Game 3 vs Taos Solar Sox or Harvard beats Yale 29-29

For the first time since 1909, the football teams of Harvard and Yale were each undefeated with 6-0 records in their conference (8-0 overall) when they met for their season's final game on November 23, 1968 at Harvard Stadium. Led by their quarterback captain Brian Dowling, Yale was heavily favored to win and they quickly led the game 22–0. With two minutes remaining on the clock they still led 29–13.As the last seconds ticked down, Harvard, coached by John Yovicsin, tied the game, scoring 16 points in the final 42 seconds to tie Yale. The Harvard Crimson declared victory with a famous headline, "Harvard Beats Yale 29-29"

In a parallel universe ,your Long Island Athletics journeyed to Grand Canyon University to face the Taos Solar Sox. The resplendent Solar Sox were featuring red Caps and sox with a bright uniform pants and the feature of the ensemble was the bright yellow shirt with red lettering emphasising the sun with its lovely color scheme.
Uniforms aside this was a revamped Solar Sox team with players from all over the country ( perhaps drawn by the colorful uniforms) and jumped on us for an early 1-0 lead with a triple and infield out.

As the game evolved we played very poorly in the field consistently making throwing errors and similar to the in game report in Casey at the bat:

"It looked extremely rocky for the Athletics nine that day,
the score stood 3 to 6 with but an inning left to play
and when a sprinting Paul was out at Home and Marc did the same
a pallor wreathed upon the features of the patrons at the game"


As we prepare to hit in the bottom of the ninth we are disapointed to be down 3.
But we scrape a run out of a single and double and are still alive.
Now we are down two runs in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and
miraculously rapped out 3 straight hits to tie the score at 6

We go to the tenth relieved and envervated but they lead off with a triple to right and then get a single to go up 7-6. Steve Kunken who had gone the distance and threw about 15 innings worth of outs while giving up only 5 or 6 hits left the field to the applause of the Athletics who appreciated his valiant effort.His leadership rallied us through the darker innings and he held up after numeropus erros and just kept battling on the mound to get outs. We get through the top of the 10th inning with no further damage and begin our chance the bottom of the tenth.

We get the bases loaded with two outs and hit a ground ball to shortstop. Their shortstop has been good all day but pauses as he decides whether to go to second or first. He opts for first but double clutches his throw and it pulls the first baseman a bit off the bag and our runner is safe and we are tied after trailing all game. Our last hitter grounds to second and they get the third out. The game is then called a tie as it has reached the three hour time limit.

We leave the field elated at the tie as did the Harvard players in 1968 as we played so poorly for so long but did not give up. At the end we strung together a few base hits off their best pitcher-under two out game ending conditions . Our emotions have been whipsawed by the disappointment at our performance in the early to late game but thrilled by our ability to string together an offense at the end.
The tie leaves us 1-1-1 heading into the doubleheader wed.

However, the doubleheader does not go well for as we lose each game and will not make the playoffs. We have one game remaining and will make the most of it but we are disappointed not to be advancing . The truth is we have not played well enough to win and the baseball gods have enforced the meritocracy that baseball demands.










The socre