Posted at 9:40 p.m. on May 16, 2012
After being rained out three consecutive weeks, Jerry Duty finally got a chance to show its stuff on the Mall this week. And boy, did they show up.
Jerry Duty (1-0), representing the office of Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), laid a 17-1 smackdown on the Wooden Bats of Sen. Dick Durbin’s (D-Ill.) office Wednesday night. Pitcher Will Ruder knocked in three of Duty’s seven homers to spearhead an impressive offensive effort.
“I was just trying to put some contact on it, and it actually worked out. All the credit goes to White Lightning,” Ruder said, pointing at his bat.
Jerry Duty’s big bats were aided by the small field on the corner of 14th Street and Madison Drive.
Outfielders could only play so far back without encroaching on a neighboring game or blocking off walkways and had to navigate tourists, runners and other players to retrieve balls. As a result, nearly every big hit turned into a homer.
But even considering the conditions, the Bats’ fielding early on left a lot to be desired. Co-captain Kevin Lefeber chalked the struggles up to a long winter and injury trouble.
“We were missing a few key players, [and] the outfield was a little weak today,” Lefeber said. “We had some new players on the team, too — first game for them. We had some rust from the offseason, I guess.”
A scary moment silenced both benches in the fifth inning, as Wooden Bats pitcher and co-captain Emily Sullivan took a line drive to the face. Despite a nasty cut above her right eye, Sullivan stayed standing and cheered on her team from the sideline.
The Wooden Bats promptly took the field after handshakes to work on their fielding before next week’s game against the Blue Collars. Jerry Duty, meanwhile, was just happy to notch a win against its political rivals.
“They’re big-time liberals, and we’re a Kansas conservative office, so that always feels good,” co-captain Tom Bush said.
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Aaron Guerrero is a former intern at Roll Call and a graduate student at Georgetown. Pat Curran is a government major at Georgetown and serves on the campus newspaper's board of directors. @cqrcsoftball
