Institutional Investor’s Tom Lamont, who is an editor in its newsletter operation and who has worked for the business news operation for more than 30 years, filed this report about it winning the New York Media Softball League championship on Sunday.
Institutional Investor beat High Times 12-6 in the championship game after defeating Forbes in the semifinal. The Wall Street Journal had won the league the last four years.
The key players were shortstop Johnny Diaz, who is a subscription salesman for our high-priced newsletters. In addition we had second baseman/catcher Marissa Pick, who is head of all social media at II.
The rightfielder is Lorenzo Pena, who works in the mailroom. The first baseman is Pierce Rowe, who also works in subscription sales. The center fielder is Dave Rowe — a Brit who is just learning the game but has excellent athletic skills (though few personal ones)
The other key player is Ty McLamb, who is with ISI, a sister company. He pitched the championship game and I pitched the semi-final. They wouldn’t allow a DH in the finals and since I’m 66 years old (a former director who now edits a couple publications and runs the trainee program) I don’t usually bat but would have if necessary in the finals. But it wasn’t necessary.
We were missing a few key people, including subscription salesman and shortstop Victor Tolentino and team captain and subscription salesman Joey Rogers.
Dethroning the WSJ wasn’t really a motivation for us. It was our first year in the league. We just wanted to play well and show we belonged.
We had the third-best record. When High Times chose to play the WSJ in the first round (top seed had first choice), even though WSJ had the second-best record, that gave us a big chance. We took advantage of it and maybe a letdown from High Times after they beat WSJ to win by a big score.
The key to the final game was in the top of the third inning. We were up 5-3 and our first two batters made out. Then we got eight hits in a row and scored six runs to break the game open.
The French tourists wandering by didn’t know what was going on, but they knew enough to stop and take a bunch of photos!
