Silver City, N.M., Senior Softball Tournament B Division Champions! SaddleBrooke Rattlers, left to right,
top row: Sam Alkhoury, Charlie LaNeve, Paul Massara, Greg Stroud, Mark Adolph, Peter Romeo, and Ed Clark; bottom row: Barry Emmons, Debbie Seguin (Team Manager), Morlin Hastings, Brand Eigen, Steve Jackson, and Loren Halverson
Morlin Hastings, SBR Softball Player
The SaddleBrooke (SB) Rattlers of the SaddleBrooke Senior Softball Association (SSSA) traveled to Silver City, N. M., and came away with a championship! The SB Rattlers started the tournament strong with a victory over One More 19-4. In the second game the SB Rattlers fell to the hot–hitting Chicano Cubs 26-12. The SB Rattlers rebounded nicely with two tough wins over the Firebirds 11-8 and a nail biter over the Sun City Rockets 8-7. The SB Rattlers finished the first two days of seeding games with a record of 3-1, earning them the No. 2 seed going into Sunday’s “win or go home” playoff games.
The SB Rattlers’ first game in the playoffs was against the Firebirds. The Firebirds jumped out to an early 6-3 lead after two innings, but the SB Rattlers’ pitching and defense shut them down the rest of the game. The SB Rattlers moved onto the championship with an 11-6 victory.
The championship game was a rematch against the No. 1 seed Chicano Cubs, who had soundly beaten the SB Rattlers the day before. The Cubs started out strong, scoring 20 runs in the first 4 innings, but the SB Rattlers kept it close scoring 15 runs. In the 5th inning the SB Rattlers held the Cubs scoreless and answered with 5 runs in the bottom of the inning to tie the game at 20-20. In the 6th inning the Cubs were held to 1 run and the SB Rattlers scored 3 to take the lead 23-21 going into the 7th inning. The Cubs weren’t going down with a fight. They started the inning off with a single and double. A sacrifice fly to right field scored a run. The next batter grounded to the pitcher (Emmons) for the second out, but now the tying run was at third with the Cubs’ home run hitter coming up to bat (he had already hit two HRs in this game). The batter hit a towering flyball to left center field where it was caught for the third and final out.
Clark (1-1) and Emmons (4-0) shared the pitching duties for the tournament. This was Emmons’ first time pitching in tournament play.
The SB Rattlers had four players bat over .700 (Stroud .867, Romeo .778, Hastings .733, and Jackson .706). Massara had the team’s only HR while also adding 4 triples to finish with a 1.874 OPS, second to Stroud’s 2.067 OPS.