Monthly Archive
for: ‘July, 2013’

So once all the dust settled and we actually reached the Lollapalooza break… the League is in pretty good shape with just the one Week 5 rain out to make up… that leaves us 2/3 of the way through our season with 5 games still to play starting about a month from now.

This week we had game days on Tuesday as well as Thursday and many great games got played… The Reservoir Dogz maintained their streak and hit the break winners of 9 in a row… Clune Construction held serve as well remaining just 1 game back of the 1 seed… Power Construction, Old Stylin’ and Cannon Design all also won a couple this week moving themselves upward on the Leaderboard… As it stands the Leaderboard is pretty well-spaced offering many possibilities for teams to move up or down once we resume… interestingly, pretty much 1/3 of the field is at .500 and poised to rise or fall, however it may turn out.

Moving forward, let me tell you what I know… there’s two possible scenarios… the one we all hope for is that Upper Hutchinson emerges from Lollapalooza unscathed, the Park District releases it back to public use sooner rather than later and we finish out our remaining schedule right where we started it. The second scenario is that like last year we move to South Field at Lincoln Park for at least a pair of double-header nights and that becomes how the season is concluded. As far as what the dates would be for those games, that’s still up in the air as we have to wait until the Summer Leagues already playing in Lincoln Park conclude. If they end up not losing many dates to rain, then they will finish earlier and we could be on as early as August 15th… but if the move to LP becomes a reality, I would push for those dates to happen as late as possible so that the span of time between our last regular season game and our 09/28 Tournament Day was as short as possible. That would probably work out as 08/29 and 09/05… beyond that, Fall Leagues start at LP so there would no longer be diamonds for us.

Many of you have inquired as well about the scheduling of those double-header nights as to what the chances are that games could be as close together as possible… be aware that the scheduling as it now appears on the web has NOT been worked on yet… so I would definitely be going over those trying to get as many of you back-to-back games as possible… although I’ll say now that it won’t always be possible just due to the specific match-ups that are left to be played, but I’ll do my best on that front…

So all for now… feel free to shoot me an email if there’s a question I haven’t answered here… have a great break and we’ll see you on the other side.

I don’t think that anyone would argue that weather and atmosphere-wise, yesterday was our best day of Design League softball yet this season… The Taste adds to the congestion a bit, but it’s always fun to play that Thursday as Upper Hutchinson feels a lot like a softball oasis.

On the fields it was an eventful day with a lot of movement on the Leaderboard… the day started with three 6-1 teams, but finished with just one 7-1 team as the Dogz were able to knock off Cannon Design 9-4 in a game that was tight until the 6th when the Dogz broke it open… VOA dropped a tight one to Power Construction 6-5 while Clune Construction came back full force to route the Ruder Group 13-3 and vault themselves into the 2nd seed.

In other games, SCB showed what they’re capable of beating the Dobbins Group in a tight 8-7 win… interestingly, 4 of Dobbins Group’s last 5 games have been 1-run decisions… tough on the nerves… JC Anderson ended their short losing streak while continuing Old Stylin’s with an 8-3 victory there… and Skender Construction needed extra innings but got the job done with an 8-7 victory over theBuzz in 8… The leagues most prolific offense is currently VOA with 105 runs scored…. while the leagues stingiest defense is the Reservoir Dogz having only allowed 24 to cross the plate with the season now halfway through.

Believe it or not… ALL pictures have been taken and posted with still two games to go before the Lollapalooza break… this is easily an all-time record and I thank ALL of you for your cooperation… if you’re unhappy with the turnout you had on your picture day… there’s more than enough time to get a re-take done… just let me know you’re interested in doing that.

And last, next week is a busy week for the Design League as we have games on both Tuesday, 07/16 on Lower Hutchinson as well as our usual game day on Thursday, 06/18… this will be a bit tricky for some of your teams I’m sure… but let’s roll with the punches and get these games in the books without forfeits… we’ve done great with the lack of forfeits so far this season and I’d love to keep it that way as we cruise into the Lollapalooza break… assuming no weather issues next week, that’ll leave us with just Week 5 still to get made up after the break and that should be no problem at all… which is great, ’cause it was looking dicey there for a while…

The post-Lolla schedule at either Lincoln Park or if we get lucky, Grant Park… is a work in progress. Lincoln Park is unable to firmly commit to much yet as they won’t know the exact situation until they see how many rain outs they have that’ll need to be made up… but the dates we’ll probably have for sure are 08/29 and 09/05… with the strong possibility that we could start as soon as 08/15 or 08/22… and of course I’m still holding out hope that a Lollapalooza that’s rain-free would allow us to finish up our season on Upper Hutchinson and skip Lincoln Park entirely as I know we’d all like to do… we’ll see.. just know that it’s being monitored and worked on.

All for now, have great weekends.