Game 1 (finally)

I am certain that I CANNOT take another edge of my seat, lead breaking, hand sweating, adrenalin rushing game. Very certain. I have never been comfortable with a lead, no matter how good it looks. And the intensity of the game distracted me from taking pictures. Great. I'm supposed to be getting an action shot of each kid. Tonight. Definitely.

Let's talk about the game.

Park? Farther than far. 45 minutes I think - in good traffic. Weather? Hotter than you can imagine. The kids were so hot there was no celebration for striking out a kid. That's how hot. So hot, I'm pretty sure they were serving fried eggs at the snack bar. Pretty sure.

Can you see how hot our pitcher is? This is the 1st inning (or maybe 2nd). Yes, that is Alec behind him at 2nd base. Their faces match the red dirt.

Our record - 1 and 1. Their record 2-0. We needed to win or essentially we are done. We need to be 3 and 1 to advance.

During the 2nd inning (we were home team for a change) we batted 14 kids. No joke. I was worried that Alec would be the 2nd out AND the 3rd. It was like that. Thankfully, his 2nd at bat that inning he got a single with an RBI, so I could let another parent be the one with the kid that got out. Wouldn't see MY kid getting 2 outs in 1 inning, that's for sure :- )!!! (phew!)

Our game was littered with errors, misplayed balls, nasty bounces off the grass, and the sun right in about 6 of our fielders eyes. That and the umpire that continually called a strike at the top of the shoulder. But, after 2 innings - score was somehow them 3 - us 10. Apparently our kids enjoyed NOT being in the field with the sun in their eyes. But, we allowed too much to go on in the next 3 innings and at the end of 5 it was 11-14 us. In the 6th, they scored 3 to tie it up. Thank goodness we were home team right? So true. With no outs, runners on 1st and 2nd, a single scored the run to end the game.

Although, I'm not sure I saw the final hit - Karen was blocking :-). Can you see the batter in the box??? Why is he there? The game ended! Does he know we just won? It was so hot, it's hard to say what was registering in their fried brains!

This game had 300 pitches thrown. That's a lot. Especially when Monday night there was 160 pitches thrown. Big difference. We used 2 pitchers, they used 4. We truly dominated the game and sans errors, it would have been a whole different game.

Alec's stats: At bat - 5...2 strikeouts, 1 walk, 1 hit by pitch and 1 single with an RBI. No bruise left by the pitch that hit him. However, he does have a nasty cleat mark on his shoulder from when he tried to get out of the way of the right fielder during a 'slide for pop fly and take out your teammate' kind of play. A bruise he can live with. Nothing is broken and that's what matters!