The unbeaten streak is over, the undefeated season now only a dream, as the Patrick’s softball team suffered its first loss at the hands of the BP Cleveland team by a final score of 16-9.  Patrick’s committed a steady stream of fielding errors through out the game, and spread equally among all players. It started right away in the first inning when seven unearned runs crossed the plate and Patrick’s trailed for the remainder of the game.

Slumping second baseman Bill Arthur achieved an offensive rarity last week when he recorded two of the team’s three outs in a single inning.  This week, Arthur accomplished what no Patrick’s player has done in quite some time (maybe ever) when he struck out twice in one game.  All of this is following a 2007 season where Bill held a .662 “on base percentage,” which ranked him among the team leaders in batting statistics.  Bill, I don’t know if you’re superstitious . . .    but if you are, now would be a good time to start wearing a different hat, change your brand of deodorant, cut the sleeves off of your shirt (which has pretty much been proven not to work), start wearing your underwear inside out, anything!

Lance Berkman currently leads the Major Leagues in “Slugging Percentage” at .763 (total bases divided by at-bats).  First baseman Eric Madsen, who is coming off a down year last year has rebounded in dramatic fashion in that 6 of his 8 hits have been extra-base hits for an astronomical 1.727 slugging percentage!  I think we’ve found our number four batter in the line-up.

Last week, I gloated over the team’s inflated run production and in typical “Sports Illustrated Curse” fashion, our run production promptly dropped off.  Thus, there will be no key stat this week until we can once again prove that we know how to play softball.