Talk of the Town edges out win in rec league season opener

Ladies and gentlemen, EDDIEEEE MURRRRAYYYY

Baltimore was a great place to grow up watching baseball. D.C. didn’t have a team so we made the 45-minute drive to Baltimore for our MLB fix.
Back then, in my formative years, the Orioles played at Memorial Stadium. Not the prettiest venue for professional sports but a real venue. The pisser in the men’s room was a long trough set in the floor for all the guys to step up, unzip, let go and talk about Palmer, Bumbry, Eddie, etc. When it was shoulder-to-shoulder between innings at the trough, they always made room for me, the six-year-old with the small bladder.
There was a lot of Black Label beer consumed back then. COLD BEER HERE! One of the many unique things about Memorial Stadium was the crowd’s enthusiasm for one part of the National Anthem.
One specific letter to be exact.
At the start of the next to last line, “Oh say does that star…,” the entire crowd would yell “O” in unison as a tribute to their home team, the Orioles, or O’s. Baltimore was like that. Even the sacred singing of The Star Spangled Banner, our National Anthem, was not immune to the crowd’s enthusiasm for its home team.
What does that have to do with the opening game of the 2012 rec league softball season Tuesday night between the Talk of the Town and the Meatsticks? I’m not sure, but the Death Star (i.e. the sun, which is slowly killing us all, by the way) was blazing and the final score was 4-2 so my mind did tend to wander at times.
Or was it 4-3? After some intense discussion during the seventh inning, the umpire gave in, or up, and granted the Meatsticks a run they felt they deserved which, in the end, didn’t matter.
Hey, did I mention Wild Bill Hagy and Section 34 Hagy’s Heaven from back in the day at Memorial Stadium? Good place to learn cusswords and witness how much alcohol an adult, or several adults, can take in during a game and still walk out of the ballpark. Section 34 was up there and there were a lot of stairs between one’s seat and one’s car.
Anyway, it was a perfect opening night for rec league. Like I said, the sun was out, both teams showed up and there were even some fans.
Talk owner/manager/player and all around great guy Joel Lewis made a big move in the off-season with two teams in the local leagues, one for the rec league and one playing in comp league. The idea is brilliant and the reason, I imagine, is two-fold. One, it creates a direct farm system for getting players experience in rec league before they’re called up to the comp league. Two, it gives aging veterans a chance to keep playing. And three, it gets the bar’s name, the Talk of the Town, out there in the public eye and ear four nights a week and could also double Sports Barrel coverage (wish I still drank—that mention has got to be worth several free shots at the Talk).
Did I say two-fold? I meant three-fold.
Again was it 4-2 or 4-3?
Still reading?
It’s summer.
SO, the Meatsticks got on the scoreboard first in the bottom of the first when Dusty Ostrand dropped a power-bunt pop-up single between the pitcher and the catcher and scored on a single by Rocky Durance.
The 1-0 score held until the top of the fourth inning, when the Talk rallied for a run. The rally actually started in the bottom of the third inning, when the Talk defense turned a 1-6-3 double play as Brian Turner scooped a grounder, spun and tossed to Melvin Seyfried covering second, who then fired to first to end the inning.
Seyfried stepped to the plate three minutes later to crank a solo inside the park home run to deep left center and tie the game.
Lewis then golfed a double to left field and scored when Butch Hamrick popped a single to shallow left center for a 2-1 Talk of the Town lead.
The Meatsticks responded in the bottom of the fourth inning as Durance doubled and scored on a base hit by Jarrod Smith to tie it up again.
The Talk regained the lead in the top of the fifth as Jen Kindred singled and reached second base on a hit by Christine Hawk. Jon Kilpatrick stepped up to rope a RBI double to left field, scoring Kindred and putting the Talk of the Town back on top 3-2.
Both teams then clamped down on defense to hold runners on base. The Meatsticks had runners in scoring position and one out before hawk chased down a pop foul behind the plate and Turner reeled in a line drive on the mound.
The Talk had two on with no outs before the Meatstick defense quashed their rally, turning three outs in a row and holding the Talk’s lead to one.
Joe Wright, Smith and Anthony Slominski combined for a series of hits to load the bases with two outs, but Turner fanned the Meatstick batter to end the inning and preserve their one-run lead heading into the seventh inning.
Bob Vandervoort singled and scored on a base hit from Turner for an insurance run in the top of the seventh and the Talk of the Town defense did the rest in the bottom of the seventh inning to seal the 4-2, or 4-3, win.