To Be The Best You Copy The Best

A Yawkey League-leading 1.01 team ERA.

A .949 fielding percentage, third best in the league.

16 wins, 0 losses.

It doesn’t take Albert Einstein or Johannes Kepler to determine which team these stats belong to. Do I even need to say it? For the purpose of this space, I have to. They belong to the Somerville Alibrandis.

On the other hand, take a peak at these stats…

A .320 team batting average, good for tops in the Yawkey League.

A 2.29 ERA, good enough for seventh in the league.

A .915 fielding percentage, good enough for (wince) fourth worst in the league

Those statistics add up to an overall record of 9-7, putting the McKay Club five points behind the Dan Tarpey Division-leading South End Astros. Those same Astros that won both match-ups against the McKay Club this year by a combined total of 16-1. Now South End holds the tie-breaker in the division. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves now, we have work to do before we start talking about tie-breakers and division crowns.

Tuesday night at Jim Rice Field in Roxbury, I watched the McKay Club wither up like a grape in the sun. We made four errors, but there may have one or two that were graciously uncounted. Unfortunately, we were participating in the game of the week and airing on the CN8 Channel. Fortunately, whether we lost 9-0, 9-8, or 17-3, it only counts as one game, and I for one have a short memory.

We can put this game behind us, forget about. Not only did we not play well, but we were very unlucky. I can count at least three balls that were driven directly into the plate against us, making routine groundballs infield singles for the opposing team. I can also remember balls hit by Jake Suoto, Brendan England, Dana Levensaler and Jackie Owens that, on any other night would have been base nits, some of them for extra bases have you.

But good or back luck aside, we deserved to lose that game. Actually, I think we had to lose that game. We made mental errors, we made physical errors, we played shi-, I mean crappy and you know what? That’s what we need. A wake-up call, myself included.

Since we won four straight games to improve the record to 8-4, every member of this team has watched our record fall to 9-7. That’s three losses in four games. We only play 34 games and every game is important. There aren’t any that you can just give away. To put it terms of a 162 season, this would be the equivalent of the Bo Sox losing 14 out of 19 games. Not good.

So what do we do to change our woeful ways? We run the bases smarter. We field more thoroughly. We cut down on the mental errors. But most importantly, we need to play as a cohesive unit.

As a group of guys, we’re pretty tight. We go to Tom English’s on a regular basis, have some beers, shoot the shit and for the most part, we enjoy each other’s company. But on the baseball diamond, we need to be more than a group of guys, we need to be a team. A team trusts one another. A team stays positive under even the most undesirable conditions. And a team should know how to win.

It all starts before the game. The preparation for a baseball game is almost as important as the game its self, just as Dave Treska, coach of the Somerville Alibradis told me. “We (The Alibrandis) have a pretty good pre-game routine that we use to get them all ready for the game.” This doesn’t just mean the four infielders taking two grounders each and lollygagging throws to first and second. This should mean a full nine practicing at about 80-85 percent before game time, assuring themselves that all the bases are covered and everyone knows where to be at exactly the right times. Timing and location are everything. Ask Dana, he’s a real estate guy.

Staying positive is another big part of being a successful baseball team. I don’t want to keep using Somerville as an example, but I will anyway (Hey, who else is a better example that those guys?). I only watch two Somerville games a year, and that’s when they play the McKay Club. I’ll tell you what, I’ve never heard any of those guys saying “this sucks” or “you need to do [this] better” or “this guy doesn’t have anything, we should be hitting the hell out of the ball.”

Those guys win games because they are always prepared to play, they stay alert and they are always positive. They don’t act negative on the bench. They stay loose, pick each other up and always seem to stay positive.

You might not want to hear it and it may well be the last thing you want to hear, but to be successful, you need to copy the best. We need to embody the Somerville ways and play smarter baseball. We need to be more prepared to take the field every night and we need to pick each other up, even in the hardest of times.

Other than that, we just need to win and have fun doing it. See you in Malden on Thursday with a new attitude.