Cut Me Some Slack by Havelock Hewes

  Sometimes one or two players cast dispersions my way during a game and I don't get a chance to respond.  Among those today was that I had myself pitch a second game when Dave Rosengard had still not pitched.  In making teams with twenty-seven players and also managing one team there are many factors I consider.  After the second game we had a number of players leaving.  I looked around and saw who was packing up and asked some players if they were leaving and made teams out of the remaining players.  I missed a couple of players who were urinating or buying a drink.  It looked to me like Bob Holzwasser was staying and I put him on one team as shortstop.  I made Ian Parfrey the other shortsop. When Matt Mishkin, the other manager, pointed  out  that Bob had left and his team had no shortstop, I gave him Ian because we had Sam Magnus who could play short and it was my mistake to not make sure Bob was staying.   In retrospect this was a mistake because it made Mishkin's team too strong.  I also made sure that each team had a pitcher who had not pitched yet. Fred Melendez and Dave Rosengard were on Matt's team.  However, Dave had told me "I don't know if I want to pitch today."  Zach Nilva was the pitcher on my team. However, after I made the teams Zach told me "I don't want to pitch today."  At the same time several players were successfully lobbying me to make the third game a five-inning game because they were pressed for time.  Perhaps I should have gone to Dave and urged him to pitch and made a trade for him, but I was concerned that we were not starting in a timely matter and also dealing with including a couple of players who I had missed and needed to include on a roster.  I decided to have Jeff Appell and I split the pitching.

Glen Lawrence waiting in the dugout to bat - in Turkey