Sunday brought us back to the baseball field, as our team was trying to move to a 5-2 record. On the other side of the diamond, would be a winless team; easy work, right?
It’s funny. I take this into consideration when betting on pro sports; the whole mental side of the equation. When a good team is playing a bum team, how serious will they take them? Will they letdown, play down to the level of competition? Now I’m not saying we’re that “good”, nor am I saying this other team was a “bum” team, but you get what I’m saying, right? Sure enough, this word got around. I heard the kids talking…. “That team hasn’t won a game all year”… “If we lose to that team, we suck”…. “We should win this game”. Well, I told them before the game, they can just as easily beat us, as we can beat them; trying to get these kids to learn not to take anything for granted. Don’t want them feeling themselves that much either. Sure, we have had a nice start, but long season…
Well, this game was going along as I feared; it was neck and neck. Although we had some great things happen, like the first home run of the season (only Ice Cream if we win) and one of our kids first hit of the season. We had some nice plays on the field, some decent pitching, but… we had defensive miscues; we struck out way too much… the pitcher was too SLOW! Imagine that. Then we started walking kids… Yeah, not a good feeling here. Still, we held a 4-2 lead heading into the 5th inning. The other team scored one in the 5th, two in the 6th, and 3 in the 7th!!! We came back and scored 2 in the bottom of the 6th, which left us 2 runs short coming up for our last at bat.
First kid got on; that was his first hit of the season. Second kid got on; 1st and 2nd nobody out. Next kid hit one of the top of the fence… a couple feet short of a walk-off 3 run homer. Wow, that would have been sweet! Still, down 1, 2nd and 3rd nobody out. My son was up next. He hit a sharp grounder that was snagged by the pitcher; he made a really nice play, froze our runner at 3rd base, and threw my son out at 1st… there went his first walk off opportunity. If that got past the pitcher… we win the game. Next up, kid crushes it… caught in center field, and with our slowest kid on third base, he stayed put. Next up, was our big bopper… the kid who hit the home run earlier in the game. He lined a hot shot right at their SS… it went under his glove. One run is in, but the kid on 2nd stopped because the SS was right in front of him; he did not score. Still, game tied. Next up, a pop up… and due to time constraints, the game ended in a tie. What a game. I was exhausted and I didn’t even play.
4-2-1 ain’t too shabby, plus… all kinds of lessons to learn from this one; I look forward to reminding them at practice and all year of this specific game. Can’t count your chickens… either way. This will work when we play an inferior team AND when we play a team we think is awesome/better than us. Always looking for coaching moments; have a bunch of them thrown in my lap from this game. I’m happy, even if we only tied this game… Thank you, next.
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