Although the year didn’t quite begin as well as team members had hoped, the Mercer Island Rockers managed to wrap their regular season with a three-game winning streak, thumping Seattle 27-8 in their finale last Tuesday, July 21 at Leo Lassen Field in Seattle.
The Rockers finished 9-2 in league play to win the ‘B’ division, the lower division of the coed softball league, which Mercer Island qualified for after a rough stretch in the seeding round to begin the season. Still, the 9-2 mark was second-best to only Maple Valley, the team Mercer Island lost to in last year’s tournament championship.
“The seeding round was frustrating because I don’t think we’re a Division II team,” Rocker head coach Alan Anderson said. “The main problem from my standpoint was because we had so many players, every game was almost a different lineup, so there was inconsistency on defense. On offense, we didn’t have a set 1-2-3-4 lineup because of different players being gone for vacation and those sorts of things. One thing I’m hoping to see at the tournament is if we put our 11 or 13 best players out there, I think we can play with Maple Valley. I think we’re a very good team if we have everybody there, but I won’t know until the end of the tournament.”
Offense wasn’t hard to come by for the Rockers this season, with Anderson calling his team “an offensive juggernaut.” The Rockers batted a whopping .759 as a team in their finale against Seattle. Terry Graham led the way, going 5-5 at the plate with a triple, while three other batters were a perfect 4-4.
For the season, the Rockers hit for a combined team average of .646, scoring 172 runs to lead the league. Ken Krekow led Mercer Island, going 16-17 at the plate for a .941 batting average. Larry Ransom and Lee Hochberg each remained above .800, with Ransom hitting .813 and Hochberg .806 with four home runs. Mercer Island’s women were equally impressive, with Graham batting .786 and Jackie Roberts boasting a .696 average at the plate.
From the mound, Mercer Island allowed the second-lowest number of opposing runs scored in their league behind the efforts of longtime pitcher John Weinberg and fellow hurler Gary Wiberg.
Mercer Island’s two losses came against Kent and Sumner, and Anderson expects to face a pool of teams that includes Kent, Bellevue and Maple Valley’s second coed team in the tournament. Each of those opponents beat Mercer Island at some point during the season, either during conference play or the seeding round. But Mercer Island’s coach hopes whatever early season struggles his team has faced have since been shaken off.
“It’s a situation where in the past, all these teams have beaten us, but we didn’t have the best team playing, so I’m really not too worried,” Anderson said. “I think with having all of our good players, we’re in pretty good shape for the tournament.”
