In two closely contested games, the Dana All Stars took home back to back wins in dramatic fashion.

Here is Joe Juhasz’s writeup:

What a wonderful 4th of July day of senior softball in was in beautiful sunny San Diego. (2) teams: One from DANA the other from LA MESA. DANA, honoring the date, wore very patriotic jerseys. LA MESA must have been sponsored by the Chinese and wore red.

The 70+ was the first game. DANA started out with a bang. (7) batters and a quick (5) runs, now let’s see what LA MESA can do. They did nothing ! Next inning-nothing, 3rd inning-nothing. DAVE HUNT was doing his GREG MADDUX impression. In case you forgot, – MADDUX holds the MLB record of 70.1 innings in a row without a walk. For (3) innings, LA MESA did nothing. They even had a huge celebration. in the 4th inning when they finally scored their first run on a sacrifice fly. But after their 5-run 1st inning, DANA’s bats went silent, being shutout (3) of their next (4) at bats.

But one thing those good ol’ boys from east of I-15 and west of I-94 can do is hit. And for (2) innings, hit they did with (10) quick runs. After DANA’s ZERO for their (2) innings, LA MESA had a 10-8 lead. It was nip-and-tuck the rest of the way, with DANA holding a slim

14-13 lead going into the all-you-can-eat ninth. Damn … LA MESA scored 3 to take a 16-14 lead with DANA coming to bat in the bottom of the 9th needing 2-to-tie and 3-to-win. KENNY, STEWART and JERRY quickly get hits bringing RON to the plate with the winning run on first. RON had already done his job, getting singles and scoring the 5th run in both the 1st and 6th innings. You could hear the crowd wispering … “Could he do it again ?” Bing, bang, boom … RON wallops a double with the winning run scoring all the way from 1st.

• HITTERS-OF-THE-GAME *
  RON 3-for-4 with his Walk-Off Double
  KEN 4-for-4 with a Double and Home Run
  JERRY 4-for-4 with a Double
  DANN 3-for-3 with Double

Other than the success stories above, it was a tough game offensively for DANA. At the same time LA MESA was outhitting DANA, DANA was also making several more errors than LA MESA. How the heck does a team win that way ? Looking back at it, I think a ton of credit goes to FRED KAISER and
DAVE HUNT for the work they put into this team, especially those 2 practices with FRED emphasizing (with an emphasis on emphasizing) about cut-off throws and positioning ourselves properly, not throwing the ball around needlessly and things like that. To be honest, it felt a bit silly at the time. We’ve all been playing this stupid game for more years than we want to recall … and we’re expected to change in a couple of hours ? Well we did. We made errors like senior softball players do from time to time, BUT … we did not throw the ball around stupidly. When’s the last time you’ve
seen that at DANA ???

A big “THANK YOU” to FRED and DAVE and STEVE ROBINSON and JOHN CHURCH and ….. and the LA MESA team and everyone that made this such a huge success.
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If you thought the 70+ game was thrilling, the OPEN game was even more exciting. The mighty La Mesa hitters plated seven home runs, three of them after two outs in the first inning, and had a few more home runs that only counted as singles since they were already up by three over the Dana hitters. But aided by excellent defense, the Dana All Stars clawed back.

At the end of the 8th inning, the score was 30 to 29 in favor of La Mesa. A key running catch by second baseman John Concepcion helped keep La Mesa scoreless in the open inning. In Dana’s ninth, a single and two walks (La Mesa walked a total of ten batters in the game) was followed by two singles, producing the 31-30 win.

Player of the day was Ken Kowalsky, going a combined (both games) 11 for 11 with six home runs.

Overall, a good time was had by all and many thanks are owed to all who helped with the delicious BBQ.