Tuesday, October 29, 2002Weekend Warriors!
This last weekend the team that normally goes by the name Pest Patrol played in the annual Halloween Havoc tournament in Visalia, California. When we play tournaments we typically get a couple more players and go by the name Flatliners, weird I know.
We had a pretty tough bracket. All teams were evenly matched with one team that managed to win all it's games. Each bracket was comprised of four teams. The top two finishers moved into championship play. Like I said our bracket was pretty evenly matched so three of us finished 1-2 in the bracket forcing a playoff. Playoff rounds are played by placing a runner on second and playing ONE inning. The team that scores the most runs moves on and the loser goes home. You keep doing this until someone outscores the other team. We lost the coin toss and had to play twice to move into the championship round. I'm happy to report we won both playoff games! We faced the team that won our bracket to see who moved into the championship game, DOH!
The final game was one of those games you live to play in. It was a hard fought battle. Both team were fired up and playing their best ball of the day. At one point we were up by eight, then our bats fell flat and we just couldn't push runners around the bases. Our lead fell to four, then in the seventh(and final) inning our lead was cut to zero. Our opponents(Buzzin) were the home team, they score they win! They had bases loaded no outs and we managed to play the best defense I've ever seen our team play! Our left fielder made the first out of the game on a fly ball hit pretty much to him then threw a perfect strike to the catcher to keep the runner from advancing! Next batter hits a shot to the right of our short stop, he makes a diving catch and tosses the ball to third because the running was about five feet off the bag, we got him! Oh, wait no we didn't! The umpire blew the call, DARN! So it's two out, bases loaded. Next batter hits a grounder to the short stop who tosses to the second baseman three away! Back to a playoff inning, we lost the coin toss so we were forced to hit first. We managed to score four runs, not bad, but the other team was on a roll. We take the field and get ourselves back into a bad situation. Runner on second and first, no outs, score tied once again. We manage to get a pop fly to left, make a catch but can't stop the runner from advancing to third. DARN! All the next batter has to do is hit a deep pop fly and the game is pretty much over. There's the pitch, POW! Deep shot to left-center, over MY head. I start to head back to the fence, I know I can make the catch but I'd have to throw the ball 300 feet on a rope to get the runner out! I take off as fast as my tired legs will carry me, then it happens. Shooting pain in the right hammy! NO!!!! I'm locked up, can't run. The ball hits about six fee up the fence and falls to the ground, game over. We're eliminated.
It was a truly marvelous game. It really was one of those you live to play for. Maybe next time, yes, next time it'll be different.
