Oh how I love baseball. I love playing it. I love watching it. I love coaching it. Yes, there is the whole “Football is King”, and growing up w/MJ and the Bulls, basketball isn’t too far behind for me, but baseball… you never forget your first love. That love was front and center over the last few days; we had 4 games in 3 days. How did we do?
When you love, there is no limit, right? It doesn’t matter how bad things are, there is always more left in the tank, right? Even if you’re digging deep, you always find something. The fact that we went 0-4 these past 4 games will not deter me. We win together, we lose together. We go forward, because there are brighter days ahead. This was the message to the team after our 4th and final loss and Monday night; this is a good message in general. It’s not BS, or sugar coating it; it’s what I believe. Am I the only one?
The first game started off brilliantly; we were winning 9-1! I had each of my pitchers on pitch counts, in order to have enough pitching to make it through all 4 games in 3 days, and it was working fine. Remember, our top pitcher has been out for a month, one of our others was on vacation in Europe, and yet another, was off limits due to travel baseball games; thankfully, we have a total of 9 kids on our 13 kid roster who have pitched; the 10th would pitch for the first time in this game. Had to bring him in with the bases loaded. First pitch, kid hammers the ball into left field, thankfully, right into our left fielder’s mitt; whew, out of the inning. Next inning, we weren’t so lucky. This is where the wheels fell off; thing is, our kid wasn’t pitching that bad, meaning, he only walked 1 kid. They were hitting the ball, but… the problem was our defense; we made at least 6-7 errors. Should I have brought in another pitcher sooner? Easy to say yes now. I eventually did, but even he couldn’t get us out of the inning. 10 runs later, we were losing by 2. We had one last chance, but nada. Rough one to start the weekend.
Our next game may have been rougher, depending on how you define rough. We lost 16-1; they stopped the game because of slaughter/mercy rule. Another single inning sunk us. This time it was 10 runs in the 2nd inning; this time it was against one of our best pitchers. This time, it was the defense again. Our defense had been a relative strength most of the year, but in back to back games, it failed us miserably. The 2nd game on Sunday was our best chance to win. We were losing most of the game, but then put up a 5 spot to take the lead; problem is, they scored 5 right back at us the next inning. We would lose 9-7. Finally, on Monday night, it was another defensive bloodbath; 12-5 loss. When one of your best defenders makes 2 errors in the same inning… what else can you do? We saw balls take bad bounces; we had a ball hit the base. We had close plays and calls go against us. It was that kind of a weekend. It was the perfect storm, where everything that could go wrong, went wrong. Where do we go from here?
Well, there is one game left in the regular season; our record sits at 3-8. Good news is that everybody makes the playoffs; better news is that our best kid may be back. Sounds like it may be double elimination, so hey, there’s a chance; I truly do believe that. As for my son, he played solid defense throughout all the games, and pitched tremendously in our close game on Sunday night; his hitting… he’s definitely in a little slump, so much so, that the best ball he hit all year was caught by the center fielder. All it takes is one to get this thing turned around.
And there we were… me and him… on the field after everybody went home on Monday after a brutal weekend of baseball. I was pitching balls to him; he was hitting them. Then, he hit balls to me in the outfield, running me ragged; I took one off the wrist, one of the inside of my right knee… the balls were getting harder to see the later we went. It wasn’t going to me that said it was time to go home though… because, you know… oh yeah, and practice Tuesday night…
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