The season is now coming down to the home stretch with only two games left which are the rescheduled rainouts. Each division leader solidified their hold on first place with wins as the rest of the league is now reduced to playing for the year-end charity tournament seedings. National Division leaders Hampton Air East continued the impressive season turn-around as they improved to 11-3 with a 22-6 thumping over Bethpage PT (4-10). The victory secured at a minimum third seed in the tournament to go along with last week's win securing first place, Hampton Air East has re-emerged as a force in the league. Joe Auer seems to be Air's man of the hour lately as his hot hitting continues as demonstrated by another home run against PT, but not all the glory goes to the offense as team sponsor Jerry Sutherland played a terrific game at short, turning in big plays to end PT's scoring threats. The real story of the night though goes to Tim Jones. Tim showed up late covered in what he said was calamine lotion (?), belted two home runs and drove in six RBIs. Someone did take a sample of the supposed calamine lotion to see if any steroids are present. PT made a valiant effort to stay with the Air's big bats but was unable to keep pace as Air scored in all but two innings. Hampton broke open the game with an eight-run fourth but PT rallied in their half on two-out hits by Mike Muscara, Mike Anzalone along with two fielding miscues. Bob Concessi then shocked the Hampton outfielders by popping one over their heads for a three-run homer, slicing the big Hampton lead to 11-6, which as it turned out was PT's last hurrah. Another National Division game had Changing Times edging out M&T 14-11 in a game cut short due to the weather (lightning). CT had the good fortune to pull ahead in the bottom of the fifth thereby making it an official game, which improved their record to 8-6 and a solid hold on second place. M&T fell to 4-10. On the American Division side, Granny O'Sheas continued their good run as they run-ruled Bar Boy. The O'Shea's hot hitting lineup had Bill Manny, Walter Hasemann and Mike Hadnagy leading the way. Being the top of the order they set the stage as they accounted for 12 hits and 13 runs scored. The highlight of the game came in the fourth as the entire lineup produced led by Gary Innes, Al Celeste, Bob Meyers and Bruce Kubart as they had four hits, three walks and six runs scored. Special note goes to visiting dignitary Jim Reilly who had two hits, two runs scored and a RBI. The big game though was the rematch between Synergy and Barco for first place. Barco had hoped to avenge their only loss but to no avail as Synergy demonstrated again why they have the league's best record, winning 14-6. Synergy came up big at the plate when needed and sparkled in the field. With Richie Dargie, who looks like Tommy John after surgery, keeping Barco's big guns relatively quiet and the DP combination of Billy Fitzpatrick and rookie Aldo Balducci turning three DPs, they crushed what scoring opportunities Barco had. Offensively, the big bat for Synergy was Tommy Vanasco with two three-run home runs. Also with a three-run homer was rookie Bob Huebner. Coming up big at the plate were Bob Cruickshank with four hits (two triples), Mr. Steady Joe Lutz, Ace Dennis Oehl, Richie Dargie, and Al Devine. For Barco, Gary Jambor (4-4) and Kevin Moloney (3-3) continued their hot hitting, who were also helped out by Bill White (2-3 2 RBIs), Dennis Ryan (2-3) and Terry McPartland (2 RBI triple). Unfortunately for Barco though was not getting the key hit as they left the bags full three times, something no team can afford to do against quality teams like Synergy. The rest of the schedule (late games) Singleton/Mers and Moby/BMB were canceled due to the weather.

As a followup to a previous note, it seems the Oneonta City Council went into emergency session when they heard a rumor that Singleton's John Gannon planned on returning to the area (to bring his daughter Theresa up to college). Its seems the city received numerous noise complaints regarding John's snoring from his previous stay but eventually decided if his wife Rose could handle it all these years, so could they. Although they did issue cautionary warning to local motels that they should stock up on earplugs for the next four years.