Jeff Nolasco hits a grounder towards second, dashes to first and dives (or did he?) 10 feet short of the bag... Leslie Suntay gets his eyes soaked with mud while blocking a cricket-like bowled ball (curveball?)... Rajah Singh barrels (or collides?) into a fielder on the basepath... Middle-infielders charging bunted balls (or grounders?)... Passed balls (or fastballs?) zipping by the catcher... Vince Alimurung's glasses needing windshield wipers behind the plate... Bacchus Ledesma doing the infield version of the belly flop... Tossing American footballs with Tente Lazatin, Jeff Rodriguez, Sky Rosales, et.al in football (or baseball?) weather... Outfielders having their wheels removed from under them... Suntay later slides into first but overshoots it, but is declared safe when the firstbaseman can't get a glove on a perfect throw... Another day at the ballpark, ho-hum....

Heavy rains were no deterrent last Sunday as 34 Titans braved the weather in Marist Field, the second largest club gathering to date. That was more than enough to play the three-team format game where both sloppy fielding and baserunning was the order of the day.

Player-Attendance figures(2nd leg)
Jul 28... 33
Aug 4... 40
Aug 11... 8 (unofficial, camp day reset)
Aug 18... 21
Aug 25... 28
Sep 1... 30
Sep 8... 34
TOTAL 186 (194)

In essence, that's an average of 31 players/day. Definitely a good roll for adult baseball in the Philippine setting, one that should continually be built upon...

The forecast (see last issue) was on the dot. Clear then cloudy skies gave way to light rains by 9:40 am which brought about the first of two rain delays. The regular scheduled game was then started some 20 minutes later only to have the players come off the field a second time. Another few minutes later and with a bit of a let up, the general consensus then was to play on and play they did - under a continuous downpour throughout most of the day. It's a good thing we had invested in a few all-weather baseballs. But pitchers had trouble throwing strikes over the mud soaked plate and baserunners were inadvertently diving all over the place and overshooting the bag. Likewise for the fielders who were generally slow to the ball, which in many instances just died on the ground. It got so bad that by the last frame, homeplate was noted to be floating towards the pitcher's circle. There was a lake at home, an infield sea and an outfield river. As for the game at hand, well that didn't really matter but for the record, turned out to be a nail-biter. Nesty Leyson drives home the eventual winning run for the second straight weekend then Nino Tator strikes out the winning run with the tying run 90 feet away. Final score: 4-5-4.

The Winning Combination
Vince Alimurung 1-2, RBI
Joey Carillo 1-1
Jun Veloso 0-2
Nino Tator 1-2, R
Alvin Santos 0-1, R
Tente Lazatin 0-1
Nesty Leyson 2-2, R, 2 RBI
Joey Ramos 0-2, R
Eric Cuisia 1-2, R, 1 RBI

But all that didn't dampen the atmosphere that followed, of what turned out to be a TITANic barbecue held at the nearby clubhouse instead of the field as originally planned. Lets run down the menu:

Grilled pork liempo
Grilled chicken breasts, thighs and legs
Grilled hotdogs
Spaghetti with meat sauce
Puto-pao
Sapin-sapin
Rice
Coca-cola
Watever we missed we didn't get to taste

On behalf of all the Titans, THANK YOU for your contributions. It was well worth your while. Hats off as well to chefs Eric Gesmundo and RJ Manzano who personally manned the grills.

It was definitely a celebration for the ages given the circumstances.