Juan Monroy

We did it again!

Last year, the Ball Busters played in the Lower Manhattan Softball League championship series and won the Heckscher Cup. This year, we finished in second place with a 19–7 record, just one game behind the top-ranked Big Red Machine, the team we beat in 2012 to win the league championship.

The same four teams played in the two semi-final series as last year’s final four teams: Awkward Times, Jackals, Big Red Machine, and the Ball Busters. Yesterday, we faced Awkward Times, a team with a very strong defense that held us to two runs. But our pitching and defense did an even better job at keeping them from scoring. We shut them out, 2–0, in the game I pitched. It was one of my best pitching performances all year. I faced only 24 batters, gave up only three hits and an error. No runner advanced past second base all game. Resting my back Saturday seems to have paid off.

We also shut them down in the second game, 2–1, in eight innings. That game was more tense as my teammate Kevin retired the first twelve batters but then wiggled in and out of jams for the rest of the game. As a testament to the pitching and defense, the first two runs of the game, one run by each team, scored on a bases-loaded walk and on a sacrifice fly. We scored the go-ahead run in the eighth inning on a single. (Who said softball games are all high scoring?) The final out of the game came as Awkward Times had the bases loaded in the bottom of the eighth inning. Their batter hit a deep fly ball to end the game.

The Heckscher Cup Finals are on Sunday, August 18, 2:00 PM, at the Heckscher ballfields in Central Park. It’s such a big deal for me that I’m missing a bike ride in California to play. All are welcome.