MISQUAH — Post 162 has reached the midpoint of its season at .500, which for this club, in this decade, counts as a genuine achievement, and which the players have earned the right to be pleased about for as long as it takes the next series to end.

The nine went two-and-one on the week, taking both ends of the important stretch and dropping only a Friday game that got away late, under the lights, or under the half of them that work. Cody Lindholm turned in another strong start — the latest in a string of them — and would have a better record to show for it if the club scored him more than the occasional run, a complaint every good pitcher on every team has filed since the invention of the position.

The offense has come around. A lineup that spent June stranding runners in scoring position has started, in July, to drive a few of them in, and the difference between a team that leaves them on and a team that brings them home is roughly the difference between fourth place and this, which is the standings’ polite middle.

The lights remain the club’s standing embarrassment and standing fundraiser. Two of the four outfield towers have been dark since the 2019 windstorm, the third since a separate failure nobody enjoys discussing, and the estimate to bring the next one back stands at $7,400 — for the one tower, a figure the meat raffle at the Northern Tap is chipping at units of pork at a time. Home games are played, accordingly, with half the outfield in shadow, a condition the home team has learned to treat as an advantage and visitors have learned to treat as an ambush.

Attendance holds at a faithful forty or so on the bleachers, plus the row of pickup trucks backed up to the outfield fence, headlights occasionally pressed into service in the late innings when the working tower isn’t enough — an arrangement that is against no rule anyone has bothered to write. The club plays at home again Wednesday, first pitch 7:15, under the working light, and welcomes anyone who wants to come sit in what remains of the dusk.