Kloppers Knock-Out Skullcaps, Securing Playoff Position

This was it.

The entire softball season boiled down to this one Sunday morning matchup between the Daily Steals Kloppers and the AWS Skullcaps at Hamilton-Metz Field in Lefferts Park.

The win-and-in game itself took nearly a week and a half to commence from its intended late-August date, thanks in part to Irene and her extended family. But, alas, for the Skullcaps in this playoff-like atmosphere, all good things ended with a 5-3 defeat to the Kloppers.

“It was a good season,” said Skullcaps outfielder Yossi Cohen. “But we could have done better than we did.”

The excitement, nonetheless, began in pre-game warm-ups, when Kloppers star pitcher Moshe Vail felt a tweak in his neck as he was stretching near the infield.

“It felt similar to a stiff neck,” Vail explained after the game.

Had it gotten worse, Vail likely would have seen the showers early as had occurred early on in the season.

Both teams didn’t have to wait long to find out the extent of Vail’s injury as he came out firing from the first pitch. Although he did not record one strikeout during the game, Moshe deftly maneuvered his pitching speeds, wrecking havoc for the opposing batters as he allowed only three hits and one run through the first six innings.

“He (Vail) was picking his spots and getting the outs when he needed them,” said opposing third-baseman Yochonon Goldman.

Wanting to minimize the scoring opportunities for the Skullcaps after a questionable call – and nearly being thrown out of the game – by the umpire, Vail curtailed the damage caused by his opponents time and again by working fast to induce lazy fly balls and infield ground-outs to bail him out of precarious situations.

Taking the lead given to him by his teammates Moshe wiggled his way through the second through sixth innings, pitching his way out of jams in each of those stanzas without allowing a single run to cross home plate.

To back up their pitcher’s solid performance, the Kloppers capitalized on infield errors in the bottom of the second inning and added another score to their total tally in the home half of the third when Yankele Ezagui took a pitch to the farthest reaches of the ballpark, easily running around the base-paths for a stand-up inside-the-park home run.

After tacking on another insurance run in the bottom of the fifth, the stage was set for a Skullcaps comeback in the top of the seventh.

Playing with one out and a runner on second base, Nesanel Nerenberg brought a runner home with an infield hit and would later score on an Akiva Eisenberg’s single to cut the Kloppers lead to two.

Feeling the pressure of watching his team’s comfortable lead slip away, Vail willed himself to go on and provoked a season-ending fly-out by arguably the best ‘Caps hitter, Zevi Katz, propelling the Kloppers to the first playoff round, for a three-game series date versus The Tribe beginning Tuesday evening at St. John’s Recreational Field.

Indeed, for some, the show will go on!