Sullivan County Womens Softball League

Logjam in Death Valley

Klein & Sons Logging roars past L&B Tack to snare last ‘A’ playoff spot

By RICHARD A. ROSS

MONGAUP VALLEY, NY - Sweltering heat caused Collins Park in Mongaup Valley to feel like Death Valley. With temperatures flirting with the century mark, L&B Tack nearly didn’t field the requisite nine players in a crucial game versus Klein & Sons Logging, which could send one of the two teams to the postseason.

Klein & Sons came out in force for the game and the team was clearly psyched at the prospect of garnering the final playoff spot in the ‘A’ division. With an ice chest full of water and lungs bursting with song, the ladies in blue and white took to the field in the blistering dustbowl.

From the get-go, it seemed that L&B Tack was content to just get the game over. Klein & Sons was playing like it was the seventh game of the World Series.

A win by L&B Tack would have thrust the two teams into a regular-season tie, requiring a playoff to determine who would go on to postseason. That eventuality was never realized.

Klein & Sons started out with two runs in the bottom of the first with RBI from Barbara Ward-Blank and Chris Basna, but the loggers did most of their damage in the bottom of the third when they scored 11 runs in an endless parade of batters.

Missing an outfielder against a team that knows how to hit the ball hard proved to be L&B Tack’s undoing. Klein & Sons sent 16 batters to the plate and RBI erupted from the bats of Chris Powers, Jane Smith, Cheryl Sheerer, Waddell, Basna, Erin Peck, Chris Lopez and Anna Puleo. Lopez and Sheerer had extra base hits, a triple and double respectively.

Klein & Sons finished the game in five innings by plating two more runs in the third and the final one in the bottom of the fifth as Hubert-Simon came home on an errant throw on a single by Smith.

The final score was 16-1 and it thrust Klein & Sons (13-6) into a first-round match up with undefeated Cooper Paint (19-0) on August 7. L&B Tack ended their season at 11-8. Last year, Tack faced Cooper Paint in the first round.