Game #15

So we played our last regular season baseball game today. And there’s no getting around it, it wasn’t good …

One of the few bright spots of the day was that it couldn’t have been a more beautiful day for baseball. 80 degrees, sunny, not a cloud in the sky …

Still, with all the rain soaking our fields, we hadn’t played in two weeks (… although we did get a win by forfeit on Thursday night … long story that’s not worth telling …). And even today, the outfield grass was like a football field in the fourth quarter. It was a swamp …

Our opponent today was hitting the ball all over the field; they were hitting all the gaps. They had me and our outfielders working as hard as we’ve had to work all season long … But when we did have chances to make outs, it wasn’t any prettier. Everything that was hit to me on the ground in left field, I fielded cleanly, but I lost two balls -- that should have been routine outs -- in the mid-morning sun. My mates in the outfield didn’t fare any better …

We had little to brag about at the plate today, too …

I was batting in the fifth spot today and came up in the first inning with the bases loaded and one out. I took the first pitch high and outside for ball one. But the second pitch was at my eyes, I took it, and the umpire called it strike one. Unbelievable! I took the third pitch too, thinking it was outside -- and the umpire called that strike two! So now, with a 1-2 count, I have no choice but to protect the plate. I know what’s coming, but the way the umpire’s calling the pitches, I’m thinking I have to swing at anything that’s remotely close … Sure enough, the pitcher throws a curve that dives right in front of me, but I’ve already started my swing. The ball gets by me for strike three, and it gets past the catcher, so I take off toward first. All of the other runners advance too, we get one run on the board and I’m standing safely at first …

Then the next batter flies out to center on what we think is a run-scoring sacrifice. Nope, all of a sudden the umpire rules that it’s the third out of the inning, and that I should have been the second out because a batter cannot take first base on a passed-ball-strike-three when first base is already occupied. It’s the right call, but the fact the umpires waited a whole batter to call it completely frustrated our team and propelled us into a mental tailspin from which we never recovered … The way we saw it -- with my first at-bat as a prime example -- a lot of the pitches that were being called strikes for us, were being called balls for the opposing team …

I got another chance in the third inning, and, still messed up mentally from my first at-bat, popped up the first pitch I saw to the shortstop (…It was a pitch that I should’ve put in the left-center field gap…). Then in the sixth inning I grounded out to the second baseman.

Finally, in the eighth, I got up with two outs and a runner on third. I worked the count to 1-2 and then shot a flare over the shortstop’s head and into the outfield for an RBI single … The next batter shot a grounder past the second baseman as I was breaking to steal second and I wheeled around into third base to give us runners on the corners with two outs …

But that would be it. The next batter flied out and we lost 17-3 … Our worst loss of the season.

So we finished the regular season 5-10 … and if there was any good news to come out of today’s games, it was that we’ll face the team we wanted, the Javelins, in the first round of the playoffs on Tuesday night …

Going into the day, it looked as though we would be facing PT in the first round, but a Javelins win combined with PT knocking off the league’s only undefeated team this afternoon broke a third place tie in the standings, and that means we get the Javelins in the first round -- good for us because we’ve had success against them this season, and a win against them on Tuesday night will get us a second playoff game on Thursday night …

My line for the season …
.361 average, 13 hits, 6 walks, 7 strikeouts, .488 OB%, 8 stolen bases, 13 runs, 7 RBI

As for our other games …
Game one: We lost, 16-4
Game two: We lost, 13-2
Game three: We lost, I was off for the weekend
Game four: We lost, 5-4
Game five: We lost, 20-9
Game six: We lost, 5-4 (with pictures!)
Game seven: We won, 7-5
Game eight: We lost, 12-4
Game nine: We lost, 14-9
Game 10: We lost, 5-3
Game 11: We won, 14-1
Game 12: We won, 12-5, but I was heading home from KC.
Game 13: We won, 16-5
Game 14: We won by forfeit.