Jul 24, 2006
Well, after 2787.8 emails, 19.4 passenger swapping arrangements,
242 changes of hotel reservations and who knows how many SMSs
and phone calls, we were all finally Verona bound at various times
on Friday afternoon.
For next season we are lodging a formal request to the Italian Softball
Federation to move Milano to someplace south of Napoli so that we do not
have to negotiate 'hells bypass' around that city each time we play ball.
Michelin should put a big * beside their timeline with a note like
(add 2 hours to journey time if passing Milano between 2pm and ??pm)
In any case we all arrived safely with the Golden Arrow and the DHBTC on
board landing first. It did not take long to find a great little pizzeria
which looked after us very well. Before long all folks had arrived and we
were into the consumption of pasta and various beverages. It was nice to see
that their clocks seemed to very similar to the ones in Novara. i.e. closing
time 1:30 really means, 'whenever the last person staggers out the door'.
So, Fri-Sat morning saw the team off to a typical start, with many more
participants than the first nite in Novara.
We were very happy not to have a 9:30 game on Saturday for a change. As it
was 'payback time' for the Ghost team, the entire team made the early Fri
nite curfew, in particular Rado and Peter, so that we would be in fine shape
for the late start on Sat.
Coach Peter showed up with a scorebook this time, so he was not fined the 2
kegs of beer. His only fine was that he still had to share a room with Rado,
but not a Fiat 500. As I look back over the scorebook, I'm thinking.. maybe
it's better to rely on brain cells than a scorebook because what I see in
the book is that we sure are not the NY Yankees at the bat.
In the Ghost game we basically bunted them into panic mode to get some runs
while Rado was throwing a great game logging up a lot of Ks in the process.
In fact (now I can say it), it was an almost perfect game. So, we made a lot
of unearned runs to ice the game and move on to the Peter Pan gang on
Sunday. That's another story.. (that I personally would like to forget)
Saturday nite Latino dancing was handled mostly by the belle ragazze
DieHards. Except.. rumour has it that Cesar is in a league of his own when
it comes to Latino dancing.. a rumour started by some of the belle ragazze
themselves. There was, once again, a considerable amount of beverages
consumed, especially by the coaching staff..in preparation for the 9:30 game
on Sunday morning. Maybe we shouda just stayed up all nite.
As for the Peter Pan game on Sun morning, I'd like to cross that game from
the books forever. We shouda just slept thru it.. Reg's eye-glove
coordination was nowhere to be seen during that episode and he was wishing
there was a hole to crawl into a couple of times out there in right field.
So, they got ahead of us and we just could not get back into the game. Of
course we will not win many games with one hit and one run for sure.. and
that was a run the hard way too. Maybe in addition to having Milano moved,
we should try to have games scheduled never before 2pm, by which time most
of has woken up. The good thing about that game is that we now have another
'payback game' to look forward to at some point. (hey, ya gotta look at the
positive as well as the negative..)
So, to get ourselves into 3rd place, we played the ladies + 1 from Slovenia.
It was a fun and relaxing game. All we needed was some BBQ sauce in the
dugout and we would all have come out cooked and ready to be served, just
slightly rare. It was a relief to go out on the field where it was so cool
and only about 40 degrees. We did not exactly kill them with hitting either.
Once again, it was more of a panic mode win, but this time with a couple of
well timed hits from Didier to score some runs.
Unfortunately, because of the long drive (and of course Monday morning
wakeup call, trains, etc) we could not all hang around for the awards. Peter
will have some news on that perhaps. It seems that Peter Pan won quite
easily, so at least we lost to the champs. But, I'm sure we have another
trophy to add to the growing collection.
Many thanks to Daniela (hope that hand gets better fast so Daniela will be
pushing down a hit rather than pushing a scoring pencil) and anybody else
who helped to keep the score book. A few different techniques, but very well
done.
One thing is real obvious.. we gotta get the bats working. In 3 games, if
you can count all of our hits on your fingers, it means we have to pitch
shutouts because we eventually will run into teams that don't panic on
bunts. And this has been against decent pitching, not real top level stuff.
From now til Slovakia, the squad needs some BP for sure.
As for the play of the weekend.. I think we have to go with Charlie's
unassisted double play to end the 5th inning with the bases loaded in the
final game. That let us get back into the oven dugout for the final basting
before serving.
We had some nice base running by Ben. He and Cesar scored most of our runs
in the final game.
I saw Mag taking some pictures.. hope she was able to get some good ones for
the album (what album? you say)..
By the way, the DHBTC determined that the beer was OK in San Bonifacio, but
not quite up to the quality of Novara. This was verified by the fact that we
did not empty as many kegs as we did in Novara.. But, we were still good
enough customers of the beer stand to earn several complimentary pitchers of
beer over the weekend anyway.
So, that's about it for this issue. Sending it out to all, and Peter will
tag on the Coaches Comments I'm sure for a re-send. Of course, if anybody
else wants to roast or toast, feel free. We all accept good natured being
made fun of (I hope).
Once again, a great weekend with a great bunch of folks. Hope you all
enjoyed it. I sure did.
Reg
Coach Rado:
Hi,
I add my point of view because I can't say this time I have the
same set of memory fragments as Peter does. We have to see each other
to sort them out in order to build a complete picture :-)
Friday:
I liked the pizza, I was dying to taste the excellent Soave white wine
and the unplanned smoking stuff :-) I barely remember the way back to
our hotel but I remember what catastrophe is when you don't have a
chilled coke for Cuba Libre drink. Don't try that with Guarrana
lemonade!!!
All that is caused by the fact that one needs to figure out in advance
how to get onto the chilled drinks inside an Italian fridge on the
corridors.
Saturday:
For me the tournament was over, Ghosts laying around the surrounding
tables dead or in the doctor's green suite hunting Peter to give him a
(forced) first aid :-)
After well chosen recharging based on the white wine we get with Peter
back to life to get ready for the Latino nite.
I don't know what was served during the common dinner, we had some
Cuba Libre, and yes you're right this time we had the KEY to explore
the fridges all over the hotel corridors.
We entered the Latino cheering ball park in a stylish way, well we
think we did, and tried to prove that when we say a pitcher must be a
good dancer we mean it. This judgment I leave to our ladies but
believe us we have tried our best :-)
Since in general the weather like a demo version of a crematorium
contributed to our overall physical<
