C'mon Meat, hit me the ball.

Going into the tournament weekend our team had some problems already.
1. Just a week before, I hurt my throwing hand
2. In the same game, a teammate caught a ball with his face leaving a nice gash on his chin.
3. The day before heading to Tampa, one of our best hitters and a good utility player, had to back out as his father had a heart attack.
4. The day before the tournament started, but while down in Tampa, our starting pitcher spilled cologne in his luggage. Not a big deal right? Well, some got into his contacts case so when he went to put the contact in his eye, instant chemical burn and subsequently a scratched cornea. Unbelievable.
5. Our backup pitcher was only going to be there on Saturday as he is a teacher and doesn't have a ton of days available to take off.

We were definitely behind the eight ball going into games on Saturday.

In addition, the tournament was supposed to start on Friday, as early as noon, but Thursday night we found it wouldn't start until Saturday morning and even then we'd only play two games. That meant Sunday would be a long day with potentially eight games and the championship wouldn't be played at 3 or 4, but 8:30 p.m. Unfortunately, we had 5-6 people leaving on an 8:00 flight, not to mention our only pitcher now wouldn't be there for the majority of the games!

One last bit of bad news, they changed the field we were playing on from one that was 10-15 minutes away from our hotel to one that was 30-40 minutes from our hotel. Thanks guys!!

Despite all that, we showed up at 7:30 a.m. for game one against a team (actually called Team 727) from Florida who had more than one guy who looked like Barry Bonds. Though we went up 12-5 after four innings, our bats went silent and we lost 17-14. Then came a four hour break before our next game, which we won to provide us a little momentum going into Sunday morning's 7 a.m. game against a team from Georgia.

Fortunately, due to the bad weather in Chicago, our #2 pitcher couldn't fly back on Saturday night, so he changed reservations to later on Sunday in order to pitch for us. He turned out to be our MVP for the tournament.

So Sunday morning was our third game of a three game minimum tournament. With one loss already, if we lost again, we went home. When we showed up to face our first opponent at 6:30 a.m. for our 7 o'clock game, they were already on the field taking batting practice. Looked like we might be in trouble. However, we hit well and rolled through them something like 17-6. That gave us one hour off until we would have to play four in a row, provided we kept winning. Our fourth game of the tournament and second on Sunday was against a team from Maryland and we handled them as well in a close game...12-7. Our third game of the day was against a team from New Jersey and we shut them out 3-0 in a pitchers duel as the wind started blowing in from left field and kept all fly balls up in the air forever. In one moment of self-glorification, I turned a key third to first double play on a ground ball late in the game to kill their rally.

At the level of ball we play, you're not allowed to hit home runs over the fence. I know that seems odd to some people, but there are a ton of guys who can hit a softball out of a major league baseball park with regularity, so they divide up the levels of competition into five levels and at our level no home runs are allowed. To put an exclamation point on the rule, if you hit a home run, your team is charged an out and the other team is given a run. The next time you hit a home run, the other team gets two runs, and so on. Very strict. On with the game summary.

Our fourth game of the day was a rematch against Team 727 from Florida to whom we lost in the first game. We jumped out to a 5-0 lead after the first half inning and maintained a lead into the top of the seventh when the score was 10-6. We were the visitors for the game so we were hitting in the top of the 7th and last inning. With two on and one out, our starting pitcher (with the scratched cornea) hit a bomb over the right field fence for a home run and a second out for us. It killed our rally and made the score 10-7 going into the bottom of the 7th. For brevity, I'll jump ahead to the score being 10-9, two outs and runners on first and third. It looked like they were going to come back yet again to at least tie us if not beat us again. Their third baseman was up to bat, a leaner kid about 25 who had good pop in his bat and a great glove.

Here's what I was thinking:
Where is he going to hit it? He's a pull hitting right handed batter. He hit up the middle yesterday, but that was game one. He's played three games today and might be getting tired. He's going to pull it. He won't be able to get his wrists around fast enough to hit it on the line though. With the runner at first, the shortstop is a step over towards second. He's going to try and hit the hole between me and the shortstop. C'mon Meat, hit me the ball.

Less experienced players usually don't have these thoughts, quite frankly because they don't need to. They can react quickly enough to get to balls hit in their direction. Older guys like me have to think more to get the first step edge. And this time it worked out.

The batter hit a screaming two hopper into the hole between me and the shortstop. I dove to my left and gloved it; popped to my knees and hit the second baseman covering the bag at second to end the game!! I was immediately mobbed by my teammates. It was a huge win and put us one win away from a top four finish. We couldn't have been higher going into what would be our last game of the day.

The opponent was a team from Taylorsville, North Carolina (pretty much an hour or two from all of Charlotte, Winston-Salem and Asheville). We again started off hitting well and playing solid defense as we jumped to a 8-2 lead by the fifth inning. In the sixth though, two errors by our first baseman (a line drive in his glove that somehow got away from him and a ground ball double play ball that he kicked) led to an 8 run inning and a 10-8 lead and eventual victory for the NC team. Our tournament finally ended.

We were 5-2 though and these out of town tournaments have a way of pulling the team together. We'll be better for having gone and are looking for bigger things this year.


Answers to tomorrow's quiz:
1) October 2) False, they live at opposite ends of the globe 3) 4
4) Andrew Johnson 5) 4 (2 parallel and 2 non-parallel)