Softball Week(end)

First of all, the Bears are 2-0!!! Outstanding!!! Best case scenario I saw for the Bears after four games was 2-2. Now 3-1 is very possible; though 4-0 is highly unlikely. On top of that great news is that the Vikings are 0-2!!! My good buddy Joisey Ken is a Vikings fan, but they are the divisional rivals of my Bears. It's early in the season, but most people thought the Packers and Vikings were 1 and 2 in the division with the Bears third. A two game lead on the Vikings is huge and could mean a playoff opportunity. Wouldn't that be nice?!?!

The softball details:

My second softball team played in Warsaw Indiana this weekend, which is 2 1/2 hours from anything. Warsaw, I found out, is home to five Fortune 500 companies and that's the reason for a plethora of hotels including a pretty nice Ramada Inn. We got a bad draw and had to play a game on Friday night, one of 8 teams I think out of 38 that had to play on Friday night. Though we won, we didn't play our best. In fact, we were trailing 12-1 after 3 innings before coming back to win 21-14. That earned us our second game at 10 a.m. Saturday morning. It was the first game for our opposition and we beat them 13-12 in the bottom of the seventh, though it felt like we were in control most of the game. We won our third game as well, but I don't remember the score, though I remember it was close again. 3-0 going into Saturday night!

The team we were playing on Saturday night, Convicts, plays out of Wisconsin and I'm not sure a team I've played on has ever lost to them, though we end up playing them at least once a year in nearby tournament somewhere. Unfortunately we were sloppy on defense and had piss-poor hitting early and we lost 17-12. Early in the game we had the bases loaded with nobody out and only scored one run. In that situation, on average, you would probably score 4+ runs (the number is bigger than 3 because on average we'd score at least one run an inning anyway). As it turns out, I just read that Convicts was playing in the finals of the winners bracket.

So that meant we had to play at 8 a.m. instead of 9 on Sunday and the sun didn't even rise until 7:20! Without much of a warm up, both teams (we were playing a team that plays in our league on Wednesday nights) were a little sluggish. Though I had three good at bats, getting on twice and getting robbed by the right fielder on a sliding catch, the score was 4-4 going into the bottom of the last inning. Their first hitter hit me a sharp grounder at third that I totally blew using just awful form and lacking any fundamentals. Ugh. Why I do that sometimes is beyond me. The next guy flew out and the next guy hit a slow ground ball to first. Instead of just taking the second out at first, we tried to get the guy at second and the throw hit the runner and everyone was safe. The next guy hit another ball to me at third and I booted that one too! Arrrrghhhhhh!!! It was a relatively easy play where I could step on third at least and maybe even get a second out somewhere. Instead they had the bases loaded with no one out and the next guy just hit a deep fly ball to win it. Crap.

After returning to the hotel for a quick shower, I headed home and got back in time to meet Sausage Andy out for his birthday celebration during the Bears game at a local bar. We celebrated a HUGE Bears victory over the Dallas Cowboys!! 2-0 baby!!!

Wednesday I head down to Orlando for another tournament with my other team. We have a game on Thursday and maybe even games on Friday, I don't know. It's supposed to be in the upper 80's down there with high humidity only one day, but who knows how it will really turn out. It looks like maybe we have one more tournament after this weekend, unless we go to Vegas in December again.