Take Me Out to the Ball Game!

It's been an interesting tournament week. On Monday the 1st and 4th place teams played each other. The 4th place team had lost all of their games, but apparently they gave the 1st place team a real run for their money and were ahead 7 to 3 before the other team caught up and beat them. Wouldn't that have been funny if they went to the championship game after not having won any games during the season?

Jamey's team was in 3rd place and they played the 2nd place team on Tuesday. It was a close and exciting game, but they ended up losing by 1 point. Jamey seemed happy with it so that's all that mattered. Wednesday was the consolation game between the losers of the first 2 games. Jamey's coach seemed pretty comfortable since he knew this other team had lost all of their games. He put Jamey in to pitch, even though Jamey has never pitched before. Let's just say that Jamey needs to work on pitching. Nobody he pitched to got on base, but I think that was more a result of the other team not having very good hitters. After the game Jamey told me, "I didn't know how much fun pitching was!" So I guess he'll need to work on pitching over the next year. The coach let another boy pitch who never had before. The coach was pretty laid back about the game and I don't know if he deliberately wanted to be sure this other team didn't have another loss, or if things just happened this way. We went into the 3rd inning only 2 points ahead of the other team. Our coach told our players to enjoy hitting for the last time because if we were winning after the other team went up to bat in the 4th inning, they wouldn't have our team bat. In the 4th inning the other team had one out when a player hit the ball and it flew across the field and landed right in Silas's glove (and nobody was more surprised than Silas!). Quickly he threw it to the pitcher, but instead of the pitcher holding onto it, he threw it home because the runner on 3rd was running home. When the runner saw that the catcher had the ball, he ran back to 3rd, so the catcher threw the ball to Jamey on 3rd. So the runner turned back around & Jamey didn't quite get it back to the catcher fast enough (and I think the catcher dropped it in the meantime -- I'll have to go back and watch the video of it) so the kid slid into home and tied the game. Needless to say there was a lot of excitement and yelling going on in the bleachers. It was a pretty exciting play. We did end up batting for the 4th inning, but all three of the kids struck out. So we ended the game tied, which means that the 4th place team doesn't have to say that they lost every game. I thought Jamey would be sad, but he really wasn't. He told me it was his funnest game ever. What a great attitude! I wasn't as happy about it because at one point one of the players on the other team stood holding the ball while 2 of our players ran around the bases & into home. Well, our coach pulled both of those players back to the bases they were on and decided the runs didn't count. I think the boy holding the ball may have not quite understood what was going on because his coach kept close to him most of the game, and I guess that's why our coach didn't want to take advantage of the situation. He's nicer than I am. If one of our players was holding the ball while kids ran around the bases I doubt the other team would have pulled their players back to the bases. Oh well, such is life!

Thursday night was the championship game. The 1st and 2nd place teams played and we all came to watch and then had a picnic afterwards. The 1st place team won the game, although it was pretty exciting at times, but I think the final score was something like 8 to 3. At the picnic afterwards they gave trophies to all the kids on the 1st and 2nd place teams. Then each of the coaches gave out 3 awards to their players. One for best sportsmanship, one for most valuable player, and one for most improved player. On our team, Coach Kimber's son got the sportsmanship award, Coach Smithbaker's son got the most valuable player award, and Jamey got the most improved player award since he had come in as a brand new baseball player and ended up having the highest batting average. He was pretty excited to get a trophy.

Well, we know that all good things must come to an end. I told Jamey that next year the coaches will fight over who gets to have him on their team, and he smiled. So I guess he will play baseball next year! And I will have fun watching him play and wondering what on earth is going on out there on the field.