ABGSL Sting 2, Benecia Outlaws 7

It was 80 degrees in the shade and the odor from a giant pile of dog poo wafted over the practice area. A large man tried and failed to scale the fence surrounding the field, and cracked open his head. And it was still only 7:45 in the morning.

The Outlaws arrived, as the Outlaws always do, with their matching gear bags, matching helmets and matching airs of invincibility.  Sierra Jimenez took the mound for the Sting and pitched bravely. The first duty of any pitcher is to throw strikes and Jimenez fulfilled it. She gave up a single run in the first inning, and just two in the second. The Sting played good defense behind her. Isabel Lavrov handled a pair of ground balls, and Quinn Lewis made an over the shoulder catch of a fly ball.

Sadly, the Outlaws pitcher was dominant, and the Sting was unable to generate offense until the fourth, by which time the Outlaws led 7-0. When Jimenez walked and stole second—and then was driven around by Sting’s first hit, a single by Robyn Wampler, it was too little too late.

The game had a feeling of tragic inevitability about it: Outlaws are somehow different from you and me. For a start, they always win. Before the game, however, the Outlaws head coach confided that Outlaw habits were actually not all that different from Sting habits: the Outlaws, like the Sting, practice only during the season, and,  also like the Sting, just twice a week; Outlaws players emerge from their not terribly competitive rec league; the Outlaws rec league is roughly the same size as the Albany Berkeley  rec league; and so on. Given these facts the father of Abigail Cain was moved to begin an inquiry into the cause of Outlaws success. “Do they have better bats?” he said, in a low tone of a man used to talking to himself.  “Maybe that’s it.”

ABGSL Sting 1, San Jose Quicksilver 6

For the first time in memory Sting players were able to look into an opposing dugout and say, “we’re bigger than they are!” A brawl, unlikely though it may be, was no longer a thing to be feared.

Amelia Galbraith made her Sting debut at shortstop and not only made a nifty play on a grounder to her left but showed a natural gift for the position. Maeve Gallagher took over at second base and matched Galbraith with a silky play of her own. Claire Kaneko started at first base and looked as if she was born to play it, making an unassisted double play on a hard hit line drive. Robyn Wampler took over on the mound and, like Jimenez before her, pounded the strike zone. The Quicksilver struck for four runs in the top of the fourth but they did it with hits, a few of them lucky. Given a bounce here or there Wampler might have shut them down.

In the field Sting looked at ease; at the plate, less so. Once again Sting had trouble with live pitching. Energetic in the field, they were passive and even timid at the plate: you could almost see Sting hitters thinking: if I wait long enough maybe the live human being on the mound will be replaced by a machine. As the father of Claire Kaneko, the horse whisperer of hitting coaches, pointed out, “most of the girls decide whether to swing before the pitch.” There is no solution to this problem but time and experience—and a lot more Adi Saaf and Jessica Kelly. In the bottom of the second inning, as if to let the Quicksilver know that a different Sting team might be waiting for them in some future tournament, Saaf took a pitch deep into right field, and rounded the bases for the game’s only home run. The next inning Jessica Kelly swatted a long double, but was left stranded. In the fifth inning Kaneko registered Sting’s only other hit, a single.

ABGSL Sting 5, Castro Valley Synergy 11

It was pushing seven in the evening when Sting took the field for its third game of the day, on their third different Vallejo field, and yet the players looked as fresh as they had at seven that morning, when they arrived for the first game.  Sting fans witnessed in their players the first spasm of the warrior spirit. Sting failed to score in the top of the first but came closer to it than usual, after Isabel Lavrov knocked a hard single and Claire Kaneko walked. In the bottom of the inning, with clutch defense and pitching, they held the Synergy to a single run. Shortstop Sierra Jimenez made a play that will endure in Sting memory, when she speared a line drive off her shoe laces. With runners on first and third, pitcher Quinn Lewis put an end to the inning with a strike out.

Then, in the top of the second inning, came Sting’s first glimpse of its bright future. Lewis led off by roping a line drive up the middle that by some miracle wound up in the glove of the Synergy pitcher. She was followed by nothing but more success, combined with better luck. Amelia Galbraith walked, and stole every other base, including home. Catcher Grace Rusin doubled. Mallory McCrane walked and dashed around the bases, in the spirit of Galbraith. Robyn Wampler singled. Isabel Lavrov hit a frozen rope to right field which, if there was any justice in the world, would have been a triple, but wound up a single. And Sting players kept crossing home plate. When the rally ended, Sting led 5-1.

The effect of this new turn of events on the behavior of Sting players, and Sting fans, could not be ignored. Parents for the first time longed to know the score and, even when they knew it, asked for it again.  Players wanted to shout various irrelevant pieces of information to their parents. The players were on their feet; their fans on the edge of their REI-issued portable chairs. Love, or something like it, was in the air.

This couldn’t last, of course. Not now: it is too early in this summer season for Sting, engaged as it is in this strange new business of trying to win, to actually win.  But the difference between winning and losing is one thing. The difference between the hope of success, and no hope at all, is another. Sting players learned what it felt like to have success. Once you have experienced the feeling, you will work harder to experience it again, not only because you want it but because you know it is possible.

ABGSL Sting 1, Santa Clara Sparks 10

Sunday morning marked the start of single elimination play, and Sting was singly eliminated. The Sparks scored 10 runs on 12 hits; the Sting scored one run on one hit. But Sting players still gave their fans hope for the future, as they had in their other defeats.  In the first inning Aida Barron inspired Sting fans with her brave play in left field. Charging in to stop a blazing line drive Barron took the ball off her shin. The pain was clearly intense but Barron raced and got the ball into the infield before crumpling in a heap. She left the game to cheers from both dugouts. Her replacement, Allison Hersh, not only admirably chased down blast after Spark blast, but fought hard at the plate. The lone offense came from Isobel Lavrov, who, in the top of the fourth, with Sting down 6-0, roped a triple, and then stole home.  Robyn Wampler gave up ten runs but she pitched far better than that—once again she yielded very few walks, and fielded her position expertly. 

Finally, the Sting players may have lost the game but they never lost their enthusiasm. Someone, in a matter of days, they have created a cheer for every situation. Amazingly even the new players—Allison Hersh, Aida Barron,  Abigail Cain, Amelia Galbraith, Maeve Gallagher, Jessica Kelly, Mallory McCrane-know every word to every cheer. If they can do this, we reason, they can also learn when to swing, when to run and which base to throw to when the ball is hit to them. Battles have been lost, yes, but the war remains to be fought.

As a reporter left the park at the end of the first day he was grabbed by the coach of the team hosting the tournament. “I just want to thank you all for the way you approach the game,” he said. “You’re a pleasure to have.” He then went on to explain that several of the other teams were somewhat less of a pleasure. We would all agree that we would rather come up short on the scoreboard than to be one of those people. But that, of course, is a false choice. We look forward to the day when someone stops us with our trophies to tell us how well behaved we are.