Wow.  What a strange couple of days here in Washington, DC.  Republicans and Democrats skipped hand-in-hand down Pennsylvania Avenue to sign a budget deal at the White House.  August, typically the hottest, sweatiest, muggiest, humidiest month in DC, began with moderate temperatures, blue skies and a gentle breeze.  And Mayor Marion Barry was stripped of his power and essentially demoted to Town Crier.

In keeping with these radical changes in what were once thought to be constants of Washington life, the Ballpark Estimates played a spectacular game and defeated the RAND Dancing Brains last night.  The final score was 26 to 7, extending the Ballpark Estimates unbeaten streak to two games (a team record).

The game began the same way all of our games begin.  In the first inning, MPR scored a couple of runs, and the other team scored a couple of runs.  In the second inning, MPR scored no runs, and the other team took the lead.

But in the third inning, something strange happened.  As Ross Perot once said of his own softball team, "we had more runs than a pantyhose on a West Texas cactus."  We scored 11 runs in the third inning, and from that point on, we were flawless.  We were catching fly balls, making smart plays, getting big hits.  It was weird, I tell you.

The 11-run third inning was enough to stop the music for the Dancing Brains, who were scoreless for the rest of the game.

Now, it would take longer than a Santa Monica lunch hour to list all of the good hits that our team had, so I will only list the home runs: "Shoeless" Joe Burton and Tim Lake each had two home runs, while Mike Stavrianos and Bruce Gottlieb each had one home run.

But if you ignore the big hits and the incredible fielding, you will soon realize that what really won the game was the mediocre pitching.  As pitcher, I was able to "psych out" each opposing batter with my skill-less lobs.  You know, you throw one behind the batter, you throw one six feet short, you throw one into the street, and pretty soon, you've got a batter that will swing at anything.  Intentional or not, I now claim that this was my strategy, and it worked.  But after five innings of this painstaking display, the Dancing Brains appeared ready to charge the pitcher's mound, and Shoeless Joe volunteered to pitch the last two innings, which he did quite well.

The game ended with a feel-good play befitting a Ron Howard film.  There was one out and one runner on first base.  Shoeless Joe, standing atop the pitcher's mound, turned to his shortstop, Mike Wu, and said sternly, "double play."  And a double play it was.  The batter hit the next pitch to Mike Wu, who threw the ball to Bruce Gottlieb at second base to get the first out, and then Bruce threw it to Jill Corcoran at first base for the game's final out.

So will this win streak continue, or will we return to business-as-usual? Well, the Republicans and Democrats are due to wake up any day now with a budget-bill hangover; August has just begun and the forecast is for a hot and humid week ahead; Marion Barry has proven in the past that there is not much that can stop him from being mayor; and next week we are scheduled to play the team from the National Parks and Recreation (Thursday, August 14, 6:00pm). Time will tell.

 -The Coaching Staff