In 1962, as the newly-formed New York Mets embarked upon a campaign of horror, losing 120 games in their first ever 161 game season, writer
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In 1962, as the newly-formed New York Mets embarked upon a campaign of horror, losing 120 games in their first ever 161 game season, writer Jimmy Breslin sought to explore why, for a team so atrocious, there were so many fans cheering them on game after game. Breslin, in his book Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?, concluded thus:
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You see, the Mets are losers, just like nearly everybody else in life. (…) It is the team for every guy who has to get out of bed in the morning and go to work for short money on a job he does not like. And it is the team for every woman who looks up ten years later and sees her husband eating dinner in a t-shirt and wonders how the hell she ever let this guy talk her into getting married. The Yankees? Who does well enough to root for them, Laurence Rockefeller?
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The 2026 Boston Hunters are losers. Here are some numbers: in the first five games played by the WPBL, 84 total runs were scored. Of those 84 runs, just seven were scored by the Hunters; of the 77 remaining runs, twenty three were scored against Boston, meaning nearly thirty percent of all runs scored to date were scored against Boston, who are one fourth of the league. Going into Saturday, the Hunters had a league-last .104 batting average and an abysmal .404 OPS containing just a .146 slugging percentage; on the rubber, they had a 15.23 ERA and a 3.08 WHIP — these are just terrible, terrible stats. Boston went into Saturday the last winless team in the WPBL. Of course, two losses out of fifteen chances isn’t quite the same as 120 of 162, but it still feels like time is running out quick for the Hunters.
Boston’s struggle is one hard to puzzle out. The 1962 Mets stunk because they were cast off players from other teams living and working together in a new city for the first time. The same is true for all four franchises in the WPBL, and yet three out of the four look much more competitive than Boston. Boston’s players are not without playing experience. Many are national or world medalists from Team Canada or Team Australia, though Boston does have the fewest USA Women’s National Team players, who have proven in general to be some of the most effective in the field. They may have been shocked by a poor start: in their opening game, starter Raine Padgham was left out to soak up 10 runs on 9 hits in 3 innings, a confidence killing choice by manager Keith Foulke. It may also be that they are simply unlucky. That’s baseball.
Loving a loser isn’t easy. In sports, to be booed is just as good as to be cheered. It means your team is as feared as it is loved. A bad team, though, keeps the people quiet. There’s no fun in that. Every failure breaks your heart, though the scars of heartbreak make every win all the more sweet. On a 94 degree Saturday afternoon in Springfield, the Hunters became winners for the first time, after a 9-6 late innings trounce of the New York Heights.
Saturday’s game began, as it had twice before, with Boston losing. The Heights came to a slow but steady six run lead in four innings, carried once again on the back of Denae Benites’ two homers off of Raine Padgham in the first and third. Heights starter Rakyung Kim continued to deal, keeping the Hunters to just one baserunner through their first four innings: Denver Bryant, who reached on error. It was not until Molly Paddison singled in the top of the fourth that they even had a hit.
The blistering heat index caught up with everybody by the sixth inning, an inning of divine luck for the Hunters, and calamity for the Heights, perhaps slung from Olympus by Artemis herself. With Boston down 6-2, Ticara Geldenhuis reached on error for the Hunters, then advanced on a balk from Rakyung Kim. (Can’t be doin’ a balk like that.) A walk and hit by pitch (one of seven in this game!) loaded them up, then player of the game Denver Bryant knocked a double off the fence that emptied the bases — though two runs of the three were scored unearned, due to a misthrow from Heights second baseman Keira Izumi that skipped past shortstop Madison Willan trying to get the out on Bryant at second.
It was here that manager Rocky Henley finally swapped Kim for Izumi — perhaps not the wisest choice, for although Izumi did pretty well in relief on Thursday, on Saturday it was 94 degrees, Izumi had been running around in the field for six innings, and was surely still shaking off her error — and Izumi promptly let in three runs, one on a single by Gabbie Haas and two on bases-loaded walks. Alyssa Zettlemoyer got the last outs for the Heights to put a stop to the rally, with the Hunters leading 9-6.
Maïka Dumais, who had pitched the fifth for Boston, was then tasked to do what no other Hunter had done before — preserve a lead. Before she could, Jealous Apollo, hoping to delay the inevitable, I imagine, intervened. In the bottom of the sixth, the heat caused the home plate umpire to pass out in the middle of a critical two-out, two-on at bat by Kylee Lahners, delaying the game for at least 15 minutes before play resumed. I do hope the ump is okay, the heat in that black must be brutal. Lahners struck out once play resumed, ending the inning. Dumais was successful in keeping the seventh scoreless, after a hit by pitch and a walk put Keira Izumi and Elodie Ciamarro on for the Heights.
The fact became undeniable: the Boston Hunters had won.
The Hunters will have a hill to climb. Their pitching, at least, is effective. Maika Dumais, for example, has been a very successful reliever in both her outings. She and Jaida Lee are the two pitchers with no earned runs in at least 5 innings pitched, and in her outing Raine Padgham looked more like the ace I saw in the Women’s Baseball World Cup in July.
But Saturday’s win only brought the Hunters from a .104 team batting average to .147. Their slugging still sits at a measly .187, far and away below all their competitors. This also remains the only win so far of single digit runs. Every other team won by 10 or more.
Even in their big rally inning, in which they batted around, only three hits were actually made by Hunters hitters. The remaining baserunners all reached on errors or walks. In baseball, you can’t always wait for your opposing pitcher to do your job for you. The Hunters will have to start hitting the ball better and harder to truly compete, or I just can’t see how they avoid getting gobbled up by a team like the Queens come playoff time.
“We were just tired of losing,” Denver Bryant said in the postgame on-field interview. This is surely not the last time the Hunters will lose this season, but now, for at least one game, they’re on a winning streak. They take on the Heights again Sunday afternoon.
