The angle for this report is that yesterday's game against the Free Spirits
was a game of firsts for the Homers.  First of all (yes, that's a joke),
we won our first game as the visiting team, 18 to 10, i.e. we won without
the benefit of the fifth innning stretch.  Secondly, Rob Emery joined our 
team and crushed a home run in the second inning, and Jerry Rodriguez, 
Alex's kid brother, played for us as well.  Raul also got his first home
run of the season, also in the second.  What else?  We mercy-ruled our 
opponents for the first time all year, and we did it in a big way:  we 
mercy-ruled them in the third, fourth, fifth, and seventh innings, meaning 
that we were up by more than ten runs and had to give up an out during our 
half of each of those innings.  Team manager Raul said, "Winning don't mean
sh*t unless you got the other guys on their knees beggin' for mercy."<p>

Starting for the Homers yesterday were Raul at pitcher, Junior at catcher,
Chuck at first, Lela at second, Richard at short, Beth at third, Don in
left, Jeff in center, Jerry in right, and Debbie at rover.  Juan started
at catcher for the other team and rejoined us when they got enough players.
Joe and Rob started the game on the bench.  Alex is on the fifteen day
disabled list but did show up to spectate.  Besides Rob and Raul, Richard
got a home run in the first; the game ball ended up lopsided after this
tremendous punishment we delivered on the ball and had to be replaced around
the third inning.  Our defense improved a great deal as we only let one ball 
skip through us for a home run.  Jeff and Don made good catches in the 
outfield, and our infielders all played their positions very well.  Finally,
after the game we had a huge contingent go to Round Table for the fare of
champions, pepporoni pizza.<p>

Our next game is Thursday, July 18, against the Cosmic Debris on field H6 
again; that's the field with the unmarked basepaths at the northeast corner 
of the Rose Bowl, but at least it doesn't have killer sunshine.  Hey, we
may still have a losing record (4 wins, 6 losses), but we are undefeated
in the second half of the season.  One thing that we haven't done yet is to
win two games in a row.