You could call this the anatomy of a team meltdown… a collapse. When a team on top of everything just couldn’t hold it together. Such was the case with my Urbana Locomotives of the Boys of Summer APBA League who just finished their season today.
On August 25 with 29 games left in the season, the Locomotives were in first place with a 74-59 record and 8 1/2 games up on the Louisville Sluggers. Then the wheels slowly began to fall off the train.
Locos looking good at the 133 game mark…
That was when the Corktown Tamales took us for six straight games. How badly did they beat us? For the whole six game series, the Locos had the lead for just two innings. Still, we had a 4 1/2 game lead in the NL East after that. We could rebound, right?
The Locomotives then split a six game series with Shawn Baier’s Traverse City Panthers 3-3. Not ideal but it hacked away at the Magic Number. By then, we were up by five games and were the only ones with a winning record in the NL East at 77-67. Magic Number was 14.
The game 145 mark brought on second place Louisville for six games. Urbana manages only two wins. Then Traverse City comes to town. We won two of the first three games and start feeling better. Then a combination of tired arms, a worn out George Springer and general bad luck hits us.
Traverse City takes the last three games of the series. I mean it wasn’t close. The Locos only scored five runs in those three games. By the end of that series with one more six game series left, Urbana has a razor-thin lead in the NL East. We’re up by 2 1/2 over Louisville and 4 over Steve Ruder’s Holland Hitchhikers. Worth mentioning is that Brad Stark’s Portland Microbrewers in the NL West had already clinched the Wild Card so a division win is essential.
Getting a little too close…
But still, we were up by 2 1/2 games with six games left. That’s plenty doable, right? I had third-place Hitchhikers coming to town and the fate was in our hands.
Well, the Loco pitching didn’t see it that way. They gave up a total of 17 homeruns to Holland bats in six games. Like the Corktown series, the Locos only had the lead for two total innings for the whole series. Not only had the Holland Hitchhikers swept my Locomotives but they skipped over the Sluggers to take the NL East championship!
The Locomotives ended the season with a 7-22 record including losing the last straight nine games. The team will end the season in third place after holding first place for literally months.
Congratulations to Steve Ruder and his Holland Hitchhikers! I wish him good luck against our NL opponents in the BoS playoffs.
Announcing the division champs of the Boys of Summer.
AL East- Bill Gillam and the Micatin Destroyers
AL West- Robert Mosher and the Fairgrove Tigers
AL Wildcard- Stray Corrado and the Chicago Nine
NL East- Steve Ruder and the Holland Hitchhikers
NL West- Chris Baier and San Diego Heroes
NL Wildcard- Brad Stark and Portland Microbrewers
Good luck everyone!!
