WE SMOKED 'EM

The fabulous Red Inks of the Pen & Pencil Club improved their record to 2-0 on Monday night at swampy Lake Belmont with a resounding 26-8 win over the More Pleasant Touch Museum.

The game was notable for the fact that no one could see either the ball or each other for the first three innings, due to a celestial fireball 93 million miles away.

We got off to a somewhat slow start, particularly in the field. (Which is odd because the sun was at our backs then.) After three innings, our lead was an umimpressive 12-7, but we batted around, plus three batters, in the fourth inning, put a 9-spot on the board and it was all chuckles and Yuengling after that.

Eighteen players arrived and 18 took part in the game, including former manager and league commissioner Ron Goldwyn, and all five of the female roster players. It helps when you bat around five times to get everyone an at-bat, and any time you want to do that again, I'm all for it.

In the scorebook, Marcus Hayes was 4-for-4 with two home runs. Also getting four hits were Russ Krause, Kerry O'Connor and Brian Donlen. Three hits, including a home run for Mark Nevins and three hits for Tom DiNardo. Steve Lynch also had a home run, giving us four HRs in a game for the first time in...well, in a long time.

We compiled 36 hits for our 26 runs and brought the game home in 1 hour, 15 minutes despite the total of 34 runs. That might be a league record, too.

The Bad Touchers have lost a few players, but they hung in despite the score and took it good naturedly enough.

Aside from Lynch, we didn't take extra bases or do anything else that would have required much effort.

PTM scored its first four batters of the game and seven of its first 12 before going through a stretch of 23 batters who didn't score, a streak that was broken when the Management threw a home run pitch to Leon, and he sent it out there somewhere into the gloaming to complete the scoring.

Much more to come, and quickly, but this one was fun.