Game 1: The Sidebar

CONCORD -- When it comes to favorite innings, the selective fan of softball has all of seven choices. The dreamers among them might well get dewy-eyed over the first inning, so full of optimism and promise and the thrill of what could be. Then there are the hard-headed realists who look to the third inning. By the time the third rolls around, you know you’ve been in a ballgame. Then there are the bottom-line accountant types, who say only the bottom of the seventh matters. By then, the Great Scorer in the Sky has made his call.

But ask any Hot Chaser for his favorite frame, and in unison and on a seconds notice, they will rise up and cheer, “The fifth! The fifth!” and yelp so feverishly you’d think they were testifying at a steroids hearing before a Congressional committee.

It was the fifth inning last Thursday that turned what had been to that point a desultory Hot Chaser performance into one of promise and hope in what turned out to be a 20-10 defeat at the hands of the cryptically tagged OHM Boyz at Willow Pass Park.

To provide a dash of context, the Hot Chasers had managed only five baserunners and had been bageled in the run column heading into the soon-to-be-glorious fifth. In other words, there had been no indication, no omen, that the stanza following the fourth would be one for the Hot Chaser record book, if only there was a Hot Chaser record book, or even a game-day program.

“That was a game? Oh, man, that’s depressing. I thought we were just clowning around,” said Hot Chaser rookie Neil Hayes, summarizing the big picture in his initial HC outing.

Well, Mr. Hayes, in the fifth, the clowning was pretty much over.

The period started on an innocent yet appropriate note, with emergency spot-starter Rick Hurd ripping a single for his second consecutive hit of the contest. The aforementioned Hayes followed with a safety of his own. His cohort and fellow HC newbie Jerry Southwick reached on an error by the second baseman as the opposition was back on its heels to the sudden surge of Hot Chaser competence. The runs continued to flow as Dennis Pimentel, bravely playing hurt after early diving for a hot-shot grounder, singled, and Dave Taxier plated another with his bases-loaded single. The bottom of the order was coming through as though it was the secret strategy all along of lineup designer Chris Wagnon.

The onslaught showed no signs of abating as Mike Lefkow played his Moneyball role to the hilt by coaxing a free pass. Take note, Mr. Beane.

The top of the lineup, thus inspired, moved things along. Mike Gale singled, then Wagnon, always on the lookout for an opening, went the other way but his scorching liner was snagged by the first baseman for the first out of the frame. This minor setback hardly fazed the Chasers, who then got a single off the bat of Randy Striegel and the big blow, a double by Luke Abbott, who was credited with three RBI on the play.

Joe Roderick, also playing hurt after an unfortunate ball-to-groin incident sustained in the course of challenging a low liner in left-center, again took advantage of a shell-shocked Boyz defense to reach on an error by the third baseman. That completely turned the batting order back to Mr. Hurd, and he and Hayes were tabbed for the last two outs of the inning, as the Boyz breathed a huge sigh of relief. But the damage had been done: Nine runs had scored on seven hits, with a pair of errors thrown in. The Chasers tacked on a run in the sixth as Southwick reached on an error and eventually scored on Taxier’s base hit. But the Boyz showed the fortitude to hang onto their 10-run lead.

“Offensively I was disappointed with our performance. We didn’t work the pitch count early in the game. The first inning was a great example. I don’t know if I’ve seen many four pitch innings even in slow pitch,” noted Wagnon. “Later on I thought we swung the bats better, but we were already in a big hole by that point. Defensively everything went well if you just throw out that second inning. I think once we get a few more games under our belt, we’ll be fine.”

Fine, that is, as long as the Hot Chasers can remain inspired by the memorable top of the fifth.

“It was pretty disappointing. I think we tried hard, but just seemed to be pressing a bit. Especially me,” said Gale, always on the lookout for his teammates’ welfare. “I just hope Roderick can recover from his gruesome injury and can go next week, even if he is speaking in a octave higher than normal. We’ll just put this game behind us, move on and get ready for next week. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.”

But if a season is a marathon, then the Hot Chasers’ fifth was the mother of all water stations.