A CORKER OF A FINISH

There were a whole lot of things that had to happen wrong for us on Tuesday night to miss out on the playoffs. Most of those options involved backing into the final postseason slot because South Philly Tap would tame the Zoo, eliminating the only reasonable team with a chance to catch us. The rest of them involved the Art Museum, which was mathematically alive but needed to not only beat us, but beat us by at least seven runs.

The best option was to simply win the game in front of us and clinch it ourselves. Incredibly enough, we took that option with a crisp, efficient 7-1 win over the Arties. This was accomplished 15 minutes before they shook hands over there on Dairy 4, so we not only made the playoffs, we avoided the dreaded back-in.

For the second straight season, we will face the Franklin Institute in the opening one-and-done round of the playoffs. This would be a nice game to win, so very nice.

But before we get to that, let's get back to Tuesday and the complete game win twirled by Chris Yasiejko. Just twelve scattered hits in seven innings for Art, and zero for extra bases. Toss in an acrobatic rules-be-damned putout at the plate on a strike from left field by George Miller and you do have a complete game. Behind Chris was great defense, no stupid throws, no dropped balls, smart decisions. Brian Donlen and Julie Dubin particularly strong up the middle of the infield.

Offensively, we should have scored more, but got impatient at times. The game was a slim 3-1 lead for us after five innings. We scored our first four batters in the sixth inning to give Chris some breathing room and he faced just eight batters in the final two innings.

Tom Hickey had two hits and started the sixth-inning rally with a triple. George Miller was 3-for-3, all line drives, and he knocked in a pair of runs. Brian Donlen had two hits, and Mark Nevins had two RBIs on a triple that almost ended with Nevins being thrown out at home.

We only had 14 hits, and that won't be enough next week. But let's deal with that next week. For now, let's enjoy this week. If you like the pictures you see here, visit the user-friendly site where you can find this team's photographic blog history for the past two seasons.