“I don’t have to tell you that the one constant through all the years has been baseball.” — Shoeless Joe / Field of Dreams
The Brookwood vs. Lassiter series was some of the most exciting baseball we have ever played (watched.) We all travelled over to Cobb County to face the number one team in the state hoping for a split that would force a third game. The underdog Brookwood Broncos had a lot of ups and downs throughout the season, but something magical happened in the series. The entire team played near flawless baseball and won the first game. Lassiter was stunned, and the Broncos were determined.
These photos are from the win after the first game. The scoreboard shows the Broncos dominating in hits, winning 5 to 2. They had zero errors to Lassiter’s 3 errors. Elliot pitched an amazing game. You can see Tim yelling with excitement as the team headed into the dugout to change for the next game. You can see the look of determination on Danny’s face who knew he was likely to be pitching.
The Broncos were determined to win the second game. Matt started off well with his typical unhittable movement. But the Lassiter team figured him out in inning three, and they quickly racked up 6 runs. Danny was brought in to put down a hitting addiction. The first batter knocked one out to make the score 7 to 1, but that was the end of Lassiter’s hitting. As Coach Howard would later say, “It was Light’s Out Lassiter.” Coach Albury signalled for the secret knuckle ball, and in his words: “That first one was wicked.” Lassiter just couldn’t hit Danny, and the Broncos fought back but ended up with a 7 to 5 loss.
That set up for the third game, which was no less exciting and came down to the last pitch of the last inning with Broncos on third and second threatening to win. It could have gone either way, but Lassiter’s home field luck won them the series with a 6 to 5 win. If you added up all the hits and runs for the series, Brookwood out scored, and hit, and under errored Lassiter.
Memories from the series:
Danny’s “wicked” knuckle ball made 5 appearances and could not be hit. Danny was the only pitcher to develop a knuckle ball because he could, as pitching Coach Albury explained, switch his mechanics and come back with a fast ball or curve right after the knuckle ball. Most pitchers cannot do that.
Danny had an inning-ending pick-off at third base. He saw the huge lead on his first pitch, and he hoped Coach Albury would call for the pick off. Sure enough, he did, and Danny didn’t even look over to third, knowing the kid would be leading off too far. The throw over nailed him.
Coach Albury, Danny, and a couple of the other pitchers figured out Lassiter’s signs and used it against them by yelling the batter’s name for one kind of pitch and number for another kind of pitch. Lassiter realized this after a couple of innings, so they started using two coaches to signal the pitches. I did not realize all of this was going on, but I did point out to Kathy how strange it looked to see two coaches signalling side-by-side. Danny said, “It was easy to figure out which one was the real signal because the catcher would quit looking when one stopped and the other kept signalling.”
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