We went from 8-4 to 8-6 in a hurry. I don’t want to spend too much time with these two games. Chatsworth beat us 17-3 and Lancaster took us out 14-6. It was tough to stomach. We had only eight guys at the Chatsworth game. Was it eight or NINE? We’ll talk about THAT ONE at The Reunion!
In the Chatsworth game (at their yard), the only thing worth talking about is Yvan Moreno’s three-for-three game at the plate and BullOxens two-run homer. Bull also added a single. Rounding out our offense was J.R. Workman’s base-hit in the fifth inning. Or was it J.R. Workman? We’ll talk about THAT ONE at the Reunion as well!
We actually hit the ball pretty well in the 17-3 loss. We had four stings, and with any luck could have scored five or six times that day. But you can’t battle it out with a team like Chatsworth and allow 31 baserunners (in a six-inning game for that matter). This was the most lopsided loss in our four-year history.
They were pretty much as I expected them to be. Loud, popping-off, the whole shot. Little did they know what was in store for them when we faced them a year later in the playoffs………
The Lancaster game was at Glendale High. It was 4-4 ballgame going into the seventh inning. They turned it on and kicked our asses pretty good. We did show some signs of putting up a fight, though. They had a mouthy guy playing for them. I had just brought in BullOxen in relief to try to get the final out of a long inning where they sent 13 guys to the plate and rolled a seven on us. The bases were loaded.
BullOxen did EXACTLY what I had hoped he would do. He FIRED a bullet right into his ribcage!!! Down on the ground I heard him gasp “you did that on purpose.”
Mike Parker was standing right over him as he rolled around on the ground near the plate and said “YES WE DID!!”
Amazingly, no brawl took place. And while we gave up a run on the HBP….it was well worth it. Or so I thought.
Still, I gotta give that kid credit.
The next time he came up in the ninth he smashed an inside-the-park homer off of us. It was pretty studly what he did. After he crossed the plate he just stood over by their on-deck circle….flexed his muscles….and screamed at the top of his lungs out towards the field while his teammates mobbed him.
It was okay. We needed that ass-kicking. And we never forgot that day either…and we SWEPT their asses in ’92!!!
And the Lancaster game was an important game for us historically. It was the LAST TIME we at Verdugo ever got our asses kicked.
I will have photocopies of the scorebooks at The Reunion where you can read up on these two games (if reading about it doesn’t make you vomit like it does me). I’m laughing as I write this…we WALKED 29 guys in these two games. To put this in perspective, the 1993 Pitching staff for Verdugo Hills walked only 31 hitters the ENTIRE SEASON!!!!
We only had five hits this game. Yvan Moreno doubled and singled. BullOxen doubled. Mike Parker tripled, and Brett Miller had an infield single.
But we still weren’t done. We were (believe it or not) still very alive in the playoff hunt at 8-6. And we had a couple of big double-headers coming down the pike that I liked our chances in. Little Rock, and our old buddies from Newhall-Saugus.
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