The Good and The Bad

As I mentioned in my last post, my softball team had a tournament down in Joliet this weekend, our first local tournament of the year. Two games were scheduled for Saturday, one at 11 and the next at 5. Those long waits before the next game suck. You'd much rather play three in a row. By the time the second game rolled around, we found out we were now going to play a third game and possibly a fourth!!! Ugh. Playing the games isn't a problem, but if you're mentally prepared for one thing and then have to do another, it's another hurdle, albeit a small one.

We won our first game after giving up 8 runs in the first inning. We started hitting and came back with 9 runs an inning later and went on to win 21-8. Personally, I started off 0-2 and I'm sure people were wondering if it's due to the GF being there. Nope, just swinging at bad pitches. I finished the game getting on base three times to end the game 4-6. Decent.

The second game was against Amish Mafia, who is a tough team which we've faced before. It was close the entire game and in the bottom of the sixth with the score 9-6 or 11-8 or something, I came up with the bases loaded two outs and hit a full count pitch for a single driving in another run. Big hit which led to another run when the guy after me singled. Now we were up by 5 and the Mafia was demoralized. They didn't score in the 7th and we won. I went 4-4 in the game so I finished getting on base 7 straight times. Things were looking good for us!

Shortly after the game, a cold front blew through and drop the temperature from 80 to 55 in about 5 minutes if that. I was changing out of my sweaty clothes into dry shorts and a shirt when the front came through and I was caught in a quandry of now being cold and dry or possibly wet and warmer. I opted for going to the car and getting some warmer clothes!

Rains came at 8 and prevented us from playing our third game, which meant we had to be at the fields early on Sunday morning to play that game. Our bats were still asleep though as we only scored 2 runs against Blackhawk (out of Rockford) and lost by the slaughter rule (either 12-2 or 17-2). My stats were simple, 0-2. Boo. That's how I started out Saturday though so I was hoping to turn it around in our second game an hour later.

The 46 degree batting practice temperature was 30 degrees ago by the time we played our second game though and my turtle neck had been retired for simple short sleeves. It didn't help me offensively unfortunately. Down by four in the 7th to Dave's Pizza (one of the teams that went to Arizona who went 0-2), we mounted a rally and had the tieing run at second with one out and the bases loaded when I came up to bat looking for redemption on the day. The umpire made a horrible call (again) on a pitch I could have more easily hit with a golf club than a bat, and I was behind the eight ball with two strikes. Though I tried to hit the hole between short and third, I pulled it too much and the third basemen was able to get a force at third, but he didn't get the guy who was already ON third base in an odd play (touched the bag, threw home, runner went back to third).

The next guy up lined out to center and the game was over, we lost 6-4. Ugh. I ended up 1-4 in the second game and a robust 1-6 on Sunday. Crap. Hitting .533 for the tournament after hitting .777 on day one, is not acceptable. Just a bad day and one bad ump (we were calling him "clown" behind his back during the game).

So we went 2-2, not nearly as good as we wanted. Lots of time to get better though. I'll choose to focus on Saturday's results. :-)