August 28, 2022: Finding the W

posted in: Cubs, White Sox | 0

For the first time since 2018, a team that I have coached won a game on Sunday afternoon; sounds bad right? I mean, 4 years since the last time my team won a game. Well, let me clarify; I’ll try to be quick…

I coached my son’s 4-6 year old baseball team back in 2018. My son was 6 years old; we kicked butt all year long. In 2019, I coached his 7-9 year old baseball team; we were the new kids on the block… we went winless. In 2020, COVID put a kabash on the season; no baseball. In 2021, I thought we were back on; we weren’t, I scrambled last minute, and nada… another summer w/o baseball. My son did play that fall, but I didn’t coach. In 2022, the league I signed him up for never made it off the ground; he had to play up with 11u travel ball… I didn’t coach again. This brings us to Fall Baseball 2022; I am head coach. We lost our first game, which brings us to Game 2 this Sunday.

I love coaching, but the main reason I’m doing this is because my son is playing. He was at the heart of my first coaching win in almost 4 years. I talked about not having a catcher on this team, which lead to dropped 3rd strikes, walks, and HBPs turning into HRs due to wild pitches last week. Well, not so much this week. My son caught the entire game. I’ll tell you what: this kid can do anything on the baseball field. He still has to work on his offense, although he did go 2 for 2 in this one with a walk and 2 runs scored. However, on the field… I think his best positions are first base and pitcher; the travel team had him playing 2B and CF. Today, I saw him catch an entire game. He does it all well… really well. He was the stabilizing force for our team in this one. The pitchers we threw out there did really well also. Our offense pushed across 9 runs; we won with a final score of 9-4. What a day!

Of course there had to be some catch with my first W… It was the top of the 6th; we had our 3rd pitcher out on the mound. I was saving my son for emergency purposes, hoping that this 3rd kid could get 3 outs. Well, he got 2 outs before loading the bases. Before we could get that final out, the game was called due to time; what a bunch of BS. If I was on the other side of that, man… would not have been happy. Not very likely they score 5 runs, but still. 1 more out!!! Oh well, not my rules. I’m not going to complain. Finding the W was hard enough… haha.

That was fun… and a relief. Was worried how this year would turn out after the first L. We had a couple practices, I put my son at catcher, and the win was realized. Where do we go from here? Well, need to find another reliable catcher, which is not very likely over the next 6 games, although we will try. More practice for the boys, that’s for sure. Hopefully some more fun, which will hopefully include some more Ws. No games over the holiday weekend, so I’ll have to wait 2 weeks to try to add another. I had everybody give themselves a round of applause after this game; it was definitely a team effort. Very proud of those boys… thank you for giving this old coach a win!

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