Short-Handed Team Shows Heart
By Aaron Guerrero
Posted at 10:53 p.m. on June 4, 2012
(Aaron Guerrero/CQ Roll Call)
Monday’s night’s House Softball League matchup between the Great Lakers, a team primarily made up of staffers from the Michigan delegation, and the Hired Guns, a team from lobbying firm Cassidy & Associates, almost didn’t happen.
The Great Lakers began the evening short-handed, though reinforcements would come later.
Unfortunately, the bats of the Hired Guns were just too much, topping their counterparts, 18-10.
Heading into the fourth inning, the game was close, with the Hired Guns maintaining a slim one-run lead, 4-3. But in the fourth inning, the bats came alive. Led by their colorful shortstop, Rocky Fox, and his three-run homer, the team scored seven runs and never looked back.
“[This is] definitely not the team we went to the playoffs with,” Great Lakers team captain Mike Klotz said, referring to last year’s run.
Still, for a team that had not played since last fall, the players would not quit.
In the sixth inning, with the game’s outcome all but determined, Sean Fish, pitching in his first game for the Michigan team, caught back-to-back fly balls in foul territory.
The second of the two featured him overcoming an obstacle that not even those in the majors must face. Running down a foul ball heading into enemy territory, Fish leaped over the Hired Guns’ cooler of beer to make a gutsy grab.
Asked how he pulled off the feat, Fish gave a blue-collar answer that would surely leave folks in Michigan proud: ”If you see it, you gotta go for it.”
