Today my softball team had a tournament out in Arlington Heights, about 50 minutes away or so. On the line, a world series bid for the ISA tournament in Tampa in September. Since I'm still rehabbing my shoulder, I was just going to fill in as manager: make the lineup, shift players around, keep scorebook, whatever else needs to be done. Though were were supposed to have 12 players there for the first two games, one guy called in sick and another just didn't show up (I guess he was iffy to begin with). We have 10 guys in the field, so it was just me on the bench when we were in the field.
Our first game was a knock down, drag out fight that was 20-19 going into the last inning and we were up. We broke through and scored 5 to go up by 6 and shut them down to win a big game. There actually is a guy on the team slower than me, so I was the "base burglar" who could go in once per inning and run for someone, but could not otherwise play in the game. So I actually contributed and scored some runs!!
In game two, we came out flat and stayed flat in a 13-3 loss to a team who was one level above us in this organization, but whom we've beaten many times. Oh well.
Trouble came in game three as we lost one player who had a prior engagement. Since we had no subs, I had to go in and play first!! Fortunately I had taken batting practice in the morning and ground balls as well, so I wasn't completely rusty, though I hadn't faced live pitching for 5 months! Anyway, I went 3-4 (including 2-2 in the last decisive inning) as we won 20-10 in 5 innings. We went into that 5th inning trailing 10-9, but scored 11 to end it by the slaughter rule. As it turns out, I was the winning run!!
In our final game, we played another team one level above us and we jumped to a 2-0 and then 4-0 lead. They clawed back to make it 4-1 and then 4-3 in the 5th before scoring 5 runs to make it 8-4. We got two runs back in the 6th to make it 8-6, but couldn't muster anymore runs in the 7th and lost by that score. I was only 1-3, but hit the ball hard twice.
As the highest finishing team at our level, we won two bats and a birth in the World Series in Tampa!! Yay!!!!
1 comment:
Congratulations!
We're busy with softball around here too. Kacey had a tournament today and had a couple of exciting games.
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