Week 5: Here come the Phillies; watch out for those ageless Wonders

Doug Daragin of the Grays receives the throw from the catcher to thwart Senior Jacques in an attempted steal.

Wednesday's game: Phillies 14, Plug Uglies 10
Fresh off their first non-loss of the year, a 7-7 tie in week 4 vs. the Dorian Grays, the Phillies earned their first win of the season against the Plug Uglies. 'Earned' is the verb of choice because as the game report shows, they bloody worked for it. Do I need to remind anyone that these guys are the defending league champs?
The game report, compliments of Miracle Max Strubel:

Plugs jumped out to an 8-1 on Phillies starter Ken Sloat through 2 innings. Sloat settled in and allowed one more run in the 5th, while the Phillies added 2 in their half of the 4th inning. Trailing 9-3, the Phillies plated 8 runs in the 5th to take an 11-9 lead. Strubel pitched the final 2 innings, allowing 1 run in the 6th and the Phillies added 3 runs in their half. Strubel ended the game striking out complete game starter Jon Adolph in the 7th.

Thursday's game: Dorian Grays 2, Wonderboys 3.

Paraphrasing Dickins, this was the best of games; this was the worst of games.
The match-up between the Wonderboys and the Dorian Grays was an unusual pardox.
Both starters, Mike "Knuckles" Whately for the Grays and Chris "Cip" Cipela for the Wonders, were solid, each going the distance while confounding the batters along the way.
At the same time each was let down by their defense. All 5 runs - every one of them - were unearned. The ghost of Casey Stengel is shouting "Can anyone here play this game?" (Chill out, Case; remember, you're dead).
Cipiela went 7, getting like 12 million groundball outs with her dazzling mixture of fastballs, curves and changeups. Whately went 6, getting outs when he needed them in the hard-luck loss.
The Wonders were up 3-0 until the Grays put 2 on the board in the 6th. In the 7th, the Grays had runners on 1st & 3rd with one out but could not get the tying run home.

Next week

6-Jun	5:45 p.m.	weds	plugs	@ grays
7-Jun	5:45 p.m.	thur	wonderboys	@ phillies

The TNB+50 League wishes to convey its condolences to Dan Alvord and his teammates on the Wonderboys for the sudden passing of wife this week.

Standings