Hollywood Story??

It was a crazy busy weekend due to a softball tournament on Saturday and the Bears game on Sunday. Since we also had a party to go to on Saturday night, we had to prepare for the tailgate on Friday night. That meant cooking chili and preparing various appetizers including bacon wrapped shrimp and bacon wrapped dates. So at the end of the day on Friday, we were pretty tired. The weekend tournament started with pool play on Saturday (3 games) followed by a single elimination tournament on Sunday. Since I was going to the Bears game on Sunday, Saturday's games were going to be my last for the year and I really wanted to see if my shoulder was better with rest. It was!! I could actually throw pretty well.

Saturday morning was a bright and early start for me as I had to be at the fields (about an hour away) by 8:45 or so. We were looking forward to our three games on Saturday Unfortunately there was the threat of it raining all day. In fact, just as I pulled up to start taking batting practice (which had already been going on for 20 minutes or so) it started raining. It kept raining for the next hour or so plus and our game was stopped in the fourth inning with the score tied. After about 40 minutes or so, the rain stopped and we started up again. Though I was 0-2 to start the game, I came through with a 2 run, 2 out single to help us win. Our second game was a blowout as we won by slaughter in four or five innings.

Our last game of the day was against a team from the Quad Cities. We jumped to a large early lead, 10-1 or something like that, but they slowly edged back into the game at we found ourselves down 3 going into the bottom of the last inning. We tied it up when the guy who hit in front of me hit a 3-run homer. I singled to keep it going and we eventually loaded the bases with one of our best hitters up. Unfortunately he flied out and so we headed to extra innings. In this organization, we start with a runner on second in extra innings. I'm not sure what happened in the first extra inning, but I think we both scored 2 or 3 runs and remained tied.

This time the guy in front of me made the last out and I was leading off the bottom of our second extra inning. They scored one in the top of the second extra inning, so we had to scratch at least one run. Fortunately I laced a single up the middle to put runners on first and third to start our inning. The next guy hit a sacrifice fly to tie the game, but I was still on first. The next guy drove a ball to right field which the outfielder misplayed and it got by him. Now, I'm not the fastest guy on the team....in fact, I'm closer to the slowest, but I raced around and scored from first with the winning run. Yep, I scored the winning run in extra innings in my last game of the year. Is it a good enough story for a Hollywood movie? Nah, but it was a fun way to go out. The guys won their first game Sunday morning before losing game two, so we tied for third out of 28 teams. Not bad.

Tomorrow, angst from the Bears game.