Game: Marlins vs. Cubs

Pregame

We expect 12 players. Neither of us have gotten a call. The weather forecast is once again ominous but the storm time keeps moving back so Steve and I are optimistic about getting our game in. We go to his house and make the lineup. It’s a really nice lineup considering we have to sit every kid by the 4th inning. Normally Steve and I go above and beyond the rules and have every kid scheduled to play at least one outfield inning. No such doing today. We’re going for the win, just as we would in the playoffs. We do the following for pitchers/catchers:

Trey/Jesse
Trey/Jesse
Everett/Trey
Evertt(.5)&Percy(.5)/?
Percy/Everett
Avi/Everett

The idea is that the moment Everett starts not to look sharp we yank him, with the possibility of doing the same if Percy starts not to look sharp in the 5th, as the 6th inning is a pipe dream.

We go to dinner. We head to Sportmart, to pickup some tennis balls, for flyball practice, and a handheld counter (you know a little circular medal thing that clicks). Only they have no pitch counters. Not only that but they’re very unhelpful about it. Anyhow we decide to check out Target next, but during the drive over there I come up with the idea of using my stopwatch with it’s 99 “laps” as pitch counter if need be. And need be it will, as Target does not carry the item.

We get to the filed. Percy’s sister has a soccer game at the adjacent field to our baseball game so he’s there really early. After throwing some toss and fielding some grounders, I have him pitch to me. After he throws two bad pitches, I tell him to shake it off, he does, and throws in several nice ones. I then have him try and throw me a change. And it’s a nice enough off speed pitch. He looks like he could have another good outing.

As discussed in the post yesterday, we decide to play “footbaseball” before the game. Several of the parents were clearly skeptical about this, but the kids came out with energy. I was busy talking to the ump and opposing coach when Steve did the pregame talk. We go out to the field with energy.

The Game
The game begins and we have no Ethan, Kelvin, or Brendan. And honestly? That’s not the worse thing in the world as none of them are great fielders. But it means I have to scramble to redo our lineup, going from 3 subs to no subs. Luckily we’re batting first. Right as we finish batting I finally finish the first inning and Kelvin nearly simultaneously shows up. Batting wise Jodi, Trey, and Everett all strike out while Jim draws a walk. This is clearly their ace. He has good control and great velocity. I hope we won’t see him in the bottom of the inning.

As I continue to scramble to do the lineup, as subbing 3 players and 1 player require completely different schemes rendering our pregame plan pretty much useless, TG lets up a well hit double. He then strikes out the next batter, but the leadoff batter advances to third on a steal during the at bat. The next batter, Andy, a kid I know well from my days of student teaching and because he lives in the neighborhood, lofts a HIGH flyball into deep in the infield on the second base side. Percy and Everett converge on it and Everett calls for it and catches it like a routine flyball. He then proceeds to talk to Percy while the runner goes home. Steve and I scream at him, but by the time Everett realizes what’s going on the run has scored. It is utterly ridiculous. I mean if it had been Kelvin, or Ethan, catching the ball I understand how a sac fly which scores a runner goes down, but I am amazed at Everett’s lack of awareness of the runner and the situation.

Trey then gets the next batter to ground back to him. Now I happen to know from my talking around the league that Andy is their best player. I make a mental note of the fact that he’s hitting 3rd and that the 4th batter is their ace pitcher. So it’s now 1-0 Cubbies but it’s still anyone’s game. They bring in a new pitcher and I breath a sigh of relief. Percy starts us off with a walk, and he then steals second. Jesse rips a ball into center and it goes to the fence easily scoring Percy and landing him at second. Bobby grounds out to first and Jesse has to hold at second. Fuller then grounds out to second and Jesse is able to advance. Avi walks. Their coach calls time and brings the shortstop and catcher in to talk at the mound. Steve and I think he’s going to use our play of throwing to short. On the first pitch Steve sends Avi and instead they throw to 2nd and nail Avi dead to left. It wasn’t even close. That’s out 3. But we’re tied 1-1

The first two batters are interesting. The first batter hits a ground back up the middle, just under Trey’s mit. Jodi, at short, is getting in a good position to make the play, until it hits the rubber, and flies into center. Base hit. Next batter hits a ball to the first base side. Everett has the best play, and fields the ball, but there’s nobody at first. I have repeatedly told Trey that if the first basemen is going field the ball he needs to be over there. After this happens I remind of this and he says he thought the second basemen was going to cover. Technically, he’s correct that the second basemen should have covered in this instance, but I don’t expect Avi to know to do this, especially as he’s played far more 3rd base then 2nd this year, where as I do expect Trey to know to move to the bag as a pitcher. Anyhow due to freakish sort of plays we now have runners at first and second. It is, by this point, drizzling and so the ball is hard to handle. The next pitch, Jesse loses his grasp on the ball and the runner, who is pretty fast, takes off to third. Jesse has him dead to right. He throws, Fuller catches and makes the tag, out 1. What’s great is that even if Fuller hadn’t made the tag the guy didn’t slide so we’d have gotten the out anyway, which I confirmed afterwards with the ump, as we hadn’t discussed mandatory sliding in the pregame meeting. Trey strikes out the batter with ease. He then looks like he’s struggling against the next batter, ending up walking him after 8 pitches. Which is sort of remarkable as up until that point he’d only thrown 24 pitches in the two innings. Anyhow on 1-0 pitch the next batter grounds right to Avi on a ball, who fields it like a pro, recording out 3. We escape what could have been a disastrous inning, unscathed. 1-1 after 2

Jodi is at bat and she strikes out again. Jim, per my instructions, shows bunt on the first pitch. He pulls back, as it was a ball, but this draws the infield in. I tell him after he’s done this that he can either bunt or hit, his choice. He chooses to hit and once again gets a single thanks to having the infield in. Score one for the coach. Trey then grounds into a FC. I give him the greenlight. He steals second and advances to third on Everett’s single. Once again there is time as the coach pulls in the relevant fielders. I tell Everett that they’re going to try and throw him out so he needs to go as soon as there is a slightly mishandled ball and go hard as he can beat out the throw. He does go, the catcher’s throw is way off and Trey scores easily. Their coach was yelling at his catcher not to throw, despite the fact that a good throw could have made it a close play (though Everett should’ve still been safe) so I’m not quite sure what the talk was about there. Anyway Percy walks. On the second pitch, it gets by the catcher. Percy immediately starts running hard for second. Everett delays and only starts running when he realizes Percy is barreling down towards second. Steve later tells me that he was telling Everett to run. It ends up a close play at third but Everett is clearly safe. Jesse is unable to take advantage of the opportunity, however, and we strand the runners after he strikes out. Marlins are up 2-1. I had told Steve I wanted a 4 run lead with Everett coming into pitch, but overall we’re playing sharp, and with energy, so hopefully things will be ok.

On the first batter it’s a hard hit groundball to the first base side. At first it appears to be a redux of the last inning, with their first base coach even telling the hitter “No one is covering” . But he’s so wrong. Jim, at second, had been pulled towards first by the ground ball, and just as the coach finishes his sentence he appears at first and easily catches the lob from Jesse and it’s out 1 in what looks like a routine play though is anything but routine. Everett walks their next batter, and it is clear that “coincidentally” they have their best player first and their worse player last. Anyhow, runner is at first. Their next batter hits a long flyball to left center. With outstretched glove the left fielder makes the catch. The runner is practically at second base when this happens. We yell for him to make the throw. It’s a pretty dead on throw, but comes in a little low. Jesse misjudges it and it gets by him, but the runner is forced to stay at first. Steve and I both yell out a good job to Bobby, who has made several great catches for us, only to realize that it was Fuller, who was standing right next to Bobby, who made the catch. Whoops. If you remember I talked about how Fuller was terrible at catching flyballs. But man did he get that one. Two outs. At this point Everett has thrown 8 balls and only 1 strike (with one foul ball on a pitch that would have been a ball). But he manages to strike out the next batter, looking very sharp. As we get ready to hit, I talk to Andy’s mother and she expresses some surprise to see Andy batting third this game. Which confirms my suspicion, along with the fact that the opposing coach does not keep a scorebook, that this guy is fiddling with things. Which, considering his team is one of the worse two in the league, I can understand on a certain level. Anyhow, I’m glad to have caught this jerk cheating.

Fourth inning, sees a truly horrendous pitcher come in. I pull Bobby aside and say I don’t want him to swing until after the pitcher throws a strike. When he lets an easy strike go past him, the coach asks me “did you tell him to take?” I confirm that I did. He’s not to pleased with this. I tell him it’s the only time all game I’ve told a player to take. He tells me that he thought I had earlier. I say that I haven’t, and he again says that he thought I had. I tell him point blank I’m not going to lie to him. The only reason that this is a point is that this league promotes kids swinging. And we do tell kids to swing. Now I’m sure if I didn’t already know this guy’s a cheater this goes down a little differently. Anyway, that is the only strike this pitcher throws and after 17 pitches, including having walked in a run, the pitcher is pulled. Jodi has struck out the first two times looking, so I had told her, even before our discussion with the Cub’s coach, that she needs to swing. She does swing, and strikes out, swinging this time. Jim then has a play recorded in the book as a sac, which I just can’t recall to be honest but which scores Fuller. Trey then grounds out to the pitcher to end the inning. 4-1 good guys.

Before the game we’ve told Everett and Percy about how this is going to work. Everett walks the first batter, on a full count, with a very close ball four. On the next player the player hits it back to Everett who listens to what I’m yelling this team and gets the lead runner out at second. Their next player, on a 1-2 pitch of course, gets a single. Everett is throwing better though. And he proves it striking out the next batter on three pitches, even making the guy fall down on strike 3, though the runners do manage to advance on a ball that gets by Trey. I tell Evertt that he should throw it hard as this will be his last batter. On the second pitch, Everett throws a bad pitch, which gets by Trey. Despite Steve having reminded him that he needs to cover, Everett mopes and by the time he recovers the runner is close to scoring. It’s a close play at the plate, but the runner scores, more because Everett has had his 3rd mental lapse of the game then anything else. After falling down 2-0 Everett battles back and ends up striking out the guy. So much for Percy needing to pitch. 4-2 Marlins heading into the 5th.

Everett grounds out to the second basemen, who manages to make the play despite mishandling what is now a very slippery ball, as there has been a near constant drizzle for the past 50 minutes or so. Everett ran out the ball really well though, so that was good. Percy then strikes out. Jesse comes and rips a single past the shortstop. I have him steal second. Bobby then walks. Fuller gets up and rips a double into right center, scoring Jesse. On the first pitch it gets by the catcher and Bobby, noticing the pitcher isn’t covering, takes off running and slides into home scoring. I call him over after the play and congratulate him on what I think is heads up base running. He says thanks though he somewhat mysteriously apologizes at the same time. I later hear from Steve the whole story. Turns out Steve had said to listen to him and Bobby made some smart alec comment and then moments later scores. This is one of those times where if he gets called out it is a major issue, but since he scored it becomes harder to make an issue out of it. Anyway, Avi walks, and Kelvin again gets a check swing “single” which scores Fuller. Jodi then comes up and strikes out for the fourth time, looking at strike 3 for the third time, though she did get several good swings in. When she makes contact she can really rip it, so I feel it’s less a case of mechanics then timing, though with her not being able to come to practice due to Hebrew/Travel Softball it’s hard to know as we can’t ever get time to work with her really.

So we start the bottom of 5 up 7-2. On 8 pitches Percy walks the first batter. He often doesn’t look good on the first batter so I’m not too concerned, though he only has a little leeway before we get to the hart of the order, and due to time constraints this is the last inning. However, as the second batter comes up, one of the Park District people comes running in, having spotted lightening and the game ends.

And, we won.

With that note I’m going to end this entry. Look for a special extra post tomorrow as I do a midseason status report and talk about Saturday’s game a little.