The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Rain? What rain? Let’s play!
by Than Acuff
I’m no meteorologist but I’d say we’re in our monsoonal flow, folks. A game that was initially billed as an Elk Avenue gastrointestinal throw-down between local restaurants Pitas in Paradise and Bonez resulted in a six-inning, rain-soaked slop fest. Props out to the two teams that continued to play despite the constant rain mixed with periods of deluge Tuesday night at Gothic Field.
Bonez came into the game on a two-game winning streak and their stands packed with fans. And not just Bonez fans, but Royals fans as well. Apparently, they were done stuffing the Major League Baseball All-Star email ballot boxes. Job well done Royals—perhaps last year’s American League (AL) champions deserve to have four of the nine AL starting positions.
I was a Royals fan, once. Freddie Patek, Hal McRae, UL Washington and, of course, George Brett. The vision of him storming out of the dugout in the infamous “pine tar incident” is forever etched in my mind.
There was no pine tar incident to speak of at Gothic Field Tuesday night, though it would have helped, given the conditions as the skies opened up, like a blessing from above, cleansing all of the sinners in the valley from their Fourth of July weekend debauchery. Hallelujah and amen, brothers and sisters! Can I get a witness?
That’s right, the Lord has acted and I am an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church Monastery and was put on this earth to help spread the good word and point out the Lord’s actions and miracles, benevolent as they may be, each and every day.
Reader, have you made your amends with our Lord Jesus Christ? Or whatever Lord you may ascribe to? As an ordained minister of the Universal Monastery Church of Life, I am here to help you.
YESSAH!
And as I pointed out last week, according to the gospel of the Universal Church Monastery of Life, “We are all children of the same universe.”
YESSAH! (I do weddings, baptisms, funerals, hell, I’ll even do a pet funeral.)
Fluffy was a good kitty, pure kitty, lived a full life of slaughtering endangered songbirds, spraying and carrying fleas. Fluffy has moved on now, though. Lost her hearing as she grew older and in a cruel case of irony, that’s what did her in. Little did she know that nice spot in the shade was behind the tire of a backhoe working next door. Poor cat didn’t even hear the beeps as it was backing up. Never had a chance. But at least it was quick. So let’s take a moment to remember Fluffy as she was and not as she is now… flat.
Where were we? Right, I was filling space in between ads and you were reading this until my cat funeral piece.
At any rate, Bonez and Pitas were battered by the rain for six straight innings but battled on through it all before Bonez emerged with the 11-0 win, or was it 10-0? To be honest, it all got a little confusing with the rain.
Dave Wooding opened the scoring in the bottom of the first with a sac hit RBI to score Chelsea Veltri. Jaime Jaskine cracked a two-RBI double in the bottom of the second inning and a series of walks scored another Bonez run for a 4-0 lead.
Then it started really raining, like pouring with extreme prejudice, but the players kept on playing. Wooding struck again with a two-RBI double to centerfield and a 6-0 lead and Austyn O’Dwyer pushed two more Bonez runners home with a single for an 8-0 lead.
Pitas looked to finally get on track with a lead-off double in the top of the fifth inning but just as soon as they got started, it ended when Bonez pitcher Mark Fontenot turned a grounder into a 1-5 double play. I know, you baseball nerds are scratching your heads but this is how it went down. Fontenot scooped up the grounder, jogged over to first for the out and when the Pitas runner took off from second base, Fontenot fired to third base for the tag-out. That’s a 1-5 double play, right?
Then the rain let up, then it started pouring again, but the players kept on playing and Bonez scored three more as Michael Ryan turned a routine base hit into a weather affected, error-assisted three-run inside the park home run (ITPHR). More rain brought more mayhem as Bonez tacked on two more runs… I think… on another ITPHR, and when Pitas finally looked ready to strike, Veltri made a huge catch in deep centerfield, despite the pouring rain, and the Bonez defense turned the next two outs to finish with the shutout win.
Shasta was a good husky. While bred to run in the great white North, she instead spent her years in the back of a Subaru or tied to the bumper on Panic tour. Still, she never complained… just howled incessantly. No one really knew why, her owners claimed it was her way of expressing her love. She had several close calls; hot days on summer tour, escaping from a friend of a friends’ house in Boulder, but she lasted until the ripe age of five before a container of hash oil cookies was left open in the car and she just couldn’t stop eating. Poor girl, never saw it coming.
