The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
“Put me in a cage, I’ll break it”
by Than Acuff
Well, Pitas OGs is back at it again at the top of the Wednesday league softball standings, but they are by no means impossible to take down. Shockwaves shot through the local fields when they were taken down a couple of weeks ago, but they have since recovered to rattle off three wins in a row including a 14-10 win over KBUT last Wednesday at Pitsker Field.
Pitas was about as fired up as they always are prior to the game with the exception of one player in particular who was about as ramped up as everyone else combined.
“Put me in a cage, I’ll break it!” she exclaimed. To which one of her teammates commented, “She’s on fire, she must have had three shifties at work.”
If you don’t know what a shifty is, then you’ve never worked in a restaurant. A shifty is a perk of restaurant work. While several jobs, not here but in the real world, offer a 401k (still don’t know what that is) and/or health insurance, restaurants offer shift meals and a shifty. Have more than one shifty, that starts coming out of your paycheck. If you have a lot of shifties, then you can get a bill for $175 rather than a paycheck on payday, something I know all too personally.
It was a rough two weeks, or a good two weeks.
As I was saying before, it’s been a good two weeks for Pitas, capped by the win over KBUT. They opened the game scoring six quick runs off hits from nearly everyone. Pip Bailey and Autumn Carpenter opened it with base hits and scored off a double from Drew Stichter and a single by Lisa Vukovich. Claire Bartholomew, Andrew Grigsby and Connor Coughlin tacked on four more runs with a flurry of base hits and Pitas was on top 6-0.
Composed and distinctly subdued in their approach to the game, KBUT was on pace to erase that early lead almost immediately. Scott Stewart led off with a triple and scored on a laser single from Kat Harrington. Pitas turned the next out but the meat of KBUT’s order was coming up with runners on. Only problem was Bailey snagged a line drive up the middle out of midair and tossed to first for the double play putting an end to KBUT’s response.
Pitas would do the same in the bottom of the third inning as they quashed another KBUT rally by turning a 1-6-3 double play and then followed by tacking on four runs in the top of the fourth inning. Bailey got in one more plate appearance before heading off to work knocking in two OGs with a single and Carpenter and Stichter, who nearly pulled a hamstring but not his kidney, combined for a couple of hits and a couple of runs for a 10-1 lead midway through the game.
The Dujardin brothers, Will and Ed, helped spark a quick KBUT surge with a couple of hits to push three runs across, but Pitas matched them and then some. Bartholomew led off with a double and scored when Frank Magri crushed a RBI triple, mind you jogging the bases, to the gap in deep centerfield. KBUT catcher Katie Holbrecht offered some relief when she chased down a foul pop behind the plate but Pitas added two more for a 14-4 lead.
KBUT’s defense then tightened up to stem the Pitas tide and offer one last chance at a comeback. Their offense followed suit as Heather Heinz led off with a single and scored. A sac hit RBI from Katie Harper scored another KBUT run and an inside the park home run from Ed had KBUT down six but on the comeback trail.
Everything was going swimmingly for KBUT as they held Pitas scoreless in the bottom of the sixth inning and had the top of the order stepping up to the plate in the top of the seventh and final inning. Stewart and Harrington each singled to start things off. Alec “Oh say can you see” Lindenman and Heinz came through with RBI hits and KBUT was clicking. Then, once again, KBUT was stopped in their tracks as Pitas outfielder Mark Bortolin got a jump on a line drive to the gap in right center to make an over-the-shoulder grab robbing KBUT of two, if not three, runs. The next two KBUT batters then popped out leaving Pitas with the 14-10 win.
