Our Mens Team

To keep the Mountain Ranch Mens Softball Team in good shape for the coming season we called Sonora to see if we could play in their spring season.  We thought this would be just the thing to get our team all tuned up.

Sonora said, “Sure, come over”, and they would teach the hillbilly Mountain Ranch how to play softball.  So Sam Smith the manager and coach took Alberts’ Hitmen to Sonora.

So Alberts’ Hitmen, the Mountain Ranch slow pitch softball team, travels 46 miles to Sonora, CA, to play in Standard Parks Spring Rec League every Thursday night.  The Hitmen started out this league undefeated until they faced “Make a Mends” who gave Hitmen their first loss, winning by one run, making Hitmen 5-1.  The Hitmen went on to face “Maynard’s” the next Thursday getting beat by 8 runs which gave them their first real upset.  This gave both teams a 7-2 record going into playoffs.  When the record is the same going into playoffs it is down to counting runs to decide seeding.  Maynard’s came out with 7 more runs, making then the 1st seed team and Hitmen 2nd seed.

June 12th marked the day for the playoffs for this Spring League and Championship game to follow.  1st seed to play 4th seed, and 2nd seed to play 3rd.  Hitmen were to face SVP at 6:30 to be the first playoff game of the night.  SVP was forced to forfeit because Standard Park rule is each team has 10 min. after original game to take the field, so lack of players by set time caused a forfeit.  Therefore, the Hitmen moved on to the championship slot with an 8-2 record.

Maynard’s and Hitmen started this championship game battling from the very first inning trading leads throughout the first half of this game.  Each team is allotted 7 home runs per game, and both teams hit 4 of the 7, until the Hitmen cam out banging in the 5th inning, blowing out 15 runs, going through their line-up twice, giving them the biggest lead of the game.  The Hitmen are able to hold down Maynard’s, maintaining an 8 run lead to win the championship and making this game 2 hours long.  This was an intense game filled with skill, dedication and competition from both teams.  With a high scoring game like this you can tell winning the championship
didn’t come very easily for the Hitmen.