verdugo288

Sunday morning late June. Beautiful Day for some baseball at Glendale High!!!!

Everybody knows Verdugo had the greatest raggers to ever don a uniform. We would deal ’em out….and the opposition would take it. Well….up to a certain point.

There’s an old saying “you live by the sword and you die by it too”….or something like that.

We also knew that if we were dealing out the brutal rags….then it may put a bullseye on some of our guys. And when you’re playing Legion ball….some of these pitchers around the League aren’t very shy about firing at some hitters….and today? Yeah ….they retaliated.

Did we complain about it? HELL NO!!!!

By the time we took our third beaning of the day….it was the UMPIRE who had had enough! The umpire stopped the game in the sixth inning and started jawing with Mel Swerdling….the North Hollywood manager and Commissioner of the 20th District. (Is that a conflict of interests?)

Anyways, Mel came out of the dugout firing at the ump in that New York mafia-style rat voice of his. “You think we’re intentionally throwing at them?” He yelled trying to act all….thug-like?

The umpire wasn’t in the mood and LAUNCHED old Mel. Mel had no other coaches with him that day. Game over!

Final score Verdugo 14 North Hollywood 6

Here’s the funny part. At the time of the ejection the inning wasn’t even over….and we had already sent 13 guys to the plate!

The first NINE guys that stepped to the plate for us in the bottom-of-the-sixth all reach base and scored! And we still weren’t done by the time the ump ran Mel.

But when Josh Canale took his SECOND beaning of the inning the umpire had seen enough.

Canale may be the only guy in 20th District history ever to accomplish such a feat!

Hell, I hadn’t seen such blatant dosing of our hitters since….since….uhhh….Canale got beaned against Crespi!!!!

Wiley Jackson took the other dose. Wiley had back-picked from right field to first base after one of their hitters tagged a base hit and took a little too big of a turn. The baserunner ended up in a rundown between first and second where we nailed his sorry ass and ended a big inning they were rolling on us. They didn’t like that….

Yeah….we may have talked a little trash about that play after it happened. Especially once we knew they didn’t like it!

North Hollywood had their rabbit-ears out all day. Their ears provided the heat for the Verdugo rags that are literally “heat-seeking missles!” And dang were our missles hitting their targets! Every.Single.Time.

It never mattered what the score was either. When the rags started raining down we were DOWN 6-1. In fact….we trailed 6-5 going into the bottom-of-the-sixth when we erupted.

We knew even when we were down 6-1 that it was just a matter of time before we got to them.

Hack Workman pitched the win. He went “all-the-way” striking out six, and giving up six hits. Of the six runs they scored against us, only two were earned.

BIG GAME at the plate today for Robb Turner. Doubling home Hack in the first-inning and getting us on the board after Hack had led-off with a double of his own.

Robb also singled in the second….and his three-run HOMER in the fourth-inning got us back in the game, cutting into their 6-2 lead making it 6-5.

Hack doubled and singled and scored three runs.

Lance Evans ripped a couple of base-hits and drove in two.

Bull Oxen singled and scored a run

Dan Bir stepped up to the plate in our big sixth-inning and rocked a two-RBI double!

Wiley drove in two as well in the sixth with a base hit.

Yves singled and scored a run for us….

Haggs picked up an RBI and Gabe scored twice and stole a base.

I’m taking a picture of the scorebook so you can see what happened in the sixth…dang!!!!

On one hand I was loving the rivalry and bad blood that was brewing with North-Hollywood….on the other hand I knew that bad blood was gonna spill over into the next game we played against them coming up in three days.

More bad blood….

More guys coming at us!!!

But that’s what ya want? Right?