Playoff Thrills

Joe D. posted the following entry on his blog recently. This story embodies the thrill of playoff softball.

One crazy softball night in 1976.Our Maulers team was in the playoffs for both the Schaumburg and Mt Prospect leagues, and the schedules conflicted. On the first night we were scheduled to play in Mt Prospect at 6pm and 9:30, and also scheduled to play in Schaumburg at 7:30 and 8:30. Rather than forfeit we decided to play it by ear, so if one game was not going well we would just quit and head for the other town.

Our first game was against the Hoskins Chevy Satyrs, a team that had beaten us earlier this year. Our strategy was to avoid any delays, no throwing the ball around between innings, no taking hittable pitches, and somehow we came away with a narrow win, and raced to our cars, and luckily somehow made most of the stoplights, getting to Schaumburg only 4 minutes before forfeit time. No warmups, play ball. The Foxes pounced on us, showing no mercy, and forced us to come from behind with 3 runs in the last inning to tie the score. The game went 10 innings, and we finally won by one run. We then had to choose whether to hang around for the next game or forfeit and head to Mt Prospect. Since it was double elimination we decided to take a forfeit. That gave us a little bit of time for our convoy to get to Mt Prospect, but every red light was excruciating while we watched the clocks tick away towards game time. We once again arrived 4 minutes before forfeit time, no warmups, play ball. Somehow we won another one run game against Scanda House, so incredibly we were still alive in both playoffs.

On the following night we got revenge on the McGaffers who beat us in the first round, to get to the Mt Prospect finals against the Shooters, who we had to beat twice due to the double elimination format, and we did that.

Guess who our opponents were for the Schaumburg finals the following night? It was the Shooters/Scrappers again, and again we beat them twice to win both titles.

We were completely out of energy, but it no longer mattered, the season was over, and the beer never tasted any better.