hot sailor at TGI Fridays you met a couple months ago. Who never did call back.

Leftfielder Ryan Preston’s single put runners at first and third still with no outs for Friedman in the fifth spot. Easy as that again, Friedman doubled to left to score Watters while Preston moved to third. Zackler then provided sac-fly number one with one to left – Friedman taking third on the play. This helped, as Gatta followed with his first sac-fly to allow Friedman to trot home with no sweat.

This five-spot in the first portended a good start for the Gardeners. The Free Agents punched back with four in their top half of the second – they also scored one in the first – to tie it up, yet the Gardeners scored two back in their inning on Jackson’s two-out two-RBI line drive shot over the fence in right (Solomon had been on first after his second single of the night). As previously stated, this home-run rule now affected the Gardeners’ future at-bats, as Jackson had to play it safe and hit oppo instead of crushing bomb after bomb over the fence. Watters and home run leader Zackler both had to temper their swinging stroke to avoid blasting shots over the fence as well.

Relatedly, Zackler led the team in home runs this season with five, and was second in RBIs with 22. Yes, you read that right.

On a tangent, let us note that having a consistent third base coach was unbelievably helpful as Cole did the best coaching job in Gardeners’ history, sending or holding runners expertly, especially considering that the Free Agents’ left- and left-centerfielders both had strong arms, which we will give them credit for. It may have proved beneficial for the Free Agents, as there were probably three times runners were held up at third because of the outfielders’ arms.

That being said, we will counter this and vehemently not espouse that Cole relinquish his playing and take over third base duties full-time. We equate his situation exactly to Tim Lincecum. You don’t win two Cy Young Awards then completely lose it and become a mediocre pitcher. It’s still there – it’s always there – and his stellar years weren’t simply a fluke. It’s mental.......he’s lost weight.......his hair – whatever it is, he’s still got that dominant pitcher in him, and we still see it often. People simply like talking that he’s lost it, he’s done, etc….well bullshit, he’s legit, he’ll be back, and we stand by this argument and truth.

Back to Cole – he started off his Gardeners career 5-for-5 with six RBIs yet has struggled of late. Say whatever you want to say, yet a player – like Lincecum above – simply doesn’t lose it. We know he’ll be back to form in no time for the Summer 2013 Season. Everyone goes through slumps. Barry Bonds. Joe DiMaggio. The Rock. Adam Sandler – he’s back in “That’s My Boy” thank God. Even though we haven’t seen it. We simply assume it’s semi-back to his Happy Gilmore/Billy Madison days.

All these guys come back from slumps. Actually, The Rock has never made a good movie, so cancel that reference.

The top of the third put the Free Agents up 9-7, yet the Gardeners kept their hitting and resilience up like a…………uh………….what’s a good simile………..Viagra boner. Yeah, that’s totally funny. Frat! Frat! Frat! Frat! Frat! Frat! Frat! Frat!

Gatta’s aforementioned sac-fly to first and then Cole’s scored the first two runs of the inning (Cole, as in Casey. Remember, Doug sacrificed his pride to take up Wendell Kim duties at third).

Manager Chris Norton - finally making a game after a three-game drought - doubled a shot to right-center next to score Dickenson all the way from first. Solomon’s walk and Jackson’s single loaded the bases for Watters, who singled to push in the fourth run of the inning and put the score at 11-9 Gardeners heading into the fourth.

The Free Agents then took the lead, which they ultimately never relinquished, scoring five in the fourth. Casey Cole’s two-out two-RBI single in the bottom of the inning clawed two back. Yet the Free Agents kept up a hot streak, scoring four in the fifth – shutting out the Gardeners in their half - and five more in the sixth, putting the score at 23-13 with the Gardeners’ having two opportunities in their sixth and seventh to make up the difference.

Oh and they responded incrementally in the bottom of the sixth. Funny in that Softball Rule #1 – Momentum – came to fruition in the sixth. The ten-run deficit in the sixth did show a quiet and disconsolate Gardeners' dugout. Yet slowly the team came back to life. Simply showed and confirmed how little hits here and there are all a team needs to get the ball running, score some runs, and gain some momentum back.

Friedman led off by beating out a single to short. Zackler followed with a nice single to left. Gatta kept it up with a hard shot to left also, scoring Friedman. Three straight hits, runners on, no outs – now we’re getting somewhere. Dickenson loaded the bases for Cole with another single. Cole hit consecutive single number five to score Zackler and keep the bases loaded. Norton ensued with a sac-fly to score Gatta. Three runs slowly coming in. Solomon then crushed a double to right-center to score Dickenson and Cole and bring the Gardeners within five at 23-18.

They carried this momentum into their defensive half in the seventh with a 1-2-3 inning, highlighted by Preston’s running catch in deep left and Jackson’s scoop of a grounder up the middle. Jackson also provided a great Derek Jeter-like play at short in the fourth, grabbing one in the hole and throwing off his back foot for the first out of the inning. In total, Jackson had seven putouts at shortstop – five of them grounders. Yea, so whatever he says, he's a vacuum out there. Preston and Friedman in the left part of the outfield combined for seven putouts. Mathematically this calculated to two-thirds of the opponents’ outs going to shortstop, leftfield or left-center.

Unfortunately there was no joy in Mudville as the Gardeners could only get one run in the seventh – on Zackler’s second sac-fly, to score Watters – and the Gardeners’ championship desires were put on hold for next season.

Nevertheless, the team shook off the loss immediately, as all ten players and third base coach went straight to the gym after the game to start preparing for the summer season. Squats and cleans. Wednesday is arms and back Ron Burgundy.

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Stat of the Week:

18.8 vs. 8.8: Average runs scored against the Gardeners in their six career playoff losses (18.8) versus their seven wins (8.8).

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5/31/2013

Yeah…..that was epic.

Looking at a shocking loss that would have weirdly sent the Savage Gardeners home to their couches for the playoffs, all ten players rallied together in the bottom of the seventh inning to launch a wild comeback in Tuesday’s walk-off 23-22 victory.

At Bob Vila Moscone Stadium, as strange as it sounds, a loss to Smoking bAses would have sent the Gardeners home for the playoffs. Yeah…..weird huh. Seemed that all season the Gardeners had coasted and looked set to make the postseason. Nevertheless, a loss and 6-2 record would have kept them out due to tiebreakers, some weird BCS formula, and Washington’s win over Dallas plus Carolina's loss or tie over Tampa Bay Sunday.

Despite all odds facing them in-game Tuesday, the Gardeners proved themselves the best team in the division and the world by staying strong. After the third inning they were down 16-4. Heading into the bottom of the seventh it was 22-15.

Yet they never gave up. They never quit. They never let go Jack. They never let go.

Kate Winslet can’t say the same – that bitch let go.

Having to play with two Triple-A call-ups while missing hits leader Jason Friedman, Manager Chris Norton, the youthful rookie Doug Cole, and consistent leadoff hitter Senor Ari Hersher Gomez de Puerto Rico, the Gardeners still had to field a team. And who was to lead the charge in the leadoff spot.......none other than league slugging and home run leader Phil Zackler. In a humble move, his brother James Zackler volunteered himself to bat in the tenth spot, looking to make some back-to-back James-Phil brother magic when the lineup turned around sometime in the game. Little did they know that the Zacklers wouldn’t necessarily provide back-to-back memories, yet would contribute more memorably as bookends later in the game.

After ceding three runs in the bottom of the first to Smoking bAses, the Gardeners punched three back, despite Zackler’s (Phil – we’ll refer to James as mini-Zackler) leadoff out. Second batter shortstop Stu Jackson’s double to right made it easy for outfielder Dave Watters to single him in next. Leftfielder Ryan Preston’s double to left put runners at second and third for fifth hitter and first baseman Eric Snow, a situation that pretty much guaranteed runs. Yeah….second and third with Snow up? Literally a guaranteed hit and at least an RBI (see bottom).

And surprise surprise, ho hum – Snow singled them both in easily with a liner to center. He cleanly finished 4-for-4 for the game with three RBIs.

The Gardeners' bats got fast and furious six innings later, yet in between it looked like they had a hangover three innings down, with the score at 16-4. However, they fought through it – pain and gain as they say – and slowly clawed back like ironmen to victory until the Gardeners’ stars trekked into darkness into oblivion before midnight after the stadium lights went out a few minutes after the epic comeback ended.

Speaking of fast and furious, it is a true fact that they almost stopped the franchise after the third movie, “Tokyo Drift.”

Seriously, google it.

Yet what most people don’t know is the real reason why they kept the franchise going, where it ultimately has become one of the top-selling series in movie history. It all dates back to a fan letter sent back in 2006 by the movie’s self-proclaimed "biggest fan." With diligent research and bribing, we got ahold of the franchise-sustaining anonymous fan letter and printed it below. Seriously, this letter changed everything from a canceled series to a sixth and potentially seventh movie in the works:

Dear Paul Walker,
I am a white male and despite your movies appealing to the Asians and the blacks because they’re really into cars, I am a huge fan because I secretly have a black person inside me (I know a lot of rap music and can do the Dougie too) and can name every NBA player (I root for the Kings and you're a king in my eyes) and which college each NBA player went to. Please do not cancel your movies and bring back Vin Diesel or else I will not buy your posters for my wall anymore.
Your biggest fan,
Anonymous

P.S. You were great in “Varsity Blues” and I know you wouldn’t have pussed out like Johnny Moxon in the whipped cream bikini scene.
P.P.S. You were also great in “Into the Blue” with Jessica Alba; too bad though that Jessica in her bikini on the movie cover couldn’t motivate girls to not eat Butterfingers from Phyllis.

The opponents scored three more in the second, shut down the Gardeners' bats, then went nuts. They kept getting hit after hit after hit – stealing the Gardeners’ sickness mantra – to put up ten runs in the third inning and put your heroes in a deep hole, deeper than the one Christian Bale climbed out of in the third Batman where he wears a rubber suit that really seals in the flavor.

Jackson tripled and later scored on Watters’ deep sacrifice fly that somehow got caught for a run in the third, yet at 16-4, all looked lost and hopeless, like Jennifer Love Hewitt’s love life if she doesn’t marry one of our writers ASAP.

A shutdown defensive 1-2-3 inning in the top of the fourth spit some life back into the Gardeners, as Zackler at second scooped a nice grounder in the inning and third baseman Alex Solomon caught a hot liner for the third out. At least Jackson at shortstop didn’t cut either player off this time, like he did in the second inning when he literally ran in front of mini-Zackler playing second – at a pop-up between second and first base – to make the out.

We will give him solid credit though in the field, where in the first inning he was in the middle of a 10-6-2 Dan Gatta-to-Jackson-to-mini-Zackler relay just in time to throw out batter Taylor Vaughn trying for an inside-the-park home run. In addition, he combined with Solomon at third for a 6-5-3 groundout as he tapped a grounder to Solomon who quickly lasered to Snow at first for an out in the sixth.

After Cy Young pitcher Kevin Dickenson’s shutout top of the fourth, Dickenson led off at the plate with a walk, moving to second on Solomon’s single. Triple-A call-up Trey McCalla – who had made a great diving catch for out three in the third to end the ten-run onslaught – followed with an RBI single, moving Solomon to third. Mini-Zackler sac-flied him in for run number two of the inning, slowly closing the gap to 16-6. Zackler, Jackson, Watters, and Preston all hit back-to-back-to-back-to-back singles when Snow finally broke the trend with a double. In total, the Gardeners got five runs back, yet still were down quite a bit.

In the fifth, McCalla (batting) and Dickenson (on second base) pulled the ol’ score from second base sac-fly move on McCalla’s sac-fly to right-center, thus keeping McCalla’s stats looking good like Channing Tatum in any movie, especially “Magic Mike.”

With two outs, Zackler doubled home Solomon, and Jackson followed with a home run to right.

Wait..........."shortstop Stu Jackson’s double to right...Jackson tripled and later scored...Zackler, Jackson, Watters, and Preston all hit back-to-back-to-back-to-back singles...Jackson followed with a home run to right..."

Yep. The cycle happened. And no one knew it until later.

AFTER the game, looking over the final scorebook, this conversation was overheard coming from the official scorekeeper:

Scorekeeper: “Shit, Stu [Jackson], you hit for the cycle.”
Jackson: “Sweet, I didn’t know that either.”

Sorry Mase.

Batter Dean Sampson of Smoking bAses also apparently hit for the cycle, yet he bragged and was pretty douchey about it, stopping at second after his final at-bat to get his needed double, looking at his teammates in the dugout, and screaming, “I hit for the cycle, yo!” while doing some douchey double peace sign hand movements.

After the game he was found with a broken kneecap with Tonya Harding apparently fleeing the scene with her bodyguard. What’s that you say? Don’t be a douche, doucheface.

Okay – stop all this nonsense – let’s get to the seventh inning and the history books and the good shit, like Christian Grey teasing us along.

Score now 22-15, bottom of the seventh, Gardeners facing elimination. A loss also wasn’t possible because there was a Garden Hoe in attendance, and we proved mathematically that the Gardeners don’t lose this season when Garden Hoes show up.

Did the Gardeners have it in them to pull this out? Obviously - if you followed the live Gamecast on ESPN or watched any SportsCenter the past few days, you know what happened. And whoever says baseball isn’t a team game needs to shut the fuck up. All ten players contributed in the seventh, right down the lineup, bookended by none other than, yes, prophetically, the Zacklers. Since a whole book could be written about the epic bottom of the seventh comeback of the final regular season game, we’ll put it in shorthand for easy reading to allow the future book’s author to go more in-depth in his book:

1. Score 22-15. Zackler hits leadoff triple to left.
2. Jackson hits sac-fly to right to score Zackler. 22-16. Yet one out.
3. Watters beats out infield single to shortstop.
4. Preston singles to center. Runners on first and second.
5. Snow singles to center, loading the bases.
6. Gatta lines single to left, Watters and Preston score, Snow to third. 22-18.
7. Dickenson doubles down the line in left, Snow scores, Gatta to third, 22-19.
8. Solomon blasts two-RBI triple to left-center. Unbelievable. 22-21, tying run on third.
9. McCalla (three RBIs already) intentionally walked.
10. Mini-Zackler up, struggling at 0-for-3 in the game. Not anymore. Triple to left. Solomon trots home, McCalla scores from first (nerd milestone stat: Gardeners' 1,000th run). 23-22. Game. Set. Match.

Win.

Playoffs.

History.

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Stat of the Week:

8-for-10 (.800), 19 RBIs: Eric Snow’s career stats with either the bases loaded or runners on second and third. Almost two RBIs per at-bat. Clutch.

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5/27/2013

Tuesday night’s battle of the titans against Big Stixx in Canada eh at Steven Jackson Memorial Field proved the first true challenge for the Savage Gardeners in the Spring 2013 seasonal quest towards immortality and Super Mario star invincibility. And speaking of Ron Burgundy, Christmas is coming twice this December. One of our writers is asking Santa for 100% snake venom cologne.

Big Stixx used their batting sticks – not wieners like some people would interpret – to hit it hardcore and finish their scoring early before relaxing oxytocin-induced post-coitally for the rest of the night. They banged out 19 hits in the first three innings to put up 13 runs on the board and leave the Gardeners clawing back all night, which they did persistently like Balboa cougs. The 13-11 loss by the Gardeners was their first of the season, likely still keeping them in World Series contention because they’re still the best team on Earth and infinity and beyond.

That was an absolutely hilarious Toy Story reference.

Nevertheless, after the 13-run eruption to start the first three innings, the Gardeners and Cy Young pitcher Kevin Dickenson held Big Stixx scoreless for the final four innings - a pretty impressive feat to hold a good team scoreless for four straight innings. The recently-engaged Dickenson also snagged four hard grounders up the middle for four putouts for the game.

Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock's duet national anthem led into Big Stixx’ six-run top of the first. The Gardeners swiped one back in their bottom half on Dickenson’s RBI single to center that scored leftfielder Eric Snow. With the absence of starting leftfielder Ryan Preston due to a honeymoon in some sweet place, all-around utility defenseman Snow took over leftfield duties for the evening. Funny enough that not a single Big Stixx flyout went to leftfield all night.

The hostile opponents added four more in the second to go up 10-1, a daunting behind position the Gardeners hadn’t found themselves in since last season. In fact, the deficit after the full first inning was the first time the Gardeners had been behind at any point this season.

In the bottom of the second, the Gardeners’ bats started to come alive like one does after sipping three hours of a 5-Hour Energy. Maybe even only two-and-a-half hours. Shortstop Alex Solomon logged his eighth consecutive hit in eight at-bats with a leadoff single to center. First baseman and Triple-A call-up Hank Weinberg’s single and catcher Doug Cole’s walk loaded the bases for fellow Triple-A call-up Mike Yanover, whose last major league appearance was last season when rosters were expanded to 40-man rosters.

Yanover pulled through with an infield RBI single to short, moving the runners up one base to keep them loaded for leadoff speedster Ari Hersher. Hersher - impressively working three jobs as a lawyer, professional softball player, and (shhh, secret) African-American break dancer/DJ - found himself up for the fourth time in his career with the bases loaded (weirdly only 1-for-3 with two RBIs at this point). He upped those stats greatly with probably the most perfectly placed triple in softball history, a tailing liner inside the rightfield line that nestled nicely in the deepest rightfield fence corner of Steven Jackson Memorial Field for a three-run three-bagger.

Snow easily knocked him in next with a sacrifice-fly to left-center for RBI 13 of the year and the Gardeners’ fifth run of the inning.

Big Stixx added three more in the top of the third to put it at 13-6 heading into the bottom of the inning. As stated above, this was the end of their scoring as Dickenson’s curveballs, Yanover’s solid stops at second base, and rightfielder Dan Gatta’s two clutch catches kept Big Stixx from doing anything productive the rest of the game. The only thing they did beat the Gardeners in – besides the final score – was their respectable presence of Big Stixx chicks, and the Gardeners’ nonexistence of any Garden Hoes. Yes, not a single Garden Hoe attended the game, unless you count the Gardeners’ handicapped anorexic media representative who writes about wieners and Matthew McConaughey.

Running a statistical analysis on the correlation between the Gardeners' win-loss record this season versus Garden Hoe attendance shows............carry the six.........yep.......a perfect 100% correlation. Hoes show up, bros blow up. Hoes stay away, bros don't play. Simple enough.

We could easily pay some stand-ins from Gold Club to act as Hoes, yet that could lead to other problems like higher season fees (only payable in dollar bills), a drop in overall Garden Hoe IQ levels, and crabs.

The Gardeners Tuesday also played without season batting average leader Matt Mason (30-day DL) and season home-run leader and future San Francisco mayor Phil Zackler, who was attending one of his 70 weekly community board meetings and couldn’t prioritize an hour out of his week to help the Gardeners to victory - letting down ten fellow teammates and millions of Gardeners fans who watched the devastating loss. Manager Chris Norton dropped his game-attendance stats to 2-for-7 (.286) this year, this one due to the upcoming ESPN "30 for 30" Savage Gardeners filming negotiations, where they go in-depth about slugger Dave Watters’ archery obsession.

Also absent Tuesday was lefty slugger Stu Jackson, who found out about the game three days later when he finally checked his email.

The Gardeners earned one back in the third when Cole broke out of his slump with an RBI double to center that scored Solomon from first.

Facing 13-7 in the bottom of the fifth, urgency pressed the Gardeners to attempt to catch up to their opponents. They put up four two-out runs in the inning, starting with Yanover’s RBI single to score Weinberg after Weinberg’s triple to right-center. Hersher followed Yanover with a single and Snow’s double to right-center knocked Yanover in with Hersher moving to third. Easily enough and with eyes closed, Watters singled them both home with a liner to left to put the score at 13-11 with two frames left.

After two solid defensive shutdown innings, however, the Gardeners’ couldn’t muster up any more runs and left the game looking at their first defeat since last season’s playoffs.

Yanover nicely finished 3-for-4 with two RBIs, while outfielder Jason Friedman pushed his league-leading hits number to 20 with a 3-for-4 night as well.

The Gardeners batted an even .500 for the night, hitting season lows in most single-game hitting categories. Likely due to their missing Zackler’s standard home runs and team-leading sacrifice flies, all because he’s focused on “making a difference in the community blah blah blah” or some other bullshit charitable reason.

Despite this, the Gardeners still ranked first in ESPN’s favorite team fan poll, with 140 million respondents giving 98% of the vote to the Gardeners and the other 2% being split between the Rockford Peaches and for some reason Scarlett Johansson.

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Stat of the Week:

9-10 (.474): The Gardeners' win-loss record at Jackson 1, the only field they have more losses than wins.

Field win-loss records:

Moscone 1 (14-3, .824)
Moscone 2 (9-4, .692)
Jackson 1 (9-10, .474)
Jackson 2 (6-4, .600)
Overall (38-21, .644)

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5/16/2013

This homer onslaught is gradually becoming less shocking. We’re talking about the Savage Gardeners’ fan favorite, All-Star Phil Zackler, obviously.

Zackler hit homers four and five for the season with six RBIs for the game as the Gardeners cruised to a 23-16 victory over Cat’s Alley Tuesday night. The win at the away field Steven Jackson Memorial Field across the border in Canada moved the Gardeners to 6-0 and one step closer to the 1972 Miami Dolphins.

Zackler now has five homers out of his six hits in 12 at-bats. Show-off.

The Gardeners’ faced their best-hitting opponent of the season in Cat’s Alley, as the kitties roped together a monstrous nine-run second inning to keep the game semi-close. Until the Gardeners batted again in the third. Squash that shit.

Under a freezing windy night in Canada eh, coincidentally the same day the Giants were visiting the Toronto Blue Jays, the Gardeners erupted in the first three innings to put up 21 runs. In addition, Rachel McAdams is from Canada. So is Elisha Cuthbert, who was unbelievably hott in “The Girl Next Door.” Also Canadian is Emmanuelle Chriqui. We now wonder though if one the Gardeners’ current players would still rank Sloan as the #1 woman of all-time…

Back to the game, and the first inning, where the crowds quickly filtered into their seats coming from Momo’s and drinking Molson and Labatt Blue. After Michael Cera's rousing Canadian National Anthem (always bet the under, except for Alicia Keys), outfielder Ari Hersher led off the game with his standard single to right. Hersher as interim manager had full control of the lineup pen – and hence the lineup – and penned himself in as leadoff so he could get a shitload of at-bats. Hersher had to perform interim manager duties for the fourth game this season, as Manager Chris Norton was in New York for the week negotiating the ESPN “Hard Knocks” contract for the Gardeners for the Summer 2013 season.

Shortstop Stu Jackson, who lives down the street from Steven Jackson Memorial Field yet still managed to show up almost late for the game, followed with a simple single to right as well. Leftfielder Dave Watters shockingly didn’t hit a homer to plate the first two batters, only slicing a double to left to score Hersher and put Jackson at third. First baseman Eric Snow effortlessly performed his duty in the cleanup spot by lashing a single to center to score Jackson and Watters like it ain't no thang.

Outfielder Jason Friedman’s single to left moved Snow to third, bringing up Zackler, who wanted to show his younger brother how the big boys played. However, he built up the suspense for later in the game by warming up with only a sacrifice fly to left, with Snow easily tagging from third.

Cy Young pitcher Kevin Dickenson followed Zackler’s sac-fly with a solid RBI triple to left for his second triple of the season. Third baseman Alex Solomon easily scored him later with a single to left. Solomon kept up his hot bat (3-for-3 last game) by going 4-for-4 against Cat’s Alley – three singles and a triple, with three RBIs.

After holding Cat’s Alley to one run in the bottom of the first, the Gardeners kept the sickness going, starting with Triple-A call-up Hank Weinberg, who led off the inning with a single. Hersher singled him to second and Jackson singled him home to put the heroes up 7-1, a typical football score. Watters then laced a single down the line to score Hersher for his 17th RBI of the year. Snow - yeah, he kind of kicked ass in the game – then tripled to the alley in right-center to score Jackson and Watters. Snow finished the game 3-for-3 with a single, double, and triple – a walk as well – and five RBIs. That’s Nawth Carolahna influence ya’ll.

Friedman’s single to center scored Snow. Zackler then stepped inwards to the batter's box as the outfielders stepped outwards towards the fences.

No dice for the fielders.

Zackler roped home run number four for the season. This is not getting shocking anymore. This is the new normal. Let’s get used to this Zackler home run onslaught, cause this is gonna happen a shitload of times.

The Gardeners scored their eighth run of the inning when Solomon singled Dickenson home again after Dickenson’s double.

In the bottom of the second, however, Cat’s Alley pulled out the guns and put a slew of runs on the board, led by Benny Rodriguez’ three-run home run. With nine runs put up in the inning and two outs, relief pitcher Doug Cole came in for the favorable situational pitcher-batter matchup. After walking his first batter Scotty Smalls, and now with the bases loaded, Cole induced a flyout to Ham Porter to earn the first hold in Gardeners’ history. His work earned him a spot on this summer’s All-Star team as a middle reliever, as he currently leads the league in holds with one.

(Irrelevant side note: The site doesn't allow for thirds of an inning to be posted, so Cole's one-third of an inning pitched won't show up in the stats accurately. No big deal though. We all witnessed it.)

Despite the mashup in the second that put the score at 14-10, the Gardeners forgot about it, moved on like Taylor Swift after John Mayer, and wrote another song about another ex. Actually, they responded in the third by putting up seven more runs. Jackson’s leadoff double to right led to Watters’ RBI single, which led to Snow’s walk. Friedman produced another RBI with a single. Zackler then came up.

And whaddya fucking know…Zackler hits a bomb to left-center. Three-run home run. Yep. At this point (before Zackler's final at-bat, an uncharacteristic out), Zackler’s season stats looked as follows, which we're gonna state again: six hits – five of them homers – in 11 at-bats, and a 1.750 league-leading slugging percentage. Also 18 RBIs. Going to our abacus, that calculated to

2.2 AB per HR
3 RBIs per hit

And yes, that’s 18 RBIs in 11 at-bats.

Big-time boner.

Emmanuelle……….where are you.

Dickenson once again came up with the bases empty – thanks to Zackler’s homers before him – and roped his second double of the day, this one a blur down the leftfield line, to contribute to his 1.750 slugging for the game. And consistently, for the third time in a row with Dickenson now on third, after Cole’s sacrifice bunt, Solomon singled Dickenson home. Solomon later scored on a groundout by the rook Weinberg. Always liked rooks in chess too. The classic two-rooks-on-the-bottom-two-rows-checkmate-move looked fancy every time.

In postgame analysis, this lineup construction really fucking looks great. Seriously, this is like discovering the perfect formula for anything – be it the Pythagorean Theorem, Fermat’s Theorem, successfully betting on the WNBA, the perfect pickup line (“Hi,” or, “Can I throw this barstool in your face?”), or the perfect lineup formula, which the Gardeners have discovered (Shhhhhh, no telling other teams though. Secrets don’t make friends you say? Ehhh……….fuck you. Here’s a barstool in your face).

Seriously though, this lineup construction is unreal – consistent leadoff hitter in Hersher, thug sluggers Jackson and Watters getting on base, Snow cleaning them in with his sweet lefty swing, Friedman slashing RBIs and taking extra bases, Zackler hitting bombs, Dickenson mashing triples, Cole’s sacrifice bunts (gotta start small to get out of slumps), and Solomon’s hot bat (7-for-7 in his last seven at-bats). And this was only Tuesday’s game. Add in Ryan Preston’s doubles, Dan Gatta’s laser liners to left, Mike Gorman’s clutch RBIs, Matt Mason’s cycles, and Norton's classic singles up the middle when he finally plays consistently and this team’s lineup is intimidating as shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit. Total domination. Like Liam Neeson in “Taken.” Or Bo Jackson in Tecmo. Or Frau Farbissina taking down Dr. Evil. Yeah…….git some git some…..put that Frau dominatrix image in your mind.

Snow added another RBI in the fourth, and Solomon scored after a triple in the fifth for the Gardeners’ final runs. Solomon also added two solid putouts on dribblers up the line at third in the fourth and fifth. Cat’s Alley put up garbage runs in those frames – two in the fourth and four in the fifth – yet they crumbled under the oppressive domination of the Gardeners and gave up. Not surprised.

Seriously though, is Sloan dethroned???

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Stat of the Week:

1: Home runs in 99 at-bats for Phil Zackler coming into this season (99 AB per HR). He has five in 12 at-bats this season (2.4 AB per HR). We seriously can't get over this.

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5/05/2013

If you were asked who currently hits a home run in every game he plays in in a season, who would come to mind...Barry Bonds? Bryce Harper? Sadaharu Oh? Dottie Hinson? The Kid Who Only Hit Homers by Matt Christopher? That huge black first baseman from Cal’s women's softball team years ago?

The answer is none of the above. Duh: it's Phil Zackler.

Zackler hit his third home run in his third game he’s played in this year in the Savage Gardeners’ 17-8 victory Tuesday night over Tuaca. The website says 16-8 yet there apparently was a mishap by the official scorekeeper for the Gardeners – who should be fired – and the final score actually was 17-8.

At Bob Vila Moscone Stadium and the warmest softball night this year, Zackler’s three-run home run in the first inning helped propel the Gardeners to their current 5-0 record and onto the path to eternal fame, hella chicks, and utopia. Zackler averages three RBIs per hit this year – meaning he leads the team in RBIs per hit, some weird stat we just made up yet actually does make sense. So simply get hits Zackler, and three runs will score every time. It's science. It's the law of averages. Even if the bases are empty, three runs will score. You can't refute the laws of nature. Everybody poops.

With hitting-on-fire superstar Matt Mason on the 30-day DL due to his fourth surgery, the Gardeners continued their easy string of victories by popping out eight runs in the first, the third time in five games this year they’ve hit a TD and two-point conversion in the first inning. No, not "popping out" like getting out - "popping out" like popping out babies, like babytrapping NBA "wives," or whatever they call themselves. Also - watching LeBron James, who is 28 years old, is really depressing sometimes. He's our age or younger, and he's kind of done shit in his life. Makes you think about your life path and what you've accomplished. Yeah...he's got four MVPs, millions of dollars, and basically crushes life. Some of us work 9-to-5 and get really excited about two hours of non-windy sunshine on Saturdays and if apples at Safeway are on sale. Gotta say we have life so much better.

With Manager Chris Norton back at the helm after three straight missed games, he decided to pencil in outfielder Ari Hersher in the leadoff spot, to try something new. Hersher did his bidding by leading off the game with his standard single to right. Shortstop Stu Jackson tripled him home with a shot to center, and rightfielder Dave Watters followed with an easy round-tripper to center as well – his fourth of the season – to put the Gardeners’ first three runs on the board.

This is literally getting fucking trite and boring writing about these three 1-2-3 hitters starting the game off. It’s the same fucking story every time. They all score in the first inning, usually punctuated by a Watters home run. Hersher hit, Jackson hit, Watters home run. Seriously, if we have to write that same sequence again we’re gonna punch someone in the fucking mouth.

After this unoriginal and bland and overused trio of hits, leftfielder Ryan Preston hit a double to center. First baseman and defensive standout Eric Snow scored him with a single up the middle to center. After Jason Friedman’s single to left, with one out, Dan Gatta singled home Snow and Friedman moved to second. This brought up Zackler. And surprise sur-fucking-prise, Zackler hit his homer, this one down the leftfield line. At that point he was at eight at-bats, three homers, and 12 RBIs. Unreal pace. Like Usain Bolt sprinting or girls running away from our softball writers. Unreal pace.

Cy Young pitcher Kevin Dickenson dominated once again, giving up only a run in the first, three in the third, and four garbage runs in the seventh, mixing in four shutout innings in between.

Solid defense and few errors also helped carry the Gardeners, as they look like the most complete team since the 1989 49ers and their 55-10 Super Bowl win or any Gold Lair staff softball team during the 2004-2006 summers.

Third baseman/shortstop Alex Solomon had his best day of the year at the plate against Tuaca, going 3-for-3 with an RBI and two runs. With the Gardeners up 8-1 in the bottom of the second, Solomon led off the inning with a single and scored later on Watters’ double and league-leading 15th RBI. Watters also did – eh – so-so at the plate, only going 4-for-4 with his homer, double, and two singles. If he had turned one of his singles into a triple he would have scored the second cycle in Gardeners’ history; unfortunately, this was not the case, and Mason’s historical feat will stay in the record books for a long time. Mason also is very friendly with crawfish.

That’s a completely different and irrelevant story that makes no sense in this context.

Sadly – and there likely is a correlation here – the tanner the Gardeners’ youngest player gets, the poorer his batting performance. Catcher Doug Cole, after tearing through the minors and crushing his first few at-bats in the majors for the Gardeners, has fallen into a yucky slump the more he exposes himself to sunshine and/or Mexico. However, slumps are always busted – be it through extra batting practice, meditation, holistic herbs, lots of sex in Tijuana with prostitutes, or marathon “Parks and Recreation” viewings, and we and Cole are confident that this slump will be busted like a nut. Like a nut in a mental institution busting out and breaking free. You know, cause a nut is a slang word for a crazy person. Wait….you say busting a nut means something else......Disagree. We do not concur. Prove it. We’re going to stick with our definition of the saying.

Friedman, who went a cool 3-for-3 for the game, scored in the third after his double, and also knocked in a run in the fifth with a single. In the fifth, Snow had plated Watters for the first run of the inning on a single to right, and Friedman followed with his single to score Preston, who had also gotten on with a single.

Seriously though, Dickenson dominated on the mound again. Tuaca batted a lowly .447 with only two extra-base hits - two doubles (Gardeners’ comparison: .605 average with eight extra-base hits). Dickenson pitched two straight 1-2-3 innings in the fifth and sixth, the fifth inning lasting literally less than one minute. True fact. In the second as well, Tuaca’s first two batters Kevin McCallister and Gus Polinski had started the inning with singles. However, Dickenson mowed down the next three batters to preserve the shutout inning.

Up 13-4 heading into the bottom of the sixth, the Gardeners added a few more insurance runs for some more insurance to insure a good insurance lead. Zackler’s well-fought? walk led off the inning. He would’ve scored on Norton’s potential laser triple down the rightfield line, yet Tuaca first baseman Buzz McCallister snagged the shot somehow. Norton won out though by backing up his play in the field, adding four putouts at third base.

Dickenson followed Norton’s unfortunate out with a single, and Solomon scored Zackler with a double to left. A rejuvenated-body Hersher then crushed a three-run home run to rightfield for his first of the season. Hersher, on the final day of his awesome cleanse, once again did his duty at leadoff, scoring three of the four times he came up.

In addition to softball, Herhser’s health and lifestyle has completely changed for the better after using the month of April to expunge carbs from his diet and feel the amazing effects of eating healthy food.

“It’s amazing what eating protein, meat, veggies, fruit, and nuts for a month will do to you,” Hersher stated as he posed between Men’s Health cover photo shoots. “I’m refreshed, rejuvenated, and recharged. I feel like I can run faster, bench more, squat more, seated hamstring curl more, decline bench cable flye more, Turkish get up more, two-foot box jump to bodyweight burpees to hanging leg raises with belt to machine lying abdominal crunch to one-leg step-up and simultaneous dumbbell opposite-arm shoulder press then lat raise repeat the circuit three times after thirty seconds rest more.” Also, once Training by Gatta gets underway, he and anyone else gonna get real jacked.

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Stat of the Week:

10-of-15 (67%): Heading into the Tuaca game, the number of times Alex Solomon came to the plate this season facing two outs.

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4/20/2013

To preserve their plants and vegetables, a long time ago the Savage Gardeners built a large French fence – de fence, in French – around their garden to keep pests out. De fence came into use big time and carried them Tuesday night hoh hoh parlez-vous Francais hoh hoh in the easy 15-4 victory.

The Gardeners’ win over Fog City at Bob Vila Moscone Stadium was punctuated by de fence and stellar defense as well by your local heroic Gardeners. The game quite possibly was the best defensive game in Gardeners’ history, as Fog City’s at-bats looked like a speed-dating event: all singles.

God these jokes are getting dumber and dumber.

The key to the game was the four Gardeners’ outfielders – Ryan Preston, Ari Hersher, Jason Friedman, and Dan Gatta, in left-to-right field position order – stopping each hit and relaying the ball in rapidly, or making great catches for outs, to keep Fog City’s runners from advancing. These plays were punctuated by Gatta’s two deep back-to-back catches in rightfield that stopped all momentum for Fogtown. His first great catch, a running-back-reaching grab on a deeply-hit by batter Danny O’Shea, produced a 10-6-5 Gatta-Stu Jackson-Alex Solomon relay that almost got baserunner Spike Hammersmith at third on his tag from first. Hammersmith clearly left first base early, yet the Gardeners’ appeal to umpire Junior Floyd resulted in a “safe” call, which the Gardeners did not dispute because they are classy.

In addition, Gatta’s catches clearly impressed the leftfielder in the game on the opposite field, Becky O’Shea (the batter’s daughter), who, while she was being observed by a pervy statkeeper in the dugout, had a major gun. Seriously, this was the second week in a row when the outfielder on the opposite field game was a female who had a RIFLE for an arm. And let us tell you – that shit is hott. Any time a female can toss a pigskin over them mountains or fire a softball (considering she’s under 200lbs, like most female softball players), that shit deserves respect. Ellen Sue from “A League of Their Own”? Dottie Hinson throwing out base-stealers? Yeah, that shit seriously is hott. Two “t’s” intended again. Like teenage girl texting. Learned that from April’s “Seventeen” issue. Great boy advice in there too.

In addition to stellar defense, Cy Young pitcher Kevin Dickenson pitched a gem, holding Fog City to four shutout innings – a stat that counts how many innings in a game the opponents don’t score runs, a measure of pitching domination. He held Fog City to a .455 batting average (15-for-33), and hence the same slugging percentage since all 15 hits were only singles (the Gardeners slugged .907, for comparison). One sacrifice-fly did occur in the fourth inning on a great Stu Jackson hustling, sliding, bobbling catch down the third base line, where the runner on third also tagged early. Yet the catch still was remarkable, accounting for one of Jackson’s seven putouts for the game at shortstop.

“I threw a tennis ball against a brick wall all week, wearing a blindfold, practicing my grounders to live up to my being a Gold Glove shortstop,” Jackson commented as he accepted his Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game Award after the victory. “I’m a pro – don’t doubt me.”

In addition to the sliding grab in the fourth, in the first inning Jackson made a leaping catch of a liner at short then threw to Eric Snow at first to double off Fog City’s runner Kevin O’Shea for the inning-ending double play. To end the game, Jackson made a sliding stop of a grounder up the middle and tossed to second baseman Mike Gorman for the putout to close out the victory.

Jackson supplemented his great fielding at the plate by going 3-for-4 with two home runs and a single, with four RBIs total. His final homer in the sixth was a blast to right-center that almost cleared the Marina Dateway, a place where it helps to put a banana in your cart. This seriously almost got one of our writers a date on Sunday with a little blondie, except for that fact that he chickened out and went home crying to google Topanga photos to console himself.

Showing off his glove as well was Jackson’s infield neighbor Solomon, who made a nice spinning play of a groundout in the second, a solid reaching catch of a hot liner to start the third, and snagging a grounder through the hole to get a force-out at second in the fourth.

In total, the Gardeners made all Top Ten Web Gems on SportsCenter for the week – Jackson’s aforementioned three plays, Solomon’s three, Gatta’s two catches, a running slow-roller putout by Dickenson to end the second, and Preston’s outfield putout to Gorman at second to get Hammersmith attempting to stretch a single into a double for out two in the seventh.

Apparently we like defense here at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY). We’d take watching Web Gems over watching SportsCenter’s Top Ten general plays while concurrently eating ice cream drunk while receiving a massage and watching the “Varsity Blues” Ms. Davis strip club scene and the “Black Swan” during commercials any day.

Not eating ice cream these days is Hersher, who has permanently adopted a get-rid-of-crappy-carbs Paleo-like diet lifestyle change that he has gladly adapted to and will never turn back on. Improved energy, clearer focus, better sleep, healthier skin, and pretty much a better life are a few of the benefits of the new eating habits Hersher has adopted.

“It’s amazing,” Hersher stated pre-game Tuesday after he finished a rippling-abs shirtless workout run on Marina Green. “At least 20 people asked me during my run if I was Matthew McConaughey.”

Add some Body-by-Jake bodyweight dips and pull-ups and one becomes an Ironman. Once Hunter brings it down from behind the Ghetto will it be put into full body-changing effect.

Back in action after two straight games with homers was All-Star Phil Zackler, who kept his homer streak up by hitting a home….never mind, he bailed on the game to attend ballet camp.

Priorities these days……..Buster Posey doesn’t bail on games. Will Smith doesn’t bail on making movies. Carrot Top doesn’t bail on his shows. Lindsey Lohan doesn’t bail on her rehab sessions.

The Gardeners took a few innings to gain momentum, waiting until the second to get on the scoreboard. Friedman led off the inning with a single and moved to third on Snow’s hustling double. Gorman easily knocked them both in for their first two runs. Jackson added a solo shot to right-center in the third to put the Gardeners up 3-0 heading into the fourth, a pitcher’s battle thus far, which Dickenson clearly was leading and ultimately won by a landslide.

In the fourth, with two outs and Gorman on second, Gatta roped a 100mph laser shot over the left-centerfielder’s head for a two-run roundtripper. Gatta finished a perfect 4-for-4 for the game, adding three singles and another RBI.

Also going 4-for-4 similarly with a home run and three singles was Preston, who also blasted a 100mph laser over the left-centerfielder’s head, one of the hardest hit balls in history, up there in the dream scene with Lloyd Christmas’ moves to the waiter in front of Mary Samsonite in the restaurant.

Up 5-2 heading into the fifth, the Gardeners finally got the ball rolling faster, like a rolling stone that gathers no moss, which is a really dumb statement that makes no sense. What if the stone has glue on it? Or two-sided masking tape? Duh……..

Argument refuted.

In the fifth, Preston, Friedman, and Snow all hit back-to-back-to-back RBI singles. Dickenson showed his speed with a two-RBI beauty triple down the leftfield line and scored the next batter on Gatta’s single to left.

Four more runs were added in the sixth, punctuated by Jackson’s three-run shazaam to Dateway immediately followed by Preston’s solo shot. Up 12 runs heading into the bottom of the seventh, the Gardeners vowed not to let last week’s last-inning meltdown happen again, and they only gave up one in the frame, with Preston’s outfield assist and Jackson’s sliding stop up the middle closing out the victory.

Slugger Dave Watters missed Tuesday’s game as he was in Texas in coonskin cap defending the Alamo. Manager Chris Norton missed his third straight game as apparently this owner’s meeting shit is getting really serious. Because the Gardeners are so good, the opposing owners are now accusing the Gardeners’ players of juicing (they don’t, unless they mean using kale, spinach, and lemon juicers), running up the score (they don’t, they’re just badass and the other teams suck), illegal players (they’re all white, no one’s an illegal), corked bats (nope), pine tar (get a life), sign stealing (impossible), spitballs (absurd), x-ray vision (huh?), flying powers (now this is getting ridiculous), and Nightlock poison berries stolen from the “Hunger Games” Arena (this is literally dumfounded and jaw-dropping). Norton held his ground, rebutted all claims as unfounded nonsense (which they were, because basically all other teams simply suck and are whiners), whipped out his wand, pointed and yelled, “Expelliarmus!” and invisibility cloaked himself off into the night.

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Stat of the Week:

14: Shutout innings (out of 27 total) Kevin Dickenson has thrown this season, meaning the opponents don’t score runs in over half of their innings.

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4/11/2013

“Every day I’m hustlin’…”

Boop boop boop boop beep beep doop, beepbeepdeep boop boop boop boo doop, hussselin hussselin.

Whatever - it’s shufflin’ shufflin’, yet the original version is hustlin’, like what we do in the streeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeets yo.

You know who knows the original version? The Savage Gardeners' leadoff batter.

The confusion of this “hustlin’” team cheer, which the Gardeners’ opponents Balco’s Best performed with hands-in before every inning, finally became clear and understood in the bottom of the seventh inning Tuesday night.

At Bob Vila Moscone Stadium in week three of the regular season, the Gardeners faced an inferior Balco’s Best team under a warm sunshine/moonshine coming up over Coit Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance. The opponents get credit in that their right- and right-centerfielders Joe Mentalino and J.P. Shay were both stellar and made incredible plays in the outfield, yet other than that the team did nothing impressive all night. The Gardeners had the game in hand throughout the whole evening, scoring eight in the first and incrementally coasting to their lead to head into the bottom of the seventh up 18-6, your typical six field goals to three safeties score.

Apparently they were being hustled by Balco’s Best, who said “It’s time,” and erupted for 11 runs in the final inning and had the tying run on third base with two outs before Cy Young pitcher Kevin Dickenson induced a flyout to Dave Watters in leftfield to cut off the whirlwind comeback.

“That last inning was definitely scary,” shortstop Stu Jackson stated after the 18-17 victory over champagne and caviar in the locker room, continuing his celebration of getting engaged. “Yet we hung tight like Phil Zackler’s package and came out with the big W.”

Yep, put it under a big dubbayuh............the big dubbayuh..........such a mad mad mad mad world.

This despite Jackson’s almost hitting for the cycle, only a week after the first cycle in Gardeners’ history (53 games at the time) was attained by Matt Mason. Jackson in his final at-bat Tuesday jogged to third on a potential home run down the rightfield line, thus denying himself a place in history and Cooperstown, a place where Mason is already headed.

Mason was inactive for the game Tuesday a week after erupting for the first cycle in Gardeners’ history as he was whisked away to celebrate his achievement, touring the country with a trip to Disneyland, appearances on the Today Show, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Oprah, Jim Rome, Pardon the Interruption, Cold Pizza, Family Guy, rotary club lunches, motivational speeches in auditoriums at high school assemblies, graduation commencement speeches at Harvard, MIT, and Oxford, a float in the Rose Bowl Parade, throwing out the first pitch at all 30 ballparks, a visit to the White House, hitting a hole-in-one, beating Zelda, tea with the Queen, knighthood, performing miracles by curing the sick and blind in the Vatican, speaking about “having a dream” to hundreds of thousands on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with his face painted black, DJ’ing at XS, bowling 300, solving the Rubik’s Cube, new high score in DDR, winning Powerball, winning the Heisman, a trip to the moon, photographing models in Jamaica for the 2014 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition, climbing Mount Everest, finding the Holy Grail, discovering Atlantis, spotting Santa Claus, finding Bigfoot, killing the Loch Ness monster, curing cancer, feeding Africa, and earning a cameo in the next Batman movie, as Batman.

However, Mason brushed off all the celebrity and did make it to the game Tuesday night dressed in his finest, to hang out with your normal, average-day humans, the Savage Gardeners.

“You know what my favorite part of the trip was?” Mason quoted as he coached third base during the game dressed as baseball managers used to dress in the 1920s, cigar in mouth and all spiffed up with polished shoes, “Coming back to my roots tonight: in the dugout with the Gardeners, spittin’ seeds and talkin’ shop.”

For the third game in a row, the Gardeners scored runs. They did this when runners crossed the home plate, which is white. Like all NASCAR fans.

In the top of the first inning – and we hate to mention this yet we have to because it is so rare, rarer than being struck by lightning or getting that cute Republic waitress Kristen to go out with you – mainstay leadoff batter Ari Hersher got out. Yes, you read that right – he led off the game with an out. Very rare. Mind you, he broke pitcher Nicholas Andre’s shin with a shot up the middle, yet Andre recovered and picked up the deflected ball and tossed it to first for the unexpected Hersher-leadoff out.

Despite this strange and shocking turn of events, the Gardeners rallied and put up eight runs in the inning. Jackson’s hustling double to right led off the hit parade. Watters scored him with a double to left and was knocked in by the lefty Eric Snow’s single to right. Outfielder Jason Friedman’s triple scored Snow from first, bringing up career 1.000 hitter Doug Cole. Cole preserved his perfection by taking a three-pitch walk, followed by Dickenson’s RBI single to left to score Friedman.

This brought up All-Star second baseman Phil Zackler, who in his last one at-bats was 1-for-1 with four RBIs.

With two on and now two outs, Zackler picked up where he left off, smashing a three-run homer to left. Yes, that’s right. Seven RBIs in his last two at-bats. At this pace he was set to break all of mankind’s RBI records. Bat him cleanup wut wut yo yo playuh playuh brotha brotha!

By the way, none of the writers here at USA Softball Statistics Yearly (USASSY) is black. So the last few words of that last sentence were pretty dumb.

Hersher in his second at-bat of the inning singled home third baseman Alex Solomon for the eighth run of the inning.

Zackler also proved his worth in the field two times, or twice. In the second inning, he stopped Balco’s three-run rally with a great line-drive catch at second to end the inning. The following inning he cleanly scooped a tough grounder and tossed to Jackson at short for the force-out to end the inning as well. The previous two games’ play by the other Gardeners catchers had dampened Zackler’s spirits about regaining his classic spot behind the plate; however, he has transitioned well in his play at second base, thinking he was headed to a hoeplus place yet finding love there, like Rihanna. If Rihanna can find love in a hoeplus place, Zackler can, and he can do it even better, na-na na-na boo-boo, stick your head in doo-doo.

Still confused though how you find love in a hoeplus place. Hoeplus places are whorehouses and prosty joints with extra hoes. Maybe some ladies fall in love with their clients, we don’t know. We’ve never been to any anyways. Except every day last month. That got expensive.

The next two innings passed with little activity, except for Balco’s Best scoring three runs in the second, putting the score at an acceptable 8-3 heading into the fourth, Dickenson’s pitching two shutout innings in the first and third.

Leading off an inning again, Hersher made good this time with a single. Jackson then roped a truly exquisitely beautiful liner down the rightfield line for a standup triple. We don’t exaggerate here – sometimes you simply have to appreciate a well-hit ball, and Jackson’s triple down the line really was a pretty hit, and we appreciate beauty. That's what's great about sports. Some momentary athletic feats are truly a pleasure to watch – like a Ted Williams swing, a Jerry Rice precise pass pattern, a Maya Moore layup, or a Tom Brady shower-viewing.

The next five batters all hit singles, save for Snow who scored Watters with a triple. Cole’s single was the hardest hit, a cleverly placed popup between catcher and first-base that three of Balco’s fielders tried to catch, all ending in failure for them and success for Cole and life. Rightfielder Dan Gatta’s single loaded the bases for Dickenson, who scored Friedman on a sacrifice-fly to left-center. Cole smartly tagged to third from second on the play, bringing up Zackler. Cole’s move allowed Zackler’s average to remain untouched on his sac-fly to right-center that scored Cole. Granted, Cole would have scored from second on Zackler’s sac-fly, yet the extra base taken to third on Dickenson’s sac-fly the play before helped him avoid the hassle of running two bases on one sac-fly. It also saved Mason coaching third the effort of waving his arm around windmill-like while directing baserunners. With Cole on third instead of second, all Mason had to do was glance up from texting Tiffany, say, “Tag…..…...now” in Cole’s ear, and get back to sending sweet nothings through iPhone cyberspace.

Solomon’s second hit of the day – a single – scored Gatta for run seven of the inning to put the Gardeners ahead 15-3.

Sitting with a comfortable lead, the Gardeners added three more insurance runs in the seventh to go up 18-6. Jackson once again tripled home Hersher - leadoff single again - and scored on Watters’ double, Watters' third RBI for the night. Watters later scored on a fielder’s choice play.

Now up 18-6, the Gardeners looked to get three outs and go home comfortably to their couches and "Family Matters" reruns. Unfortunately, weird-ass shit started happening and the hustling of Balco’s players came to fruition. Hit after hit after hit. Yeah…next thing you knew it was 18-14. Snow made a great leaping defensive grab on a throw from third to finally get the first out, yet Balco had already started their momentum. Soon it was 18-16. Dickenson caught a pop-up for out two, yet Karl Swanson knocked in a run to make it 18-17. Runners on the corners, two outs, major drama and kids peeing their pants – yet the Gardeners didn’t crumble and Dickenson produced the aforementioned flyout to left for the closeout.

Zackler led the team with four RBIs for the night, while Friedman quietly finished the night 4-for-5 with a triple, three singles, and three RBIs.

Manager Chris Norton’s owners meeting extended another week as Norton was forced to miss this week’s game as well. Topics discussed at the meeting included steroids as usual, free agency, Moneyball, Kirby Puckett’s glaucoma, Madonna’s All-The-Way-Mae hotness, and Sid Bream.

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Stat of the Week:

3.3: Stu Jackson’s career plate appearances per extra-base hit stat (PA/XBH). Every 3.3 plate appearances, Jackson hits an extra-base hit (2B, 3B, or HR) – roughly more than one per game.

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4/05/2013

Interim coach Ari Hersher sat in the visitors’ locker room hours before first pitch Tuesday night, agonizing and mulling over whom to slot in the number two batter’s spot for that night’s game against the SF Seals.

“I always get on base leading off, that’s a fact,” Hersher pondered to himself over his pregame almonds and celery sticks, “so after I steal second, I’m going to need someone to knock me in with Stu [Jackson] gone.”

Manager Chris Norton found himself in Seattle that evening at an impromptu obligatory owner’s meeting to discuss the upcoming Congressional inquiry into steroids in city-league softball. The owner’s meeting had been called due to an ex-Gardeners lefty second baseman on the Seattle minor-league team who had tested positive for steroids after trying to crack the majors with his .078 batting average and .250 fielding percentage. With Norton’s absence, the delicate delegation of the lineup went to the mainstay Hersher, who found a fleeting minute free of wedding planning with J-Lo and Matthew McConaughey to craft the lineup for the Gardeners’ week two matchup. Soon, a light clicked in Hersher's head.

“You know, we share shaving razors and I’ve seen this guy naked so many times as my roommate and longtime friend, he’s the perfect specimen to fill the role.”

Penciled in the #2 spot: Matt Mason, First Baseman.

Mason barely pulled through batting so high in the lineup, only going 4-for-4 with a single, double, triple, and home run – and also a walk for good measure – in the 23-9 victory.

Wait, that’s the cycle!!!!! Yes, Mason pulled through with the rarest of the rarest of the rarest of the rarest of the rarest of the rarest of the rarest of the rarest of the rare and achieved that epitome 2.500 slugging percentage and all four possible base-hits that equate to one’s hitting for the cycle. His heroics earned him the Jana Kramer Whiskey Player of the Game Award and a blacked-out door-knocking visit from Slorin.

Unfortunately, after the game the umpires conferred with MLB regulatory authorities as they had hunches that possibly Mason was on the juice, the exact reason Norton was in Seattle that night to begin with. And yes, with his bulging biceps, strong hammies, and toned calf muscles, this was a legitimate observation.

Soon after the victory, Mason was whisked away in an unmarked van to the lab for steroid tests. Fortunately, to the delight of himself, his teammates, and his millions of fans – especially little kids who wear his jersey to school and the chicks who throw themselves at him and bring “Marry Me!” handcrafted signs to the games – the only symptom found from the steroid test was an irregular heartbeat – “fluttering” heartbeat, the lab technician called it, “likely due to being in the throes of love.”

In love with their opponents the Gardeners were not, as they clubbed and drubbed and beat the seals to death with merciless glee and brutality. In addition, after leaving Fisherman’s Wharf, the Gardeners played against the SF Seals and beat them as well.

In addition to the in addition, sensing Mason’s growing clout on the team, especially after Mason’s dramatic ESPN-worthy pop-out catch last week as catcher, Phil Zackler in his season debut wanted some of the spotlight for himself on Tuesday. And earn it he did, by providing the Whistle at Chicks and Simultaneously Drive of the Game in the fifth inning. No, it wasn’t another “Say-‘There-It-Is’-while-the-pitch-is-in-mid-flight-then-crank-a-homer-to-left” moment. Yet close enough.

With the Gardeners’ up 18-4 in the top of the fifth, and after Doug Cole’s single loaded the bases, the second baseman Zackler stepped in for the third time in his career with the bags hammie-jammied, or the bases loaded in common parlance. With this oppressive situation weighing heavily on his mind, millions of fans holding their breath, including Abraham before sacrificing Isaac, and a blonde cougar fully flashing him from the centerfield bleachers, Zackler calmingly lifted a liner to left-center that flew past the outfielders, allowing him to circle the bases for his first career grand slam, joining Stu Jackson (two) as the only Gardeners to hit grand slams in their legendary history. (Jackson hit one in the Summer 2011 season and another in the Summer 2012 season, courtesy of Stats LLC).

The Zackler attack finished the game with a career-high five RBIs and is now tied for second on the team in homers this season with one. And shit, that nickname almost rhymes with Racket Attack, one of the great Nintendo games of all-time, only behind #1 Tecmo Super Bowl, then Super Mario Bros. 3 (then 1). Mario 2 was just weird, with cherries and squatting and throwing those annoying jumping fish-looking enemies. And what the fuck was with Luigi when he jumped. Seriously, what kind of person does a running bicycle leg movement while he’s jumping through the air. That was really annoying. And also any game that has a female as the best character (Princess, because she could float while jumping) is a skeptical game at least. Wait, take that back – MarioKart for N64 is the second-best game of all-time (behind Tecmo), and Princess Peach and her saying, “Let’s-a-go!” literally was the shit in that game, so we kind of take back that female-character comment, yet it does apply to all games besides MarioKart for N64. Maybe our bitterness with Mario 2 stems from the fact that the game always froze before we could complete it. Fucking unfinished conquests in one of our writer’s lives…

The visiting Gardeners began their hitting once again in typical Gardeners’ fashion – the same as last week’s start as well – with the first two batters (Hersher and Mason) getting on base and third baseman Dave Watters mashing them home with a three-run homer to leftfield. A few batters later, Cole, in his initial at-bat of the season, picked up where he left off last season by hitting a two-RBI triple to left-center, scoring Cy Young pitcher Kevin Dickenson and rightfielder Dan Gatta. Cole jogged home easily on Zackler’s first at-bat, a single to left. The rookie Alex Solomon then added to his lore by hitting a two-run home run to left to put the Gardeners up 8-0 after their half of the first.

Dickenson kept the Seals from barking by giving up only four runs in the first four innings, allowing the Seals to bat only .400 – Hall of Fame-worthy in professional baseball yet poor in softball standards – through four. The fifth inning snowballed to five runs for the Seals, yet the sixth was an easy shutout that closed out the 23-9 victory. In addition, Dickenson added a swinging strikeout on a slider to Seals batter Taj Mahal Badalandabad in the third, his first K of the season – save an induced foul-out last week.

The Gardeners added four runs in the second inning, punctuated by leftfielder Ryan Preston’s triple to left, Dickenson’s singling home outfielder Jason Friedman, and Cole's batting in Dickenson with a single. Don’t jinx him, yet Cole’s career batting average stands at 1.000 (5-for-5, two triples, two singles, and a double, along with six RBIs). Shows that being the youngest and tannest member of the team does produce great results. Cole also added a popout catch at the catcher’s position – mask on, mind you.

With a number of Garden Hoes in attendance, Mason’s progressing night was as simple as the Simple Life with Paris and Nicole, yet without all the drama and hoe-shit: double, walk, two-run sliding home run (getting his pants dirty…fuck…laundry time), single, then a stop at third on his final at-bat to complete the epic night (see bottom).

The Seals batted flyouts for 13 of their 18 outs, with a few nice defensive gems in there. In all, the official scorekeeper cannot recall the Gardeners making any errors – throwing or catching – a perfect night in the field. Preston made a few key catches down the leftfield line, while Hersher provided a graceful Mays-like running catch in left-center in the third. In one of the four groundouts (Dickenson’s K was the remaining out), Mason made a classic scoop of a throw from Watters at third in the fourth to end the inning and progress into his leading off the fifth with his third hit of the cycle, the climax hit coming on his triple to left-center with two outs later in the inning to score Hersher from first.

Watters in the fifth followed Mason’s leadoff single with another home run, the 37th of his career, dropping his plate appearances per home run stat from 5.14 to a now exactly even 5.00 (185 PA, 37 HR). At this pace, that career number should drop to 1.00 by week five. Friedman added a solo shot as well in the third, finishing also with a double and single. In total, the Gardeners had six home runs for the night.

Holy shit this is really distracting, we're really getting turned on in here in the editor's office thinking about Tecmo. Bo Jackson...Lawrence Taylor...Ronnie Lott...Thurman Thomas...Neal Anderson...QB Eagles.......fuck this is hott.

Things are heating up like a trapped baby in a microwave for the Gardeners as they improved to 2-0, which is undefeated if you do the math.

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Stat of the Week:

1: Number of cycles hit in Gardeners' history. Matt Mason is the first.