Dave Rosengard's "View From The Mound"

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Dave
Rosengard's
View
From
The
Mound"

REVIEW OF THE 2000 SEASON

When I look back on the 2000 Season, I think first and foremost of the sound of Hecksher Field with the music from the Carousel and the "ping" of the bat meeting the ball.

The season began 3/25/00 at Savell's Conference center in Croton with lunch and awards. First game date was a rainout and the first game on 4/23/00 was against the Spitfires with us winning. On 4/30/00 we played as we have done for18 seasons. We played over 50 games this season; I don't know the exact number, but Balento played 46 games and he must have missed some. We had 121 people play in the league down from 130 in 1999. We had newcomers from hearing about the game from the Website and for the first year we were able to see all the stats each week on the Website and we had several writers pen columns about the games.

Memorable moments were a lot of come-from-behind victories, some blowouts, some close games and some great defense. I remember some catches in Dobbs: Derek Martinez's catch in Left in the small Dobbs field and Phil Kotik's catch in Center in the larger Dobbs field.

We had 14 pitchers in the league up from 12 in 1999 and we had one pitcher, Gil Schmerler, go 6-0. Larry Savell lead the league in batting all season and closed out with a record-breaking .623 average, eclipsing the long-standing mark of .620 held by Bill Weinberg.

A small number of people keep everything going: Rich Inserro with stats, Tony Connor and Havelock Hewes with making up the teams each week, Linda scoring each week, this writer doing the "View From The Mound," Larry Savell posting everything on the Website and e-mailing info to all, and Bobby Narjano with the equipment and knowledge of the rules (and the willingness, on rare occasions, to offer his comments on matters of potential interest).

This year we had enough players each week so people seem dedicated. Balento led the league with most at-bats, hits, RBIs, and HRs but had 10 more losses than wins (17-27). Savell had the highest BA and OBA, was second in SLOB to Dan Schneider, and was third in hits, HRs, and RBIs, but was 4 games under .500 (12-16). Some other leading hitters had similar losing records (Kotik -5, D'Alessio -4, Martinez -4, Gerber -3, Schneider -3). I would think the guys with high RBI, HR, and BA would have a higher W-L record. I was talking to Larry about this and he believes this phenomenon may be due in part to the process of creating and attempting to balance out teams. Maybe we should discuss this at the Winter Meeting.

I enjoyed writing the column this year and I remember on 6/25/00 winning 15-1 against Havelock. In that game I had a shutout through 5-2/3 innings with a runner on third and Havelock at bat. Havelock beat out a grounder to third that went through the third baseman but was backed up by Tovar at Short who fired to first but Havelock beat it out and spoiled the shutout. It made me remember a game in the 1980's when Havelock and I faced each other pitching and in the 6 inning with Havelock going 6 2/3 without giving up a hit (maybe even a perfect game that day in Riverside Park). I got the hit after Havelock had retired 17 in a row, probably a record for our League.

Some day soon another season will start.

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