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U.S. EXPORTERS CLINCH SPRING REGULAR SEASON DIVISION CHAMPIONSHIP!
Consecutive Division Championships
The Calendar Grand Slam!
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Congratualtions to the regular season champs,
the U.S. Exporters!
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Roger Morse reporting:
Congratulations on a great season! We are the champions! We are also the defending champions of the Spring Playoff Tournament. It's time to defend our title.
Siri Carpien reporting:
Great throw by Kenny Freed to nail their runner at the plate in the first game. The out kept us within striking distance, allowing us to tie game one. We brought out the whoopin' stick for game two.
We won the Calendar Grand Slam! 2004 Spring Tourney, 2004 Fall Regular Season, 2005 Spring Regular Season.
Kenny Freed reporting:
It was classic Exporter's softball on Tuesday night. We couldn't get the sticks going in the first game and ended up with a tie. That can only mean bad things for the opposing team.
We took out our aggression for the weak effort in the first game with a 20-2 spanking of the Jabronies in the second. If you're going to play us close in the first, you might as well eke out a win because either way you're going down in the
second.
Mark Boudreau reporting:
We did what we needed to do. That's what this team does.
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Jay Hatfield reporting:
I got a message to call Roger Morse at about 2:00 Tuesday afternoon. Before Roger's call I had been at my office trying to figure out what I was going to do in the evening. Would I watch a baseball game on TV or would I take my wife out to dinner? I couldn't decide.
Ever since I retired as the U.S. Exporters field manager in early 2004 I have purposely tried to stay away from the team's ball games because 1) I thought that I would bring bad luck, and 2) I didn't want to upstage the manager in charge. I have been perfectly content being the team's general manager and attending to behind-the-scenes administrative matters that no one else really likes to do. It gave me Tuesdays off to goof around however I wanted.
Well, not this night.
When I finally reached Roger, he told me that he had been called away to a presidential dinner. He would not be able to make the game. "Jay," he said, "you're going to have to run the team tonight."
Jay Hatfield was instantaneously reduced to a quivering lump of greasy sweat. Me? I hadn't run the squad in over a year! Was he crazy?
After finally resigning to my fate, I begged Roger to send me a lineup. When I got home I dusted off my old lineup message board, pulled out a new scorebook, gathered up a couple of new softballs and made my way to the park. After posting the lineup board, I set up a chair for myself outside of the dugout, then sat back to watch the mayhem.
I was absolutely certain that my presence at the game would bring us bad luck. The U.S. Exporters needed to win one game of the Tuesday night's doubleheader in order to clinch at least a tie for first place with the Quarterdeck softball club.
When our Tuesday night opponents, the C.A. Jabronies, took a one run lead at the top of the seventh inning of the first game I was convinced that fate had finally intervened to make my life a miserable hell, but our guys fought back and managed to tie the game in the bottom of the seventh. Since we don't have extra innings in this league, the umpire announced that the game would end in a tie.
Well, I was convinced that something bad was still bound to happen. We still needed to win the next game to be assured of a division championship, and if we lost the next game we would likely be out of the money.
In the second game I stuck with Roger's original lineup, with only a minor adjustment. For some reason the lineup seemed to click this time, and the guys took a big lead into the fifth, and final, inning. What a relief!
Congratualtions to the regular season champs, the U.S. Exporters!
Now, I would like to return to my normal duties.
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