Whetstoners crush Sofa Kings

No more music?

Before I get into the rec league game of the week between Sofa King Cool and the Whetstoners, we have an issue. Some people out there have complained about the music that both KBUT and the Rasta Hairnets provide at their games. As a result, both teams have been asked to tone it down.

That is sofa king lame.
Perhaps someone, or some people, were just having a bad day and wanted to share their misery with everyone else. There goes another sofa king cool thing about softball in this town.
At any rate, with the regular season winding down, it was high time to check out Sofa King Cool. They hadn’t received any press all season and I got to admit, I like the name. Plans were to catch them playing KBUT Tuesday night and ostensibly kill two birds with one stone.
Speaking of killing birds, anyone else find magpies sofa king annoying?
The idea being, give Sofa King Cool softball press and KBUT press about their upcoming summer pledge drive.
Well, monsoonal rains last week, at least monsoonal for Crested Butte, threw the schedule into a bit of a tailspin and games were rearranged leaving me with the Whetstoners, Sofa King Cool showdown.
On paper, Sofa King Cool, or for ease of typing the Coolers, look pretty good. Their roster is solid and despite their record, if the entire team shows up, my guess is they are legitimate. But as they showed up to play Tuesday night, some of the bigger names from the roster were missing and they even had to field a hobbled Joe Garcia on the mound just to put together a full squad.
Nevertheless, I stuck it out and stayed with the plan. Fact is, usually I’m wrong about predicting the outcome of games.
Unfortunately, I turned out to be right as the Whetstoners crushed Sofa King Cool.
The writing was on the wall from the start. After a barehanded grab by Rich Driscoll to deny a base hit and a base-running miscue by the Coolers ended their first at bat, the Whetstoners came out swinging.
Michelle Gerard stroked a single and scored when Alex Mattes-Ritz turned a base hit into a two-run inside the park home run. Renee Newton and Chuck McKenrick added two more runs with base hits and had it not been for some defense by Bobby Warner and tricky pitching by Garcia, it could of gotten a lot worse.
Mattes-Ritz and Barb Winter tacked on two more Whetstoner runs in the bottom of the second for a 7-0 lead.
The Coolers finally got on the board in the top of the third when Tricia Garcia hustled out a power-bunt single and eventually scored when Christian Weichsel slipped a base hit through the infield.
The Whetstoners top of the order produced three more runs and the Coolers responded to score two more runs on hits by Dalynn Trujillo and Weichsel but were still down nine runs heading into the bottom of the fifth inning when the game turned sofa king ugly.
It didn’t have to though. After the top of the Whetstoners batting order combined for three more runs, and Molly Arment connected for a RBI single, the Coolers defense turned the next two outs. Trujillo pulled in a pop up at first and Hollywood lived up to his name with a tremendous grab at third but the Whetstoners carried their energy through to put together a two-out, eight-run rally and force umpires to call the 10-run rule.
Down 22-3 heading into the sixth inning, the game appeared sofa king over but the Coolers, to their credit, never gave up. Sara Wynes led off with an infield single just beating out the throw. Both Joe and Tricia Garcia singled to load the bases and Deuce Wynes clipped a two RBI single to shallow left field.
The tides were turning and you could see the Whetstoners panicking as the Coolers were on the cusp of mounting a tremendous late game comeback. Their intensity had the Whetstoners on their heels trying to make sense of what was happening. After six dormant innings, the Coolers were catching fire bringing the near-capacity crowd to the edge of their seats hoping to witness…
I’m sofa king kidding.
The Whetstoners closed it out to win 23-6.