In a week filled with headline news, (ie: 1. The debate over the national debt and the looming crash of our economic system, 2. The Phillies emptying out their farm system to acquire Hunter Pence, 3) The Eagles shocking signing of Nnamdi What's His Face), the biggest story of the week was The South Philly Taproom 2 game sweep over the Franklin Institute to capture the 2011 Center City Softball League Championship!!! It was a true team effort, with everyone on the squad contributing in one way or another. We'll touch on that point a bit later, but in the meantime, the story of how this championship season came together needs to be told.
We'll start in the 1960's, when Coach Al's parent's first gazed into each other eyes and said.......Actually....that story will take to long. Let's flash forward to April of 2011.
SPTR was coming off yet another disappointing season after losing in the first round of the 2010 playoffs to Bishops Collar. Morale was at an all time low, and several long time team members were seriously thinking about leaving the team to focus their passion on other hobbies like Modern Dance and Coed Synchronized Swimming (which will be an Olympic Sport in 2024). Ultimately, everyone decided to give it another try. With re-focused energy, The Taproom came into the season with high expectations and with a Single Goal: Dethrone the reigning 5 time champion Franklin Institute. After 3 games, achieving that goal seemed highly unlikely. The Taproom dropped 2 of its first 3, losing to two of the better teams in the league (Art and Franklin). The Franklin game was such a beat down the notorious Franklin Force Blogger titled his weekly entry "The Spankening". (The infamous blog entry also spiraled into a politically malicious war of words that somehow reached the conclusion that the SPTR squad was somehow involved in the Kennedy assassination.)
The early season Franklin loss forced Coach Al to re-evaluate the squad and make some changes. The first and most important change was to get rid of the putrid mesh uniforms that lived through 5 years of futility. The new 'old school' Phillies Powder blue T's seem to do the trick. (despite the fact that we turned into walking billboards). Another big change was moving Rookie Aaron Goldfarb to the top of the batting order. Aaron's speed and overall lankiness proved valuable in the leadoff spot. Kudos to Coach Al for that unselfish move, which indirectly knocked him down to the 9 hole in the lineup. The last big change was the insertion of John Benson into the starting pitching rotation. What was originally thought of as a joke on a night that Swede couldn't make it, turned out to be huge competitive advantage for the Taproom in the 2nd half of the season and into the playoffs. Benson fields the position very well, and seemed to have a detailed scouting report on all of the top players in the league. (For instance, some of Franklin's better hitters don't like it when you talk bad about their Mothers during their backswing......and they prefer high arc pitches, middle in.)
These changes sparked SPTR to several strong efforts against some of the top teams in the league. We squeaked past P&P in two games that could have gone in P&P's favor with a few breaks here or there. We also swept the Collar and lived through a few weeks where it seemed like every game was rained out. Before we knew it, it was late June and we were looking at back to back games against Art and the Franklin that would have major playoff ramifications. We knew going into that week that we would be short handed for those two games. (how dare Jeremy go to Italy with his family during the season...what is he thinking!). Despite missing Jeremy and Brian W, the Taproom was able to squeak past the Art in a tightly fought one run game, and scored a convincing win against the Franklin. All of a sudden, SPTR was 8-2 and in first place. We swept the last 4 games against PTM and the Zoo to finish 12-2 and win the regular season title for the 2nd year in a row.
Part Deux of the Season Recap coming next week.
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