Hitmen Soil New Jerseys with Loss
Remember last week? The thrilling last inning comeback? The celebration after a clutch hit brought home the winning run? Well, the National Mall was again the scene of such a CSL contest on Thursday… Unfortunately for the Hitmen, however, we were on the other end of the score this week in our game against the Naughty Fingers. Call it bad luck, call it payback, call it a choke job. Whatever you call it, it was disappointing.
But, I’ll try to focus on the positive…
The game marked the debut of our 2009 Hitmen jerseys (thanks, Evil Twin!) so, for once, we actually looked like a team instead of a rag tag band of randos. The game also marked the season debut of veteran Hitwoman Deke, who was back from New York City to hold down the catcher position.
Spurred by these developments, we played pretty solid ball for six and a half innings. Timely — if unspectacular — hitting and relatively solid defense (especially by Hitmen standards) gave us a 12-7 lead going into the bottom of the seventh — a minor miracle considering that we had started the game shorthanded when offensive stalwarts Bow Wow and Kinger went MIA after going in search of beer… er, I mean, Gatorade. (Fortunately they returned by the third inning with thirst-quenching beverages in tow.) Indeed, things were looking positive for quite awhile.
Sadly, however, it just wasn’t meant to be. In the bottom of the seventh, the ‘Fingers rallied. A string of base hits followed by a homer spelled the Hitmen’s demise. While we wished it wasn’t so, the scorecard (a.k.a. the chicken scratch in the back of Knitts’s LSAT review book) didn’t lie. We had been bested.
Fortunately, however, we’re not a crew who worries too much about such things. Rather than dwell on the defeat, most of the traditional post-game meal at MBP was spent heckling Gabs about her new favorite nickname. “Punky Brewster” no more!
