Maria from tournament sponsor Mi Pueblito along with Jane, Kandy and Ellen, are ready to serve up lunch; photo by Pat Tiefenbach
Mark Foster; photo by Pat Tiefenbach
Jonathan Green
Sunshine and softball stars came out to warm and entertain hundreds of fans and to honor the memory of one of our good friends, Mark Foster, at yet another SaddleBrooke Senior Softball Association (SSSA) holiday tournament, Saturday, November 26 at SaddleBrooke Stadium.
They were all well fed, too!
Mark Foster passed away this fall, but courageously played in SSSA’s recreation league through September. He was a great competitor, SSSA board member, scorekeeper and a loveable guy. He is missed.
SSSA thanks Thanksgiving Tourney sponsor Mi Pueblito, a great Mexican restaurant and bakery on Arizona 77 in Mammoth, Arizona and, once again, Doug Wagers the Window Wizard who cooks hot dogs and brats on his Louisiana Cooker.
On The Field
Game 1 – Recreation League: Charlie Kennedy started the day with a double and scored for the blue shirt Sunshine Experts team managed by Jeff Rayner. So what? answered the Tri-Community Lock and Safe white shirts. Managed by Dale Norgard, they scored the maximum five in innings one and two and then three each in three and four to take an insurmountable 16 to 4 lead into the seventh inning. Greg Morgan hit a three-run homer in the second and lead-off hitter Fran Weinberg went 4/4 for the winners. Final score: 16 to 8.
Game 2 – Community/Coyote League: This one started out slow with Jim Smith’s The Charles Company blue shirts and Paul Butler’s white shirt Twin Lakes Air carrying only one run each into the third. Then white scored four in the third and blue got five in their fourth. White got five in the fifth and it was 11 to 7 going into the seventh and final inning. Blue’s first four seventh inning batters scored to tie it, but they couldn’t pull ahead. With runners in the corners and no outs, Ron Romac flied out to the outfield but Dennis Skoneczka tagged up from third for the winning walk-off, 12 to 11. Brad Adair and Larry Cusumano went 4/4 for the losers and Dave Diericks was 4/4 for the winners.
Game 3 – Competitive League: Len Gann’s Villas Assisted Living in blue vs. Ron Quarantino’s (a.k.a. “Q’s”) Vantage West Credit Union in white. Both plated five runs in the first and Gann put a two-run homer into the dog park. Q’s boys did five again in the second. White team’s left center fielder Alan Kravitz made a thrilling over the shoulder catch of a Don Jones line drive to end the blue’s second. Then white team third baseman Jones got payback next inning with a great snare of an otherwise sure extra-base-liner. White took a 14 to 11 lead into the sixth inning; blue tied it in the top of six and then white put up five more to make it 19 to 14 after six. Gann’s team had a strong answer; 13 players batted in the top of the seventh and nine of them scored to turn the lead around to blue 23 – white 19. A deflated white team had no answer back and it ended that way.