Mako's question of May 18, 2000 about the past perfect tense:

"Strikeouts, errors, he got in our way in the game and we lost it" is Yoshiko's answer, but Sumie might say "He had got in our way in the game and we lost it." Are these two both correct? Which is more natural? Thank you.

Both seem fairly natural to me. The distinction between the simple past tense and the past perfect tense is often a matter of emphasis. One use of the past perfect tense is to show that two events occurred in the past and that one event was completed before the other began. When more than one event is noted in a simple past tense sentence, however, the use of the simple past often indicates that the first event was immediately followed by the second event or that the first event led to the second event.

Strikeouts, errors, he got in our way in the game and we lost it.

This sentence seems to emphasize that one event ("he got in our way") led to the next event ("we lost the game"), so the use of the simple past tense here is the natural choice for showing this kind of cause-and-effect relationship.

He had got in our way in the game and we lost it.

This sentence seems to indicate that one event ("he had got in our way") was completed before the next one ("we lost the game") occurred, so it may not have the nuance the speaker intended -- the use of the past perfect tense here makes it seem as if the two events might not be closely related. In addition, we usually use the past perfect to show events out of their chronological order, so this sentence might sound more natural in reversed order:

We lost the game because he had got in our way.

In this form, the later event appears earlier in the sentence. Still, this sentence would probably sound more natural in the simple past:

We lost the game because he got in our way.

If we want to phrase this sentence to show a cause-and-effect relationship, I'd choose Yoshiko's simple past tense sentence (with the substitution of "during" for "in" and the replacement of the second comma with either a colon or a dash):

Strikeouts, errors -- he got in our way during the game and we lost it.