Doo doo doo doo, doo-doo, do-wah!

Sunday saw the Thirds in a bit of jam, as always. No, Mario did show up. He was actually on time. Early, even. But we were down 5-4 in the bottom 6th, and needed a big win to keep in the Silver playoff bracket. Would the Thirds/Teals/Sapphires hold on? Or would they be demoted to the Bronze bracket? Stay tuned for the dramatic conclusion of July 22nd Sunday D-League Coed Softball... but first, we start at the beginning!

Most of the team got there surprisingly early, which meant they were all in time to watch the dismal display that was the Mentos and Diet Coke experiment. What's supposed to happen is that when you put Footos, err Mentos, in a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke, you get a big geyser that looks like this, or maybe even this. But not when we tried at Cabot field. Perhaps it was the lack of goggles and a lab coat.

We saw a lot of unusual happenings in this game. In no particular order, they are:

• The use of the word "ergo" to explain to the other team why a dropped ball was foul... Ump: "The fielder was in fair territory, the ball was in foul territory, ergo foul ball."
• A lack of errors by the Thirds
• A game ball apparently awarded to me by Sean. I think this was a split decision between me and Ryan, who should receive some sort of film award for treating us to the first live slow-motion instant replay in the history of Sunday D-League Coed Softball, as he rounded the bases on his dinger in the bottom of the 4th

Now, back to our recap. The score was 4-4 going into the fifth, including the two penalty runs assessed for our one girl shortage that were awarded to whatever BSSC Indies team we were playing. The Indies went up by one in their half of the inning, with the bottom of the Thirds order, cemented by Basil-Mario-Automatic Out, going oh-fer. But we held the Indies scoreless in the top of the 6th which brought us to...

The bottom of the 6th...

Obviously.

Eagle stepped up to the plate and kicked off the inning with a single. Three batters later, we had tied it up and had the bases juiced. We ended up keeping the bases loaded, scoring six before the Indies recorded the third out, and managed to keep them scoring in the top 7 to end the game. Not to say we were flawless. We almost ended the rally in Yakety-Sax fashion (though we still would have won) when I was following Karen S around the bases and ran through an apparent stop sign by Eagle as I turned second. When I realized he was trying to hold us, I turned back towards second--to many screams of "Go back!"--to see the ball being thrown to third. Which is when I reached second and saw that Karen had left the safety of third and was also heading back to second. But fortunately the gods of comic relief had induced plenty of throwing and fielding errors for the Indies, and we both ended up safely on base.

So yes, we won. An astute reader would have realized we won due to the awarding of game balls several paragraphs up. Sorry if I ruined the cliffhanger. Jen took the victory, giving up just one earned run (1.17 ERA), while Brian gave up two runs in the first inning (0.00 ERA, according to Brian's scoring rules).

At the end of the regular season, our record stands at 4-4, which it would have been last year except for the two games we tied because of two-run penalties. And now, we move on to the Silver playoffs...

Not-so-fun fact:

• The reasons behind why Diet Coke shoots in the air when Mentos get dumped in are many, but boring. I won't recap them here.

Fun, but debatable fact:

• 2007 is the 70th anniversary of the greatest moment in mankind: the invention of Spam.