Sick, schmick.

So when I last left you, I was battling a potential cold and had been run down from a week of activity. Not to be daunted, Friday brought a tailgate with good friend Kels and my Mokena friends, Terry and Sandie. Five or so cars lined up outside Lot F before 5 and went in together for the 7:10 game pitting the Sox against the Yankees.

I know what you're thinking: "if you're so sick, how did you make it to a tailgate?" Well, I had the tickets since May, so I basically just sucked it up. Plus, while I had some post nasal drip, I wasn't feeling particularly bad after I got some sleep.






Terry, as usual, was in charge of the grill. It's tough to get a picture of Terry when he ISN'T near a grill. It was a great night for a tailgate and all the food was awesome. Nice job organizing it Kels!!











While at the game, we headed over to Comiskey's brick paver area and LL found my brick fairly quickly. Here it is:
















After the Sox took a solid lead, 10-5 after 7, LL and I headed out to the car as I had to get up relatively early and head south to near St. Louis, 5 hours by car, for the South Illiniois State softball tournament (for the NSA organization which we play in sometimes). Though I'm really just a fill-in on this team, I've played in several of their tournaments this year. For instance the team won second place in the North Illinois State tournament in Rockford or Kankakee.....I wasn't there so I'm not sure.

Anyway, the teams first game was at noon, which I wasn't going to make, but we won 13-2 in quick fashion. The next game was scheduled for 6, but a rain delay caused it to be moved to 7 or so with another game not starting until almost 10:30. Though we finished after midnight, we started the tournament 3-0! I contributed little going 0-3 in our first game and then 2-4 in the second. A good night's sleep and some more batting practice would certainly help....right?

Well it did! Though I was still blowing my nose and sneezing periodically, I felt ok. It was just breathing that was an issue as my nose was stuffed. Then, due to the a/c in the room I think, I developed a nose bleed during batting practice. Ugh. No worries. It stopped after about 30-45 minutes and wasn't a problem the rest of the day.

In our first game Sunday morning, we gave up 9 runs in the first inning to a team called Head First and then played them relatively evenly the rest of the game, losing by 10. Damn. Down to the losers bracket for us. We won our next game though which gave us a rematch with Head First in the championship game. We beat them 23-15 I think, which meant we had to play and beat them again to really win (called the "if" game for some reason). They only had one loss as did we, so that's why we had to beat them twice.

The last game was nip and tuck until they scored 7 runs in one inning to go up 12-5. We answered with 6 runs of our own to make it 12-11 and it was close the rest of the way. We were tied at 17 going into the last inning and we put up 2 runs for a 19-17 lead. Unfortunately we couldn't hold them and they scored 3 runs to win 20-19. A close game and gut wrencher to lose. They were good sports though and bought us shots and beer afterwards. Good fun.




So here's our second place trophy. Nice hardware, but the first place trophy is bigger.

















A close up of the inscription.

On championship Sunday I had an on base percentage of .800 (12-15), to bring my overall average for the tournament to .635. Guess the rest and bp helped! Still, my nose was running all day and getting some much needed rest tonight is going to be key. We didn't finish until almost 5 and started with batting practice at 9 a.m. Then I had the 5 hour drive back home. I'm beat and now my nose is starting to get chapped from blowing it so much today. Ugh.