Our old buddies from Woodland Hills East rolled into Stengel Field on a Sunday morning for a twin bill. When I first got our schedule for the ’91 season and I saw we had a double-header at Stengel against them…….I didn’t care if we went 2-20. I just wanted BOTH of our wins to be against these idiots. See my earlier Post “One Time in 94 Games” if you don’t know WHY I wanted BOTH of these games…..
But I’ve always said this about double-headers…..”They’re HARD to sweep, and EASY to get swept.”
So “Why” you may ask….if I wanted to win BOTH of these games….would I start BullOxen the day before against Agoura? Because ‘Ol Bull was going hunting or fishing that day and had told me he wouldn’t be there for this game before the season started! I think this may have even been Father’s Day……..it was June the 25th.
So we knew Bull wasn’t going to be there. I still felt we would have “enough” guys there who would “remember” what had happened the previous summer. We had Hank, Weap, and General there coaching for us. We had Turner, Sammy, and Rogers on the field for us that day as well. We were all still TOTALLY pissed about that game. In fact, I’m STILL pissed about that GD game TODAY!
So here they come in with their RED and White Jerseys. It didn’t take long for most of us who were on the field that day they beat us a year ago to get sick to our stomach. We were TRYING to tell the new guys on the Team about what had happened last summer. For whatever reason…they didn’t really understand. I guess you “had to be there.”
They came out and trounced us 9-2 in the opener. I guess you could say I was “Seeing RED” again……….
We had nine hits in the first game. Turner…two hits. Rogers…two hits and two RBI. Sammy…one hit. Five of our nine hits were by the three guys who were on the field that day a year ago. I was proud that they, too, had “remembered.” But it was a hard sell to the rest of the guys to get ’em to totally step up for this game. Yves, Yvan Moreno, Mike Parker, and Brett Miller all singled in the first game.
But there’s always a silver-lining to any Verdugo defeat. We beat ’em in the second game 10-0 on a mercy rule and dominated them in ’92 in a BIG game. By the time we had finished all four seasons in 20th District play…there was only ONE team that had a winning record against us…and it WASN’T Notre Dame. And it WASN’T Woodland Hills East. We were still building our program in ’91…..and by the time the building was done and it was time to just kind of go out and PLAY…..nobody touched us. And I’ll TAKE THAT.
BIG BRECK came out in the second game and had a complete-game shutout victory. A tight little three-hitter. Ahh Big Breck!!!
Offensively, we banged out a dozen hits. And pretty much everyone contributed to the blowout.
John Rogers got us on the board in the first inning with a big RBI-double. He had two hits on the day.
Robb Turner picked up another couple of hits in the second game.
Brett Miller had two hits.
ELMO had two hits and an RBI.
Cadena singled twice and drove in three runs!
HACK singled, drew a walk, and had two RBI.
We were actually starting to hit the ball pretty well at this point of the season. 33 hits in the last three games. While the ’91 Team had GREAT pitching, we also had the lowest Team batting average in Verdugo history at .286. It wasn’t BAD….but the ’90 Team outhit ’em. But as I said in an earlier Post…..everybody now knew who we were and adjusted their pitching rotation(s) to make sure we were seeing one of their better guys, if not their BEST guy.
We didn’t sweep….but we didn’t get swept either.
We were still AT or very near the top of our Division at 7-4. Next up on our schedule was “Valley E.T.”………a team we had swept in a double-header towards the end of the ’90 season.
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