Team Tinker wins spring season championship Published June 3, 2010 By Brandice J. Armstrong Tinker Public Affairs TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. -- They are the champions. Team Tinker, the men's varsity slow-pitch softball team, wrapped their spring season May 26 and took home the first-place Boomer Sports Complex trophy. The evening began with uncertainty as a storm heading in from the west threatened thunder, lightning and pelting rain. Several players stood outside the Oklahoma City softball park fences, waiting for the storm to arrive or turn in a different direction. Others waited inside the gates with 30 Stones, the first opponent, and umpires on the field. With the threat of a Tinker-provoked forfeit looming, the entire team took their places on the field. Between bouts of a rainstorm, they played and beat both 30 Stones and TWP, making their final record 14-4. In game one, Thirty Stones held a 1-0 lead until the third inning. Then things changed. With Brent Nichols on third, Mike McCabe came up to bat. He hit a sacrifice fly to score Nichols and Tinker tied the score at 1-1. Tinker got two more runs and finished the inning with a 3-1 lead. In the fourth inning, 30 Stones scored another run. During the home half of the inning, Nichols hit a two-run home run to increase Tinker's lead to 5-2. Thirty Stones came right back in the fifth inning, scoring five runs. Tinker scored two in the bottom half of the inning, tying up the score at seven apiece. After 30 Stones added a lone run in the top of the sixth inning, Tinker scored three of their own. The highlight of the inning was a two-run shot off th bat of Eric "Ski" Szymanski. The score was 10-8 Tinker. Thirty Stones tried to tie the game up in the seventh, but fell short. Just before Tinker took to the field for game two, Charles Shumpert said to team, "Let's go win this and take first place." The team responded in a big way. After the first inning, Tinker lead TWP 8-1. TWP slowly caught up, trailing by just two runs, 12-10, by the third inning. In the fourth inning, Tinker scored six runs, increasing their lead to 18-10. "Play some 'D,' play some 'D,'" Mark Upchurch said to the team. And, they did. Going into the fifth inning, TWP scored one more run, but so did Tinker. Tinker took the game and the championship with the 19-11 win.