Richmond Strikes Again!

At the end of my post about the Richmond game, I warned the teams who will be playing Richmond in the future to bring their rule books to the park. I was right on the money. Today they tried to pull one over on the Master Batters.


Richmond was late again just as they were for our game. And the Master Batters let it slide, just as we did. Both games could have been ruled forfeits if it weren't for the generosity of the Master Batters and the PC Bricks. As always, I had my scorebook with me (actually, I had three scorebooks in my backpack) and upon seeing this, the MB's asked me if I would keep score of the game for them. Since I was going to do it anyway, I agreed.

The problems in this game started in the bottom of the first inning. The MB's scored four runs in the top of the first inning on a two-run double by Mae and a two-run homer by Anthony.

Richmond answered back with four runs in the bottom of the first but it appeared they were batting out of order by the end of the inning. Jerry batted eighth in Richmond's order and he drove in the tying run with a two-out single. The next batter due up was the ninth spot which was occupied by an absentee female. Raymond, the catcher was due up tenth. For some reason, the woman known as "Q," who bats first in Richmond's lineup, came up to bat after Jerry and she made the third out, leaving the score a 4-4 tie after one inning.

It wasn't yet clear to me why "Q" batted first and ninth in the first inning. I thought it might be something the MB's worked out with Richmond before the game. I advised the MB's manager, Paul Martin, that something didn't seem right about Richmond's batting order.

The MB's scored five more runs in the top of the second inning on an RBI grounder (fielder's choice) by Flo, a three-run homer by Ethan and a solo homer by Anthony. They held a 9-4 lead after 1-1/2 innings.

When Raymond, the tenth hitter came up to bat leading off the bottom of the second, I knew Richmond was definitely batting out of order and I reported it to Paul. Raymond grounded out to third and then "Q" came up for a third time! WTF? How can she bat twice before Raymond has batted once and then come up again a third time before anyone else on the team has batted twice? From that point, Richmond got back in order with Troy, Raz, Mark, Lilliana, and Jerry hitting safely and reducing the deficit to 9-8.

After Jerry batted, the absentee female's spot in the order came up again. Paul called time out to approach Richmond's dugout and make some sense of their dubious lineup. I tried to assist by showing them the scorebook but Richmond's first baseman, Raz, told me I was obviously too stupid to figure out how their lineup was arranged and called me an ignorant jackass before moving on to a verbal sparring match with Dawn Young. I don't know what her problem was but she certainly wasn't helping. I approached Jerry with the scorebook to show him where his team had batted out of order three times but he didn't seem too interested. He said if things were going to be like this, he didn't want to play. Next thing I saw, Richmond walked off the field and quit. To her credit, Raz came over to me and apologized for calling me names and she acknowledged her team had been batting out of order.

Where do we go with this team? If they want to play in our softball league, why can't they get ten players to the park and play? The City of Richmond has over 800 employees. If they have half a clue, they should be able to find ten people out of that large pool of employees to field a team. We formed seven teams from a pool of about 1,500 employees. Why can't they fill out a lineup card and then follow it? Why must they try to circumvent their own Recreation Department's co-ed softball rules? I don't envy Paul for having this mess dumped in his lap.