Long Day of Softball

Our first game was at 8 a.m. at the Big League Dreams Sports Complex on the Wrigley Field diamond. Here are some pics:









Yes, the sun wasn't even up yet when we arrived at the complex.























I took this as I left the complex since I was still asleep when we passed it in the morning.

















All of the fields had actual dugouts, which are pretty nice and protect you from the sun at least a little.













Here are the Brew Dogs for 2009, taken in front of the Wrigley Field scoreboard. Looks pretty real huh?





















Yep, Chicago.















There's the scoreboard painted on the wall in the outfield.

















They even had the rooftops from left field.....albeit a bit dated.

The long shot of the outfield wall.

Did I mention that it was a bit dated? Yes, the fans are clearly odd and reproduced at all 8 fields.

Here's as much of the Wrigley outfield wall that I could get in one picture.

Tomorrow I'll post pictures of the other seven fields. Today we started at 8 and played three straight games and five in total. We went 3-2, which was good enough for 7th out of 18 teams....not great, but it was our first tournament of the year and we were playing against teams from Arizona and California that get to play all winter as well. The two other teams from Illinois both went 0-2.

We played pretty well considering the circumstances. On the Wrigley diamond, the sun was directly in the batters' eyes, so you were swinging where you hoped the ball would be. It was really tough. Yes, the sun is there for both teams, but if you play on those fields all the time, like our Arizona opponents, you're at least used to having the problem. Heck, we hardly even see the sun in Chicago during the winter!! We won the first game however, lost the second, won the next two and lost the fifth game. Due to injuries, I was playing third instead of first. I made one nice play early in the day and then didn't have a ball hit to me until the last game. Weird. Fortunately I finished strong in hitting going 7-8 in the last two games. For the first three games I went 2-4, 1-3 and 2-4 to finish 12-19 which is a robust .630 OBA. Not bad for an old man.