B League Picayune
Often in error, never in doubt.
Volume 7, Issue 31 – June 26, 2025
What a terrific day of B League action we had today – three excellent games, the awarding of raffle prizes, and a splendid luncheon. I’ve got more pictures than Gmail will let me attach to a single email, so will follow up this report with at least one picture-heavy addendum. On to the games, which were moved to Krieg 2 due to the muddy infield at Krieg 3…
Games of Thursday June 26:
10:30 a.m., Red (1-2) at Blue (0-2):
1 2 3 4 5 BUFFET FINAL Red 0 1 0 5 3 2 11 Blue 4 0 1 0 0 4 9 Pitchers: Red – Joe Bernal; Blue – Tommy Deleon. Mercenaries: Red – Henry R, Bobby Miller, and Paul Rubin; Blue – Tim Coles and Raul Deleon. Umpires: home – Jeff Stone and Tom Kelm; bases – Scott Wright. Perfect at the plate: Red – Gary Coyle (2 for 2 with a triple and a walk) and Paul Rubin (1 for 1 with a double and a walk).
Dave Berra’s weather report: 83 degrees, feels like 90. Humidity 77%. Wind from the South 5 MPH. Partly sunny – nice summer day.
After Tommy Deleon threw a masterful, scoreless top of the first inning – he gave up a lead-off single to Jack McDermott, then retired the next three batters, getting Jack Spellman to foul off a two-strike pitch that I realized too late was going to hit the front of the mat – Blue took the lead with four runs in the home half, its first five batters hitting safely, four singles and a double by Steve Sandall. (One of the singles was a ball that winged left-center fielder Bobby Miller on the knee, leaving stitch marks.) Those hits put three runs across, the fourth scoring on Rip Wright’s force-out grounder to shortstop. Joe Bernal got Joe Dayoc to hit into a 5-4 force and Adam Reddell to fly out to right field, a nice catch there by Henry Flores, making his 2025 B League debut.
Blue maintained the lead through the third inning, Tommy Deleon holding Red to one run in the second (Gary Coyle led off with a triple and scored on Dale Fugate’s double; Tommy retired the next three batters) and none in the third, while Joe Bernal blanked Blue in the second (1-2-3 inning) and gave up one run on three singles in the third.
Red broke through and took the lead in the top of the fourth, scoring five runs on two doubles (Jack Spellman and Rolando Rodriguez), a walk (Gary Coyle), a sacrifice fly (Anthony Galindo), and three singles, all but the first run scored after two were out. Singles by Adam Reddell and Raul Deleon put runners on first and second with one out in the bottom half with the top of the order due up, but Joe Bernal got Jim Foelker to pop out to shortstop and Steve Sandall to line out to second baseman Donald Drummer, who made a terrific, leaping backhanded grab of what looked like a sure hit off the bat.
Red increased its lead to 9-5 with three runs in the top of the fifth. Tommy Deleon retired the first two batters, but the next five hit safely: Paul Rubin doubled to left field, then scored on Jack McDermott’s single up the middle. Jack Spellman doubled to right-center, putting runners on second and third. Anthony Galindo doubled in both the Jacks. Joe Bernal followed with a single to left field; the third-base coach and everyone on Red’s bench told Anthony to try for home, but he was cut down 7-2, Steve Sandall making a very good throw home to catcher Joe Dayoc – Red was hoping third baseman Adam Reddell would cut off the throw, but he smartly did not, and Anthony was out by a step and a half. It was a good send with two out and Red up by four, hat tip to Steve for an excellent throw.
Joe Bernal then retired Blue in order in the home half. Joe fell behind in the count 3-1 on Tom Brownfield, but wound up getting Tom to hit a two-strike foul, and then got both Daniel Baladez and Tommy Deleon to ground back to the box. After Blue’s first five batters of the game knocked hits, Joe retired 15 of the next 20.
Four of Red’s first five batters singled in the top of the buffet, two runs scoring. After Gary Coyle (completing a perfect day at the plate) and Dale Fugate led off with hits, Adam Reddell made a good play on Jim McAnelly’s hard grounder down the third-base side, forcing out the lead runner. Rolando Rodriguez and Donald Drummer followed with run-scoring hits. The inning ended with Tom Brownfield and Tim Coles turning a very nice 4-6-3 double play on Henry Flores’s hard grounder.
Blue was chasing six to tie in the home half, and they came out hitting, loading the bases on singles by Rip Wright, Joe Dayoc, and Adam Reddell. Tim Coles unloaded them with a triple on a drive to the fence in center field. Raul Deleon ripped a hard grounder up the middle, but was robbed of a hit by Donald Drummer, who was shading him that way and made a terrific catch to his backhand and a strong throw to first for the out, Tim scoring on the play. That cut Red’s lead to two runs. Joe Bernal got Jim Foelker to hit a short pop that Joe caught for the second out. Steve Sandall ripped a double, which brought the potential tying run up in Tom Brownfield. Tom made a bid for a long drive, but got just a bit under it and skied it to left-center, where Bobby Miller hauled it in for the final out. Final score: Red 11, Blue 9, Red defeating Blue for the first time this season, after three losses.
11:30 a.m., Maroon (2-1) at Orange (1-2):
1 2 3 4 BUFFET FINAL Maroon 0 0 0 1 3 4 Orange 2 2 5 2 X 11 Pitchers: Maroon – Jeff Stone; Orange – Ray Pilgrim. Mercenaries: Maroon – Jack McDermott; Orange – Ray Pilgrim. Umpires: home – Gary Coyle; bases – Jim McAnelly. Perfect at the plate: Maroon – Scott Wright (2 for 2 with a walk); Orange – Ken Mockler (3 for 3 with three doubles), Terry O'Brien (3 for 3 with a home run), and Boo Resnick (3 for 3). Home run: Terry O'Brien (inside the park) (2).
Weather report: 85 degrees, felt like 93, humidity 65% (plenty sticky), wind from the SSE at 4 MPH (not enough), mostly sunny.
I’m starting to wonder if Ray Pilgrim met a shady fellow at the crossroads and made some sort of deal, because his (Ray’s, not Mr. Scratch’s) pitching of late has been next level. He shut out Maroon’s very solid lineup over the first three innings, starting a 1-6-3 double play (David Brown on the pivot) to end the top of the first, and working around two singles and stranding runners at third base in each of the second and third. Maroon finally got on the board with a single run in the fourth inning: lead-off singles by Scott Wright and Jeff Stone, returning from injury, put runners at the corners, and Scott scored on Don Solberg’s 4-6 force out to Terry O’Brien. David Brown made a good play to his backhand on Tom Kelm’s grounder to the 5-6 hole, and his strong throw forced out Don at second. Ivan Budiselic followed with a single, but Ray got out of the inning thanks to Clint Fletcher, who made a good play on Steve Hamlett’s hard grounder down the third-base side and stepped on third base for the third out.
That one run cut Orange’s lead to 9-1. They had scored two runs in the first, on Terry O’Brien’s inside-the-park home run to center field and Ken Mockler’s RBI double, which scored Peter Atkins from first, and two more in the second, on four consecutive singles after Jeff Stone had retired the first two batters. (Jeff was helped by good defensive plays by Tony Garcia, who moved to his left to field David Brown’s grounder up the middle and threw to first for the third out in the first inning, a bang-bang play; and by Ken Brown in right-center, who went back to haul in Terry Thompson’s deep drive leading off the second.)
Terry O’Brien receives a Pluckers coupon from Marvin Krabbenhoft after his inside-the-park home run in the bottom of the first, Terry’s second of the season.
The game’s biggest offensive outburst was by Orange in the bottom of the third, five runs on seven hits, including back-to-back run-scoring doubles by Ken Mockler and David Brown. Clint Fletcher and Terry O’Brien capped the rally with two-out RBI singles.
Orange increased its lead to 11-1 with a pair of runs in the bottom of the fourth, Ray Pilgrim and Ken Mockler knocking doubles and scoring, Ray’s pinch-runner on Ken’s two-bagger, Ken on David Brown’s single.
Maroon entered the buffet trailing by ten and finally began to generate some offense, five of its first six batters reaching base, on four singles and a walk drawn by Scott Wright. Ray Pilgrim got on out on a ball hit by Bobby Miller, a hard grounder that second baseman Terry O’Brien made a good play on, moving to his right, getting a force at second. Tony Garcia hit a ball down the third-base side that Gary Coyle called foul, after initial confusion. Given a second chance, Tony knocked a clean single to right field to drive in Jack McDermott. Scott Wright walked and Jeff Stone singled, Bobby scoring. Don Solberg, batting right-handed, hit a deep fly to left-center, caught by Steve Sandall, Tony tagging up an scoring. Tom Kelm hit a hard grounder to third base, handled by Clint Fletcher, who threw to second for the game-ending force. Final score: Orange 11, Maroon 4
12:30 p.m., Purple (2-0) at Green (0-2):
1 2 3 4 5 BUFFET FINAL Purple 1 3 0 0 0 1 5 Green 0 2 3 0 5 X 10 Pitchers: Purple – Ray Pilgrim; Green – Greg Lloyd. Mercenaries: Purple – Gary Coyle, Jim Foelker, Ray Pilgrim, and Don Solberg; Green – Jack Spellman and Morgan Witthoft. Umpires: home – Terry Thompson; bases – Dave Brown. Perfect at the plate: Green – Greg Lloyd (3 for 3), Jack Spellman (3 for 3 with a double), Phil Stanch (2 for 2 with a walk), and Chunky Wright (2 for 2 with a double and a walk). Home run: Gary Coyle (inside the park) (1).
Dave Berra’s weather report: 87 degrees, feels like 95. Humidity 63%. Partly sunny. Wind from the SSE 4 MPH.
A good pitchers’ duel over the first four innings. Purple jumped out on top, scoring a single run in the top of the first – Matt Levitt led off the game with a single, took second on Rick Jensen’s base on balls, advanced to third on Fritz Hensel’s fly to Buddy Gaswint in left-center, and scored on Mark Hernandez’s single – and holding Green scoreless in the bottom half, Ray “Crossroads” Pilgrim retiring the side in order.
Purple made it 4-0 with three runs in the second, the first two on Gary Coyle’s inside-the-park home run, a drive to the fence in center, that also drove in Jim Foelker, who’d doubled. Matt Levitt followed with another single, and again scored, coming around after Rick Jensen singled and Green threw the ball around a bit.
Green got on the board in the bottom half. A single by Greg Lloyd and walks to Phil Stanch and Chunky Wright loaded the bases, and Greg and Phil scored on Jack Spellman’s two-out double to right-center.
Greg Lloyd then found his groove, shutting out Purple in the third, fourth, and fifth. He started a 1-6-3 double play, nice pivot by Ralph Villela, and faced only three batters in the third, then retired the side in order, I think on three pitches, in the fourth, three balls in the air – flies to Buddy Gaswint in left-center and Morgan Witthoft in right-center, and a pop to shortstop Ralph Villela. He walked Rick Jensen and Fritz Hensel to start the fifth, but got Mark Hernandez to hit a grounder to third base that resulted in a 5u., 5-4 double play. Tim Coles singled, but Greg got Larry Young to pop to second baseman Doc Hobar to end the inning.
Meanwhile, Green had taken the lead with three runs in the bottom of the third on five singles and Mike Garrison’s sacrifice fly to Don Solberg in left field, a very hard line drive that Don was perfectly positioned to catch.
Green didn’t score in the fourth, so it was still 5-4 entering the bottom of the fifth. Green broke through in that frame. Mike Garrison, snakebit today, squared up a pitch and lined it down the third-base side, directly at Gary Coyle, who practiced admirable self-preservation and caught it for the first out. Buddy Gaswint drove a pitch to left-center that Don Solberg couldn’t get to; it got past Don to the fence, and Buddy wound up at third with a triple. He scored on Greg Lloyd’s single. Phil Stanch also singled, and Chunky Wright knocked a double to center field, Greg scoring. (Greg, Phil, and Chunky were a combined 7 for 7 with two walks in this game.) Ray Pilgrim got Billy Hill to hit a two-strike pitch just foul down the third-base side for the second out. Jack Spellman’s grounder to the right of second base managed to get past second baseman Rick Jensen – I’m pretty sure Rick got a bit of glove on the ball – and both Phil and Chunky scored. Singles by Morgan Witthoft and Ralph Villela brought Spellman around with the fifth run.
Green led 10-4 entering the buffet. Ray Pilgrim ripped a double to the fence in left-center to start the inning, and a walk to Don Solberg (who took the first two pitches batting right-handed and the third batting lefty) and a single by Jim Foelker loaded the bases. Gary Coyle walked, forcing in Ray’s pinch-runner. That meant the tying run was now at the plate. But Greg Lloyd got Matt Levitt to line out to shortstop Ralph Villela for the first out, the runners all staying put. Rick Jensen came up and lined a ball back to the box; Greg made a good play to snag it, and snapped a throw to first – Gary Coyle hadn’t taken more than a step off the base, but couldn’t reverse course in time to get back before Chunky Wright caught the ball to double him up and end the game. It was the third double play turned by Green over the final four innings. Final score: Green 10, Purple 5
Session 3 standings:
| Session 3 | Games | Runs | Runs | Runs dif- | W/L | |||
| Wins | Losses | Win %: | behind: | for: | allowed: | ferential: | streak: | |
| Gray | 3 | 0 | 1.000 | 0 | 41 | 24 | 17 | W3 |
| Purple | 2 | 1 | .667 | 1 | 32 | 24 | 8 | L1 |
| Orange | 2 | 2 | .500 | 1.5 | 42 | 32 | 10 | W1 |
| Red | 2 | 2 | .500 | 1.5 | 44 | 50 | -6 | W1 |
| Maroon | 2 | 2 | .500 | 1.5 | 34 | 51 | -17 | L1 |
| Green | 1 | 2 | .333 | 2 | 28 | 29 | -1 | W1 |
| Blue | 0 | 3 | .000 | 3 | 27 | 38 | -11 | L4 |
| Home | Visitor | Walk-off | Extra-inning | Flip-flop | 1-run games | |||
| W-L: | W-L: | wins | W-L: | W-L: | W-L: | |||
| Gray | 1-0 | 2-0 | 0 | 0-0 | 2-0 | 1-0 | ||
| Purple | 2-0 | 0-1 | 1 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 1-0 | ||
| Orange | 1-1 | 1-1 | 0 | 0-0 | 1-0 | 0-2 | ||
| Red | 0-2 | 2-0 | 0 | 0-0 | 1-2 | 0-0 | ||
| Maroon | 2-0 | 0-2 | 1 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 2-0 | ||
| Green | 1-1 | 0-1 | 0 | 0-0 | 0-1 | 0-1 | ||
| Blue | 0-1 | 0-2 | 0 | 0-0 | 0-1 | 0-1 |
2025 total victories (read across) and losses (read down):
| Blue | Gray | Green | Maroon | Orange | Purple | Red | TOTAL | |
| Blue | X | 1 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 15 |
| Gray | 3 | X | 1 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 12 |
| Green | 1 | 2 | X | 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 13 |
| Maroon | 2 | 4 | 3 | X | 2 | 2 | 1 | 14 |
| Orange | 1 | 3 | 1 | 2 | X | 2 | 2 | 11 |
| Purple | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 | X | 2 | 13 |
| Red | 1 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 2 | X | 12 |
| TOTAL: | 11 | 13 | 12 | 14 | 14 | 12 | 14 | 90 |
2025 season home run leaders:
Tim Coles – 4
Tommy Gillis – 4
Bobby Miller – 4
George Brindley – 3
Anthony Galindo – 3
Jack Spellman – 3
David Brown – 2
Tim Bruton – 2
Larry Fiorentino – 2
Mike Garrison – 2
Doc Hobar – 2
Rex Horvath – 2
Matt Levitt – 2
Terry O’Brien – 2
George Romo – 2
Pat Scott – 2
Peter Atkins – 1
Tom Bellavia – 1
Gary Coyle – 1
Donald Drummer – 1
Tony Garcia – 1
Buddy Gaswint – 1
Mike Malay – 1
Ken Mockler – 1
Ray Pilgrim – 1
Jimmy Sneed – 1
Jeff Stone – 1
Mike Velaney – 1
Ralph Villela – 1
Chris Waddell – 1
Chunky Wright – 1
Scott Wright – 1
Hit for the cycle:
Scott Wright – June 5
Schedule for Monday June 30:
10:30 a.m.: Blue (0-3) at Green (1-2), Gray umpiring
11:30 a.m.: Gray (3-0) at Purple (2-1), Blue umpiring
12:30 p.m.: Red (1-2) at Maroon (2-2), Purple umpiring
Orange has the bye, with priority for its players out of the bucket.
Preview: Purple can climb into a tie for first by defeating Gray at 11:30. The other two games don’t have a team over .500 for the session, everyone’s just trying to get some traction. These will be the only games next week, as we’re off next Thursday for the long Fourth of July weekend. Will I have a photo dump for you of pictures of my time at the Jeff Bezos wedding? One thing is certain: only time will tell.
Keggy’s Korner:
Terry Thompson checks in:
ASSL, you guys are awesome! Anthony Galindo, Paul Rubin, Jack Spellman and I just met with Central Texas Food Bank to contribute the ASSL Raffle proceeds to them, and they were very appreciative of your donations.
Overall, your donations amounted to $1,330. But get this: your donations are being 4x matched resulting in an overall donation to CTFB of $5,320. And that’s very important to many kids in Texas now that Summer is here as they don’t have access to the free breakfast and lunch they count on during the school year. Hunger becomes a bigger issue.
But the good news is, as CTFB advised, each $1,000 donated can provide 4,000 meals to those kids. And your donation along with the 4 sponsors ($5,320) will result in 21,280 meals being provided to Texas kids this Summer.
Many thanks, guys, for your kind generosity. You are awesome!
Best – Terry Thompson
I do appreciate a big-ass check.
The winners of the Central Texas Food Bank raffle received their prizes today:
First-prize winner Jack McDermott received from Bobby Miller a Short Porch bat…
…and second-prize winner Steve Hamlett received from Beebe Sports a new set of cleats, a jersey, a tote bag, and this nifty cap.
Short Porch bats and Beebe shoes were on display, with Tim Coles and Joe Bernal purchasing demonstration cleats that were fortuitously in their sizes.
We’re very, very grateful to Short Porch and Beebe for their support of this worthy fund-raiser.
After the day’s games, Billy Hill (who gets all the credit) and Shane and Rachael Hill (who did all the work), treated us to a wonderful luncheon. I’ll have pictures from that in a follow-up email.
Hey, Arctic Blues Band, with Johnny Lee and Morgan Witthoft, will be at Mr. Catfish this coming Monday June 30 from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m.