Bonus baseball
The baseball league in which Ian plays apparently decided, at the 11th hour and then some, to have a post-season tournament, which is fine; I know Ian would enjoy another game or two. Coach said we had enough interest within our team, so the Marlins are in the post-season.
The first game was last night. Beforehand, Coach laid it on me that he discovered we have been in the wrong division all season. We are a first-year team, obviously meaning it’s the first year our kids have played {organized} baseball. Come to find out, we’ve been playing in the 2nd-year division all year. THAT explains a lot. No wonder we kept getting our asses handed to us all year. Turns out that of all the dozen or so games we played, only one team was a team that we “should have” played.
I was really kinda pissed about all that at first, but then I says to myself, “Self,” I says, “sure, we lost a couple games by double digits, but there were a few games that were only decided by 2-6 runs or so.” I know you can shoulda-coulda-woulda from here to Rancho CUC-amanga, but it does have to make one wonder, if we had been playing in the right division, how might the season have been different? So after thinking about it a little bit, I decided it actually wasn’t as bad a thing as I thought, since, as I said, several of our losses were only by a handful of runs or less.
So anyway, to last night’s game itself. We played against the Royals, who I had to assume was a first-year team, considering they had some little, LITTLE kids on their team. There was one kid- I’m not exaggerating- his bat was probably 3/4 as tall as he was. Anyhooze, what a difference playing against someone with similar abilities and skill levels makes. The Marlins jumped out to a 6-0 lead after 2 innings, then the Royals came back and made it 6-5, then we scored a run or two each inning the rest of the way, and wound up winning the game 11-6. All the kids did very well, especially in the field. Sure, there were your requisite botched throws and dropped balls that you’ll find in seven-year-olds baseball, but it was like they all turned it to eleven. They were diving in the dirt for balls, backing each other up, making double plays, it was amazing. Ian was had three infield assists playing 2B, two of which were pretty bang-bang, but he wound up getting the kid out simply by staying with it and not giving up. (MAN I hate it when people talk in cheesy sports clichés, but sometimes it’s hard not to.) Ian also got two hits and then grounded out to first.
So since we won last night, we play next on Wednesday. I’m not sure what happens after that, whether win or lose. I’m fairly certain it’s double-elimination, so I think we’re guaranteed at least one more game after tomorrow’s game, but I may be assuming way too much as well. Ian and I just show up when Coach calls and tells us we’ve got a game. I imagine that tomorrow’s game may well be against another two-year team again, and almost certainly any game(s) after that likely will be as well, but hey, we’ll take it as it comes and do our best.
