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Heat Rises in June
After taking a near month-long hiatus, the
officials of this league have recuperated well enough to endure a string
of four gamedays in the month of June, topped off with the famous All-Star
Weekend on Saturday, July 8th. The last time we as a league got together
and played was May 7th, and nearly every player in the league (save the
few poor chaps who are out of the loop) are watering at the mouth to get
back into it. And it's a good thing
too, because these four gamedays will be some of the most important ones
that could either make or break a player's season. The season's first
four gamedays were like the first four laps of a 5000 meter run, with
the players testing the waters, setting the pace. These upcoming four
will serve as the middle of the race, where certain players will either
break ahead of the pack, or fall behind with little chance of recovery.
And it's only necessary that while the competition heats up, so does the
weather. Some players cannot stand the hot weather of Chico, and feel
that (especially since school is just getting out) these days would be
much better spent inside watching Full House, but some players relish
the month of June. Terry Creighton and Casey Sylvester both hit .286 in
June last year (compared to their .239 and .235 season average, respectively).
Joey Creighton hit .457 in June while Scott hit .636 with 6 homeruns in
only 11 AB's. Clint Wattenberg, last year's Most Improved Player of the
Year, hit .400 in June. He hit .229 in all other months. This season,
ALL of Clint's AB's will come in June. Yes, June will be good to some
players in this league. The offense will most likely pick up, and pitchers
may see their ratings slowly dropping.
With the league unable to play this many
games at The Sac, we had to find another field. Derek Byrd is unselfishly
allowing two of the four gamedays to be played on his street (also the
tail end of a cul-de-sac). The field had already been deemed "The
Byrd House" and should make for some interesting highlights. Similar
to the SF Giant's field, Pac Bell Park, The Byrd House has a creek running
behind it that, with a 120 foot plus homerun, could be the landing pad
for a few wiffleballs. It will be interesting to see whether the different
locale will serve to present different performances from the players in
the league. Will Derek Byrd himself have a home-field advantage? With
his .182 batting average and 6.86 ERA, he'd better hope so.
Staying
true to tradition however, this year's All-Star Weekend will be played
at The Sac, on Saturday, July 8th. If you're a player, I'm giving you
this information WAY ahead of time, so unless you already have something
planned, getting one day of work moved to another day shouldn't be too
difficult...unless your boss is an asshole. If he or she is, I apologize,
but at the same time, I'm an asshole too, so I don't care. As you've read
time and time again, this All-Star Weekend will hold not only the HR Derby,
the Rookie Game, and the All-Star Game, but will also hold the first-ever
Women's Game, pitting the best WOMEN wiffleball players in the greater
Chico area against one another. The schedule for the day appears like
this, but could change at any time. Hopefully it won't, and hopefully
we'll be able to keep from falling behind:
Homerun Derby: 11:00 am
Women's Game: 1:00 pm
Rookie Game: 2:30 pm
All-Star Game: 4:00 pm.
If you have any questions regarding the schedule, e-mail me, snail mail
me, call me, or IM me, and I will try to work with you. Everyone is required
to be there at LEAST 15 minutes before the event they are in (for example,
women competing in the women's game must be there by at LATEST 12:45 pm).
If that is too much to ask, then please do me a favor and stay home. I
wouldn't want you there. And remember, the All-Star Section for the site
that we'll be building, which will include movies, stats, bios, and player
thoughts on who's gonna do what, should be up hopefully within a week
of the final gameday of June, after the rosters have been determined for
each game. It will be big, and will take a garbage load of time to make,
so please check it out to make it seem at least ALMOST worth the trouble.
For now though, I'm gonna take a look at some players and what they need
to do to be PART of this section:
James Vassar: James is having a good
year, but in a different way. Last year James bat .313 and hit 18 homeruns
in only 113 AB's. This year he has only 5 homeruns in 52 AB's, but is
hitting .404. The kid is on the way to his second consecutive All-Star
Game and needs only to not worry about homeruns. They will come. Not everyone
(hell, only three people have done it) can say they've hit .400.
Mike Walsh: Mike is yet to play his first game, but has four gamedays
to prove that he belongs in the Rookie Game, which pits the 4 best rookies
against each other in a 2 on 2 game. Some say he's going to easily make
it, but Mike has the pressure of HAVING to do well now, because he's starting
at zero, since he just recently got bak from college. Personally, I think
he's a lock for the rookie game. It'd be a shame if someone like Mickey
or Bruce made the Rookie Game and Mike didn't. The only question for me
is whether Mike can play well enough to do what James did last year, and
play in the All-Star Game as a rookie. We'll see.
To any women who are planning on playing in the women's game: If
you want advice on how to be successful in this league, take it from me,
the second-most successful person to ever carry a Cosom Fun Ball: Just
throw strikes. Get the ball over the plate and the outs will come quickly
and easily. I don't care HOW you throw it, or how slow it is...even Eric
Christensen gets people out when he has accuracy. Remember, getting someone
out is a lot easier when you let them hit it rather than walk them. And
everyone knows the age-old statistic: 80% of all leadoff walks wind up
scoring. It's true, it's true.
Terry Creighton: Last year's All-Star Weekend wasn't much fun for
Terry. He hit zero homeruns in the Homerun Derby and went 0-5 with 3 K's
while giving up 4 runs in a 7-0, All-Star Game loss. He just needs to
go out, remember that nothing's going to hurt his season stats on this
day, and have fun. He'll play better.
The
busiest month of this 2000 season is days away, so you fans sitting at
home can safely anticipate updates galore in June as you watch your favorite
players either climb to the next level, or fall behind and out of contention
for anything other than Disappointment of the Year. Some of our fans are
visibly upset and claim that we are "dropping to everyone else's
level" with our constant updates. Allow me to say...huh?? Sorry folks,
but we can't write pulitzer prize-winning columns on every single effort.
Nevermind the fact that our worst is better than our critic's best. So
hopefully ALL of our fans will be happy in June as gamedays will be played,
stats will climb, movies and audio files will pile up, and Donnie and
Omar get re-motivated to write. 16 games in 19 days...if I don't hate
this game by the end of the month, I'll buy the new Kid Rock album.
Nevermind, no I won't.
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