First Tournament Day Two.

I started off the morning missing my alarm. I was just a few minutes late to the field but again I just got my players ready on a cold early morning and we were ready to play. I made my lineup and talked to my starting pitchers.

We played a team called the Nitro that has always beaten us apparently (without me). I had my hardest thrower on the mound because I wasn't sure if my defense and offense were awake yet. Well turns out they were. I don't remember much about that game but I know we won on a somewhat lucky call and time limit. Who says you can't have clock management in baseball?

The second game was against a team in a much worse bracket and they were called the Storm. We were playing on a hitters field and my team was stroking the ball so I put on a pitch to contact pitcher because I wanted to save the rest of my guys for the championship game I was pretty sure we would get to. It was a hitters game the first inning with a score of 2-2, only difference was that my pitcher threw 14 pitches and their pitcher threw 34 pitches. The second inning was the same story where we scored a few runs and they didn't score any though. They left their pitcher in throughout the game, even when it was 10-2 (us) and the poor kid threw 150+ pitches... that's terrible to do to a player! We stomped them in that game. Now on to the championship game!

We played the Predators again for a rematch of the first game of the tourney. I noticed right away that they were screwed. They had no life to them, they only had nine players to our eleven, and their fans were quiet as ever. I knew if I got my team up and excited that we would win this game. The first three innings were a defensive showcase. Both teams making great plays and hitters were being robbed of base hits. It was about the 4th inning that we exploded for seven runs. I switched pitchers and we held them that inning. Then we scored another three runs making it 10-0. The fans got loud, my players got a little extra life to them and things were looking up. I had the same approach for my catcher and pitcher and we got the first three hitters we faced out. Thus ending the 5th inning and giving us our first ever tournament win. 

Everybody was excited and quite a few parents congratulated me for teaching this team and molding them in to a championship team. I had a few messages from players thanking me and asking me what the next goal on the season was. Below is the first place trophy picture.

photo cred. Tracy Jepson.