2010 season has marked the end for one Verdasys Softball player’s career. Bhavani Vankineni has announced that she has retired from the game. According to an inside source, Bhavani felt she was injury prone and did not want to risk getting reinjured. Bhavani ended the 2010 season with a back injury suffered during Game 5e.

And despite the onset of winter, the 2010 season continues for one Verdasys Softball team member. Coach Wolan will be playing in his third league this 2010 season after joining the BSSC Indoor Co-Ed Softball League in Danvers. As a walk-on player, he joined a team of other walk-ons named “The Indies #1”, a name assigned by the league and not the creation of one Coach Wolan. Furthermore, the team elected Coach Wolan to lead the team during their 2010 winter season.

Since the writing staff has disbanded, we will provide limited coverage of this team either on this website or on a sister website.

The writing staff has announced that the 2010 season has been their last. Effective immediately, the writing staff (Andrew Wolan) will be retiring from the sports writing business to pursue other interests. The news comes as no surprise after the team stated the staff was contemplating retirement during a pre-season press conference.

“Being associated with a high quality company requires that our content be top notch” said Wolan. “But lately it has become increasingly more difficult to remain at that caliber. We thought about toning things down, but we feared the quality would suffer too much. We felt we would rather have one last good season of reporting than several crummy seasons, even if the final season we covered was not very interesting in itself.”

“And so with that, we have decided to shutdown our operations. We would like to thank our fans for supporting us through-out the years, and give a big thank you to all the individual contributors who helped make our content the best it could be.”

The writing staff was originally formed in 2004 to help promote the “Avengers” co-ed softball team. Since then the quality of the site has continually improved and has become a world-class production. The writing staff has covered A-WOL and his “traveling circus” for the past seven years. During that time, A-WOL has played with 6 different teams in a total of 5 different leagues. Recently, the writing staff hit a milestone of writing their 100th game summary.

There is no word about whether the photography core or the team statistician will follow suit and retire.

A most curious image was brought to our attention today.

On specially marked 12-pack boxes of Diet Dr. Pepper© is a promotion for the bottler's “Million Dollar Tuition Giveaway”. Found in the graphics are three college-age students, all of whom are wearing red and white attire. The gentleman in the rear of the photo is wearing a sports jersey that looks exactly like the Verdasys Softball team jersey.

Did Dr. Pepper© intentionally use a Verdasys Softball jersey in their advertising? Or is this a matter of the two parties simply going to the same clothing supplier? A comparison of the jersey between the ad and that worn by Coach A-WOL are shown on the right.

We asked the team and the Verdasys legal department to comment. All declined to comment on this story.

We’ll post more information on this story as it develops.

Dr. Pepper© and Diet Dr. Pepper© are registered trademarks of “Dr Pepper Snapple Group”. Verdasys© is a registered trademark of Verdasys Inc. We hear Andy was touched by a trademark many years ago …

Teams stats*:

Record:	0-7 (0-1 post-season)
Forfeits:	3 / 0
Team batting avg:	0.544
Runs per at-bat:	0.262
Runs scored:	51 / 107
Double plays:	0 / 2
Outs at home plate:	1 / 1 (Both occured at G5s)
1-2-3 innings:	1 / 2

* (Made by Verdasys / Made by opponents faced)

Batting stats**:

Most Games Att:	Eno (6), Theo E. (5)
Most Hits:	Eno / Theo E. (13)	Colby (9)
Most Runs:	Pete V. (8), A-WOL / Theo E. (6)	Colby (6)
Most RBIs:	Pete V. (10), Theo E. (8)	Colby (4), Kristen S. (2)
Most SACs:	Ryan G. (2)	Bhavani (2), Justine (1)
Most Doubles:	Pete V. (4), A-WOL / Ryan G. (3)	Colby (2)
Triples Club:	Colby / Joe (Tuffs) / Ryan G. / Shelby / Theo E. (1)
HR Club:	Ryan G. (2), Pete V. (1)
Season-long hit streak:	Theo E. (5) (5 game min.) Note: Eno's was snapped in his 6th game of the season.

** (Men - Women)

Miscellaneous stats:
Number of words written for website: 27,500
Number of photos taken and processed: 140
Number of photos with A-WOL standing in the dug-out: 3

Verdasys Softball's hopes and dreams of a league championship were dashed today, as the team's post season run came to a premature end, following an unusual agreement.

As has been the trouble for most of the season, the team struggled to assemble enough players that could commit to their playoff game. But the team would catch some luck as a stubborn low-pressure system soaked the area with rain, causing the playoff game to be postponed.

Under normal circumstances, such an announcement would be a big break for the team. However, these are unusual times. Coach Wolan knew the team would have trouble rounding up players for the make-up game and he knew that it would be wrong to agree to a make-up game in which the team could not commit. But with the team scarred by two forfeits, the only prize the team was fighting for was to avoid a third forfeit and to prevent being expelled from the 2011 season.

After Coach Wolan communicated his team’s situation to the commissioner, the two agreed to give Verdasys a “forfeit” while allowing Verdasys to play again in 2011. This situation gives Milestones the win, while preventing the league from having to reschedule this contest or the “Up To Date vs. Mass Medical” contest.

“Look on the bright-side” said Coach Wolan. “We forfeited a postponed game, which means we just invented a new way of losing! How many teams can say that?!?”

As for the remainder of the Middlebrook Division “Consolation Playoffs”, “Up To Date” would beat “Mass Medical” to advice to the finals against “Milestones”. However, the M’s had to forfeit the match-up because most of the team’s players were on vacation that week. Thus, “Up To Date” is the “Consolation Playoffs” champions.

As for the “Season” or “Championship Playoffs”, Tufts and Thermo Fisher beat RPG and Inverness Medical respectively to advance to the finals. TF would win the match-up to claim the Middlebrook Division “Championship Playoffs” crown.

As reported before the start of the season, the writing staff of Verdasys Softball.com was hoping to reach a major writing milestone by the end of this season. Well today the staff is proud to announce that they have reached this milestone by publishing their 100th game summary!

This writing milestone took 7 years to accomplish, spanning from the 2004 season through 2010. The game summaries themselves followed the on-field antics of “A-WOL and this traveling circus” as he played on several teams across Massachusetts and in Wilmington, DE. Along the way, the writing staff reported on the gauntlet of issues that a team could ever face, ranging from rain postponements, to bitter rivalries, to bitter calls, to umpless games, to close games and to some really not-so-close games.

And which game received the dubious honor of being number 100? Why it was Game 6p, the game in which the opponents protested a forfeit. “It wasn’t the sexiest game we ever covered, but it was memorable.”

To learn more about the history of the writing staff and to review a list of their top 10 moments during that 100-game span, check out the “Game Summary #100 Milestone” article on the site.

As the season comes to a close, the league’s teams set their sights on the playoffs. Today, the commissioner has announced the structure of the playoffs, along with each team's seed. The play-off structure will be the same as years past: The top 4 teams in each division will play in the “Divisional Tournament” while the remaining teams will play in the “Consolation Tournament”. (Or, as Aleksey so affectionately calls it, “The Losers Tournament.”) The tournament is single elimination.

Despite a 0-6 season, Verdasys does qualify for “Consolation Tournament” as the #8 seed. The team’s first tournament game will be a rematch of the team's most recent regular-season contest against 3-4 Milestones. This game will be held on Wednesday Aug 25th. (Rain date Monday Aug 30th.) If the team wins this semi-final show-down, then it’s off to the finals against the winner of Up To Date vs. Mass Medical Society. Date for championship game is tentatively set for Wednesday Sept 1.

To view an image of the Middlebrook Division Consolation Tournament playoff bracket, click on the image at the right or click here instead. Fans can catch every Verdasys Softball playoff game on TV38-WSBK.

Important Note: the Milestone vs. Verdasys game has precedence over the UTD vs MMS contest. In other words, if Verdasys' game is rained-out, then their make-up game will occur on the 30th, pushing the UTD vs. MMS game from Aug 30. to Sept. 1.

Game 6 ended with Mass Medical Society agreeing to take a 9-0 loss instead of a forfeit, after their team appeared with just 5 players. Raju, the MMS team skipper, later contested the agreement with the commissioner; Raju stated that he “wasn’t aware of the agreement” and claimed that the MMS win in the scrimmage match were the official results. He later petitioned the commissioner to have the game declared as a “double forfeit,” claiming that Verdasys did not have enough players themselves.

Today, the commissioner made her final ruling on the matter and declared the match-up a double forfeit. “Neither team could field the legal number of players including women in the batting order, the official decision has to be a forfeit for both teams.” According to league rules a team consists of at least ten players, three of them being women. Since neither team had the correct number of people, both teams had to forfeit.

While Coach Wolan said he agreed with the decision, he was not pleased with MMS’s conduct. “I’m not sure what makes me more upset: a team claiming a scrimmage game win as official or a team backpedaling on an agreement.”

The decision denies the Verdasys team their only win of the season, giving them a record of 0-7 for the season. In a press release, the Verdasys team stated that because of MMS’s conduct throughout the ordeal, the Verdasys team will not acknowledge the loss to MMS and will not log it internally or on our website.

For detailed information about this ordeal, and for more comments from the team, please view Game 6p Summary (Protested Results).

The #2 seed 356er’s have been eliminated from the DuPont Summer Co-Ed Softball League Tournament as they fall to the #1 Brewmasters 8-7 in Round 4. (Bye, win, loss, loss)

The 356er’s got to work early to take an early lead. Their defense helped keep Brewmasters off the board, limiting them to just 2 runs over four innings. This included a great heads-up play at the plate to catch a base runner trying to take home behind the 356er’s back.

Top of five and down 6-2, the Brewmasters took advantage of some miscues by the 356er’s defense and rallied. When it was over, the team had scored six times to take an 8-6 lead. The score remained that way through the sixth.

In the seventh, the Brewmasters blew a potential scoring opportunity to end the inning following a terrific defense play by the 356er’s. After Anthony caught a fly ball in center field, the base runner on second tagged-up and tried to advance to third. But Anthony riffled the ball the Scott Ellis at third, who got the ball and applied the tag in time for the out.

Down by two runs and at their last at-bats, the 356er’s would start things out with a lead-off triple by Scott. He would then score on a sac fly to make it 8-7. But that would be all the scoring that team would get as K.O. hit an infield fly ball to end the game, and the team’s 2010 season.

This wasn’t the only one-run game of the day. Three other playoff games played that afternoon were settled by just one run.

“I can't remember a playoffs in this league where nearly all the games have been competitive like this year” commented league commissioner Howard Jones.

Other scores from the league:
Winner's bracket:
Pioneer 7, Incognito 6

Loser's bracket: (All losing teams are eliminated)
Outlaws 18, Odd Balls 14 (completion of suspended game)
DuET 11, Outlaws 10
Brewmasters 8, 356ers 7
Brewmasters 7, DuET 6

Verdasys Softball got a taste of their own medicine today, as they collected their first win of 2010. In a season haunted by roster issues, the team overcame their problems to participate in a game that has historically been competitive and exciting.

However, not everyone from their competition, Mass Medical Society, was as eager to play. At game time only 5 players from MMS had showed up, forcing the team to consider what Verdasys had to consider many times this season: forfeit.

Recognizing that past competitors had given Verdasys the courtesy of taking a 9-0 loss instead of a forfeit, the team felt it would only be fair to give MMS the same opportunity. After presenting the offer MMS agreed to take the loss, thus handing Verdasys their first win of the season.

“With the way this season has been going, we’ll take whatever break we can get” said Coach Wolan. The win secures the coach’s record of never ending a season winless.

After the agreement was reached, the two teams played a brief scrimmage game before calling it a day.

Per league regulation, the Verdasys Softball organization has released an injury report on several of its players.

Dante Dacayanan will be out for the season after pulling a muscle in the lower back and a hamstring. It is reported that the injury was suffered after chasing a pop-up while talking on a mobile phone at the same time. Don Muldoon claims Dante is pulling a “Manny Ramirez” and is faking the injury so he can spend more time in the office. Dante denies those allegations.

Ajeet Bhoyar (right) is also expected to be out for the season following an injury suffered during practice. While chasing in infield flair, Ajeet collided with the support post of a fence. He injured his wrist in the process and is expected to miss the remainder of the season.

Elliott Eno should be ok after spraining his ankle. The injury came prior to Game 5 while training for the premier soccer league in Europe. Though he requested to take the game off to heal the injury, Elliott was able to participate in Game 5. His participation in Game 6 is not definite, but his injury is expected to have healed by Game 7.

Alexei “Ivan the Terrible” Kvasov will be out for the season after injuring his wrist. He is believed to have injured his wrist at the batting cage after trying to hit too many balls back at the pitching machine so he could destroy it.

Bhavani Vankineni is expected to be out for the remainder of the season as a pre-caution. She reports having a sore back after nearly outrunning two force-outs at first in Game 5e. However, an inside source says she may have injured her back while making a leaping catch of a bad throw to the plate during practice.

Don Muldoon is expected to be out for the rest of the season as well after coming down with a severe case of “pre-season football training camp” fever. He is expected to recover by relaxing in the sun while watching the New England Patriots practice at Gillett Stadium. As for why Don missed the first 5 games of the season, Dante claims that Don caught a flu known as "W1-MP". Don denies those allegations.

Steven Bergstein is day-to-day after pulling a hamstring. The injury occurred while running to first in Game 4. He hopes to make a full recovery in time to the playoffs.

In addition, the team is reporting the following roster moves:

Darrell Teague (right), a popular first baseman of Verdasys Softball, has signed a deal with the “Trout Slappers”, a Finnish softball team. As a result, Darrell will be leaving the team.

The most anticipated new player, Ankitha Garapat, will not be playing with the team this season after contract negotiations between the team and her agent have broken down. Avi Potluri, who uses the same agent, is reporting contract negotiation issues as well and is expected to be out until his contract issues are resolved.

Stella has signed a 3-year deal with the Boston Lobsters Pro Tennis Team and will not be returning.

Lisa Austin, a new player signed during the off season, is not expected to play this season due to an undisclosed conflict with “Mike Ditka”.

Despite all the negative roster moves, the team does have positive roster moves to announce. The team has announced the signing of the following players: Kristen Sinitski, Pete Vallieres, Jenna, Justine and Shelby. There is also word that “Mike Ditka’s wife” is in negotiations to not only join the team, but to assume the role of team co-manager.

The 356er’s secured the #2 spot in the league this afternoon as they cruised to a 18-3 win over DuET. This end-of-season make-up game held more significance to the 356er’s as the outcome would determine not only their spot in the league standing, but their spot in the playoffs.

With the win, the team improves to 19-3, leading to a second place tie with Pioneer. Since the 356er’s won both games against Pioneer, the 356er’s claim the #2 seed per tie-breaker rules.

The team’s first playoff game will be held on Tuesday Aug. 3rd after the team enjoys a “bye-round” for earning a top-4 seed.

Feeling the heat of their hallway rivals, Racepoint Group (RPG) has quietly rolled out a team website of their own. Nicknamed “Rolling Thunder” after a company marketing term, the new site features game summaries and a few in-game photos of the team’s past contests. Also included is a summary of their recent contest against Verdasys where RPG claimed the title of “South Pod Supremacy” for 2010. But don’t expect the team to be modest about their recent win. In fact, Rolling Thunder rolled out some smack in their article. Below is a quote:

“I straight up don’t like them,” said Ben Haber. “It started a few years ago when they beat us in a close game. As payback, I would take all the napkins downstairs if I saw a Verdasys employee. The frustration on their faces when they realized they couldn’t clean themselves during a meal was priceless! Now that we’ve beaten them horribly I can just smile and politely say hello.”

After reviewing their site, the writing staff for VerdsysSoftball.com had a few comments to share.

“I’m glad to see some competition” said lead writer Andrew Wolan. “Their site looks great and it appears that they put a lot of time and effort into it. They’re obviously off to a good start.”

But the staff had a little smack of their own. “However, their site lacks stats, scorebooks, post-game analysis, has far too few in-game action shots, and various other elements found on ours. They also posted the first 4 game summaries in a span of 3 days, which makes me wonder if they would still have a site if they were losing… like us.”

“But I think the kicker is that they don’t have a link back to our site. Booo!”

The new Racepoint website can be found here:
http://ja-jp.facebook.com/notes.php?id=55860819547

Note: in case the article about their game against Verdasys is removed, a copy can be found under the "Articles" section of the site.

It appears that A-WOL’s facemask look is gaining popular. Team slugger Don Muldoon brought to the club house’s attention the following photograph, stating “Andy – is your maiden name Cory Abeling?“

(Click here to access the photo set on Cincinnati.Com. Refer to photo #4.)

Wolan commented that he was “Glad to see that the A-WOL facemask look is finally catching on in popularity.”

Apparently, A-WOL introduced the “facemask look” to the regional co-ed softball leagues back in 2006. Its introduction followed an incident where a colleague got drilled in the forehead trying to field a grounder that had taken a bad hop off of the pitching rubber. Since then, A-WOL has been seen using the Gameface(c) protective mask when pitching or umpiring. (Refer to the following links.)

• http://softball2006.emulationzone.org/games/game_07/media/DSCF0274_s.JPG
• http://softball2007.emulationzone.org/gamedata/media/game_04/DSCF1430_s.JPG

The Verdasys Softball team starts the 2010 season much like how it ended the 2009: with a forfeit. With the start of the Fourth of July holiday a mere day away, coupled with pressures at the office, the team apparently had things other than softball on their minds. As a result, the team was only able to commit 5 players for game day, forcing Coach Wolan to call a forfeit.

“I am frustrated” said Wolan “[because] we were playing a new team, and it was a game we had a chance at winning”.

The forfeit is the second forfeit in a row for the team, after the coach was forced to forfeit a 2009 playoff game, which was the team’s final game that season. It is also coach’s second forfeit ever as head coach.

Chestnut Run Park in Wilmington, DE saw its last games ever this afternoon, and what a memorable final games they were! Two of the league’s best teams, the 356er’s and Pioneer, squared off in a farewell doubleheader. Game 1 was all Pioneer in the early going as the 356er’s quickly found themselves in a 15-run deficit in the fourth. Needing at least a run to keep the game alive, the team refused to go down by the mercy rule and fought to push the game into the fifth, scoring the necessary solo run.

Perhaps Pioneer became complacent with their lead, but whatever their reason, the 356er’s would fight back and scored 11 in the fifth to put the mercy rule back on the shelf. The team would then score 6 in the sixth to put a win in reach. Finally, down by 6 in the seventh, the team would score 7 to steal a win from the jaws of defeat to win 28-27. (Game time: 1:45)

In the final inning of Game 2, Pioneer found themselves in a similar position. Needing 11 runs to win, Pioneer would rally. However, they were only able to score 8 as the 356er’s won the game to sweep the farewell doubleheader. The two teams then held a farewell party.

Starting tomorrow, the field will become the site of a new office park development project. (Photos of demolition.)

Ready or not, here they come!

Verdasys, Inc. has announced that their softball team, Verdasys Softball, will participate in the 2010 summer softball season. As was the case in the 2008 and 2009 seasons, the team will play in the Waltham Recreational Co-Ed Softball League (WRCS) in Waltham, MA. This will be the team’s third season in the league.

The team also announced that the pretentious Andrew Wolan (AKA “A-WOL”) will once again take on the role as team manager. Wolan, who led the team to a 2-6-1 record last season, (including a draw in the playoffs), has agreed to coach the team again this season after agreeing to a one year extension during the off-season. This will be Wolan’s third season as the Verdasys Softball team manager, and the fifth of his career. The team also reported that Wolan will be juggling time between them and the 365er’s softball team in Delaware.

In addition, the team also announced that the critically acclaimed “writing staff” and its photography core will return to cover the team in 2010. This will be the staff’s third season covering Verdasys Softball, and their seventh year of coverage of a softball team overall. A listing of the staff’s previous work can be found under the Softball Stories section of the site. Over the past two seasons, this staff was credited for creating “one of the best softball team websites on the Internet” whose coverage “is the envy of even some minor league teams.”

With the news comes some bad news. During a press conference this afternoon, both the writing staff and Coach Wolan announced that they may retire following the end of the season. In addition, locally renowned sports photographer Richard Moffitt has announced that due to being in heavy demand he will only be able to cover a few games, if that. Finally, the co-manager position on the team is vacant. The team was tight-lipped about its plans in to fill the vacancy.

A transcript of the "Q&A" press conference held with Wolan following this announcement can be found here.