Below .500 Teams Face Off With Eye Toward Post-Season
By Aaron Guerrero
Posted at 11:24 p.m. on July 30, 2012
(Aaron Guerrero/CQ Roll Call)
In the Congressional Softball League , even if you’re down, you’re far from out.
The CSL post-season tournament is open to every team, no matter how lopsided a team’s loss column is to its win column.
For the NAB’s Big Sticks, who entered the game with a 2-7 record, and the PACA Fools, lacking a win to their name, Monday’s game presented an opportunity to build some kind of momentum before the regular season ends.
Representing the National Association of Broadcasters, the Big Sticks began the game well, something mostly foreign to them this year.
“[We] got off to a good start for a change,” Big Sticks centerfielder Gagan Nirula said.
And the good start would carry over in the later innings, as the team used a hitting formula high on consistency and low on power to amass an insurmountable lead over the roster of returned Peace Corps volunteers.
Like clockwork, the team would tack two runs onto the scoreboard for three consecutive innings: the third, fourth and fifth.
Trailing 9-3 in the bottom of the seventh inning, the Fools showed signs of life when they got two runners on. But the timely hitting necessary for a comeback was, as it had been for most of the evening, nonexistent.
“It’s either our gloves are on or are sticks are really on,” Fools captain William Roland said, detailing how the team has yet to have a game where they fired on all cylinders.
With less than a handful of games left on the season, both teams can begin to think about a post-season that may hold better fortunes.
Asked about a deep run, Big Sticks team captain Josh Miley lowered expectations, noting the team’s youth (it’s their first season). Though if they managed such a feat, he said, it would resemble that of a bracket busting Cinderella in the NCAA college basketball tournament.
As for the Fools, Roland took an impromptu poll about whether the winless team should give it a go in the post-season. The response wasn’t wildly enthusiastic.
