Marlins vs Yankees and Marlins vs. Red Sox

Tuesday
The forecast for the day is gloomy, but Tuesday morning as I sit at my desk at a library things are looking gorgeous outside. Monday night I had sent Steve the email I posted here. Steve agreed with the revised lineup and pitchers. However, after some more thinking I had thought perhaps we should throw our unreliable pitcher, being Bobby or Jim, in the first in the hope we would then still have time to recover if they got shelled. This causes a flurry of emails back and forth between me and Steve. We end up actually doing four lineups, one with Bobby and Jim throwing in the first and one with them throwing in the fourth. It should be noted that with Brendan catching we can actually do a pretty terrific infield. We decide we’ll throw them both a little beforehand and see who looks sharper and that’s the way we’ll go. I keep pushing for Steve to try and get his younger brother to come as he’s the high school pitcher, but that’s a definite unknown.

As I leave school at just after 3 I listen to a voice mail from Steve. Bobby has called him and he was home sick during the day. So at least that solves our dilemma of who to pitch between Bobby and Jim. As I am driving to the youth center the clouds are quite ominous. In fact when I arrive around 3:30 it is thundering and lightening but only rains for a minute. I expect the game to be called. When I call at 3:45 the game is still on. Same thing at 4:00. And 4:30. And 5:30, when I leave it is sunny once again. So it looks like we’ll play some baseball. Unfortunately, it will be a game without Steve. He calls me at about 4 saying he has some stomach bug. It’s definitely going to be weird coaching a game without him. I also worry that there isn’t really a stomach bug and he simply doesn’t want to drive down for a game that could very easily be canceled. As I have said once or twice before Steve doesn’t seem as committed as last season.

And so I head out to the field, after a stop at home to change, extra early hoping to catch an early game. Which I do. Only problem is that I then realize I’m at the WRONG field. So I drive to the correct field. Jesse is already there and Ethan arrives at about the same time I do. As we walk over to the field, the field is clearly unplayable. Where there should be a batter’s box there is instead a HUGE puddle. A phone call has been made to get somebody to bring some dirt over. Just as I arrive, at 7:15 for our game, there is a flash of lightening. Which means we’ll have to wait 30 minutes to play our game, anyway. The players slowly trickle in. I have Jim and Jesse throw behind the dugout a little. Jesse comes over and tells me how great Jim looks. I swear that no pitcher has ever looked poor throwing to Jesse when there is no coach looking if you were to ask Jesse. I take a look at Jim and he looks OK. He looks like he’s going to get the ball TO the plate, though it won’t necessarily be a strike. But even that is an improvement. Our 7:45 game time rolls around and nothing. The Park District guy shows up right at 7:45. Eventually the ump and the other manager, at my suggestion, agree to start the game on the other field and to move back, as the field with the puddle has the lights. We end up starting at about 7:55, so only 10 minutes late. With no Bobby, Kelvin is our first batter. He draws a walk. Jesse strikes out, but Kelvin has stolen second and third. With Kelvin on third Trey is up at bat. And that’s when the Park District guy comes over and says there was lightening. The other coach asks if I really want to wait the 30 minutes, as we are now playing at a field without lights and the other field might, or might not, be ready to play on. I say that I absolutely want to play. So we start to wait. After about 5 minutes of waiting it is decided that conditions simply won’t let us play and so everyone is sent home.

I remind everyone at this time that we don’t have practice on Wednesday, but are going to do a light practice on Saturday before the game. Steve and I both feared that the Tuesday game would get canceled and we’d miss the game on Wednesday when we’d be at our brother’s graduation. Fortunately, by the time the other team’s coach suggests this the players from our team have mostly left and so it’s agreed we won’t make up the game. Unfortunately, after I reminded people about our game on Saturday Trey goes up to his dad and says “Did you realize we had a game on Saturday?” Trey’s dad asks me several times if that game was on the schedule or was a makeup and I tell him it was on the schedule. Trey’s dad tells me that Trey won’t be there. I do apply a bit of a guilt trip as Steve and I had planned on really going all out against the Red Sox, considering they were our first round opponent. As I leave the field I call Steve to tell him that we will be without Trey for our game on Saturday.

Friday I work am at work at the Youth Center and Joey, who has hit several home runs and is on the Red Sox, is in again. And he keeps trash talking our team, continuing off of something he already started on Tuesday. He keeps trying to get me to admit my team is bad. Keeps bragging about how good his team is. Frankly the whole thing gets annoying, but I never waver in saying that I think we have a good team and that it’ll be a good game.

Saturday Before the Game
Steve and I make plans to get together, have breakfast and then to head over to the field. We put together a lineup without Trey. He is the only one we remember won’t be there, however I later remember that Kelvin had told me he wouldn’t be at the game. While doing the lineup we bemoan the lack of Trey.

We then go out and have a nice breakfast, in my case, or lunch, in Steve’s case, at a deli. As we are finishing up our meal and getting ready to head over to the field Steve gets a phone call. He goes “Uh-oh”. He quickly establishes that it’s Trey on the phone. I think to myself “How can anything with Trey be MORE of an uh-oh”. And then Steve says “Well that’s great. How about the practice beforehand?” And that’s when I practically leap out of the booth. A moment later Steve hangs up. We are going to have Trey for both the practice, which we didn’t really care about, and the game. The whole thing with him missing was so mysterious I am dying to know what it was. A court date? A urologist’s exam? What? Steve and I decide that this warrants redoing the lineup.

In the car ride back from the deli we debate how much we want to use Trey. 2 innings? 1? With the playoffs coming up we don’t want to wear out his arm before the “real” games even start. In the end we decide that we will pitch, Everett, Percy, and Trey with the “split” innings approach to try and limit their pitches. We are now expecting all 12 players to be there.

We get to the field nice and early and basically lay in the grass watching one of the games and sunning before our players get there. When our players do arrive we go through a very light practice that consists of Steve hitting them ground balls while I hit them flyballs, using a tennis racket and tennis balls, and then switching. We then pitch them some soft toss, and they all look good. We end with “footbaseball”. During practice Brendan’s family calls and says he won’t be there. Also absent from the practice are Ethan and Kelvin.

Game time approaches and we are at exactly 9 players. Which means I will be figuring out positions as the game begins. I bring the team over beforehand and give them a speech which goes like this. “We are playing the team we play in the first round of the playoffs. And they aren’t giving you any respect. They really think we’re a bad team and that they can just roll right over us. And I know they’re wrong. We had a nice light practice before hand, but it’s game time now and we have to go out and play 100%. So we’re going to go out there and play hard and prove that that we’re the better team by winning today.” The team checks to make sure I was being serious about them trash talking us, and not just making it up, and I assure them that I am being serious. Both of the kids I know on the team, Joey and Garett, have both said something or made faces so while it was a slight exaggeration to say the team was doing it, it was certainly not an outright lie. The team is pretty motivated as we get ready for our first at bats.

The Game
So the game gets underway. With Trey being there after all he is our leadoff batter. And our star player starts things off by flying out to center-right. The play was a routine play and it was fielded routinely which will be something typical throughout the game. Fuller then hits a rocket, unfortunately it is right at their nearly 6 foot tall second basemen, Joey, who makes a leaping catch. It was a very well hit ball, but perhaps an even better defensive play. Jim walks, but Avi grounds out to the pitcher to end the inning. 0-0

Everett takes the mound against a favorite player of ours from last year, Garrett. We tell Jesse, who is behind the plate, to give a high strike zone and sure enough on the second pitch, after a first pitch strike, Garrett bites and grounds it back to the mound. Next batter rockets it on the ground to shortstop, but Bobby fields it like a pro and we get the next out. Everett then hits the next batter. The following batter gets a single. Up comes Joey, their star slugger. We tell Jesse to setup inside and on the first pitch Joey hits a pitch that would have been a ball right at Jodi in left. She gets her glove on it, but the ball is hit so hard that it pops right out, which wasn’t really her fault. She gets the ball back in quickly, but unfortunately they score a run. Everett then gets the next batter to ground back out to him and so we end the first down 1-0.

Percy leads off our next inning with a walk. Everett follows this up with a single which gets Percy to third. First pitch Everett steals second base so now we have runners at second and third. Jodi draws a walk. Bobby singles into right field only because they had their right fielder playing ridiculously shallow. If he had been playing at a normal depth it’s likely an easy out as the ball went over his head and died. Anyhow Bobby drives in Percy. Jesse strikes out. Trey then hits a single driving in Everett. Fuller steps up and hits a ball to the first baseman who throws it home to get Jodi out at the plate. What is of note is that they are already contesting the run by bringing the infield in, something I think is a strategic mistake in this league, though we never do take advantage of the fact during the game. With two outs Jim is up. He hits a ball to the second baseman which he loses track of. Bobby scores easily. By the time Trey gets to me, and he is sprinting I will add, the second baseman still doesn’t have the ball. With 2 outs and Avi about to be up I decide to send Trey. I figure three things can go right for us: 1. He beats the throw 2. He wouldn’t have beaten the throw but it will go wild or 3. He doesn’t beat the throw but they can’t get the tag on him. Well just after I send Trey the second basemen finally locates the ball and gets it and throws it home, on a perfect throw. The catcher has plenty of time to get setup. TG slides in, pretty clearly under the throw, but is called out anyway. He thought he was safe. I thought he was safe. The parents sitting in the stands thought he was safe. Oh well. Good guys go up 3-1.

Everett is on the mound for another inning. The first two batters pop out, first to Jodi at second and then to Trey at short. Next batter lines a double. He steals third, but we get Garrett to ground out, again, to our pitcher to end the inning. This is the first time where Everett’s good pitching was rewarded in that he allowed only 1 run in two very solid innings of pitching, with only 25 total pitches thrown. Anyhow still 3-1 Marlins. Avi starts of the inning by hitting it hard at the first basemen who makes an error. Unfortunately, Avi did not hurry out of the box and so the right fielder throws him out by a step. If he hadn’t thought he was out when he hit the ball he’d have been safe. This is reinforced when Percy hits almost the exact same ball and is safe by a couple of steps. Percy steals second and third. However, he’s stranded there when Everett hits one back to the pitcher and they look him back. Jodi comes up with two outs and draws a walk. I send her on the second pitch. But it’s all for naught as Bovvy strikes out.
Percy is our new pitcher and does not start off so well, walking the first player. Everett is now catching for us and they decide to run on him with that player stealing second on the first batter, who strikes out. The next batter also strikes out however the runner steals third after Everett makes a bad throw. Normally our left fielder would have been right there to backup, but as the batter was a lefty he was shifted way over. So anyhow they score a run without having hit the ball. The second batter strikes out. Which is just as well that the bases are empty because up steps JR, their slugger. We are playing at the only field with a fence and we have our outfield practically playing on the fence, which proves to be the correct play when he hits a ball that nearly goes over but instead is a very long single. Now this guy is not a fast guy but they STILL managed to have him steal second and third before Percy strikes out the next batter. 3-2 Marlins after 3.

Now it should be said that this game is moving. We are about half way through the game and we are half way through the time limit. This means our plan to only play for 5 innings isn’t going to fly. Our pitching schedule has Trey throwing next inning and Avi closing out the game with the last two. Alternatively, we could have Percy throw 2 and have Avi and Trey each throw one. We decide to see how long this next half inning takes before making a decision. Jesse leads off with a walk. Trey hits a ball to second base which gets Jesse out on a fielders choice. Trey manages to steal second and third. Fuller pops up to second base. I give Trey the green light to try and steal home, as I have more faith in Jim leading off an inning then driving in a run. And sure enough Jim hits the ball to second base. Something has happened to Jesse which diverts Steve’s attention and so I have to make a split second decision on what to do and decide to put Avi up there as we’re still doing well on time. Unfortunately, I don’t have positions for this which proves to be a problem as I have Everett catch again, not really thinking about how Trey should have caught this inning as Trey clearly cannot catch for himself and we didn’t really want to catch Everett for three innings. I realize my mistake too late to change it.

Anyhow Avi takes the mound. Avi starts off with 4 balls, though the batter swings at one in the dirt so it’s 3 and 1. We tell him to take a moment and concentrate, which makes a big difference for him. He takes his time and induces a grounder back to the pitcher for the first out. He then asks if it was a good pitch, which Steve and I assure him it was. Next play is a ball to Trey who is at third base. Trey who when I told him he was playing third rolled his eyes. Anyway TG comes up with it and fires it over to first to Jesse who completely misplays it. So now we have a runner on. Who then proceeds to steal second. He advances to third when the next batter hits a single. We give up the steal and now have runners at second and third. I tell Trey to hold the runner at third on and sure enough we catch him walking back to the bag. Everett makes the throw and we have a run down. A rundown which we execute perfectly, though the runner from second does advance to third. Two outs. Garrett comes up and knocks in a single to score the run. He then proceeds to steal second and third, on consecutive pitches though the call at third could have gone either way. Next batter hits a single to score Garrett. Avi then strikes out the batter to end the inning. 4-3 BoSox.

Avi starts us off with a single. He steals second. Percy then walks. Everett then hits a ground rule double, under the fence, which is a shame as Percy would have scored easily. Jodi strikes out. Bobby then pops it up and the first basemen makes the play though Percy is able to score on a tag up and Everett advances to third. Jesse then knocks Everett home. Jesse is able to steal second before Trey strikes out. We do get three runs though putting us up 6-4.

Trey comes up to pitch. As he’s doing so, JM is very upset about something which Steve is handling. I later learn that Joey made a threatening comment to him. This appears to be in retaliation for a play made where Jesse missed a throw by Everett and so Joey ended up getting hit in the head. We are not sure, as the inning starts, if it is Joey or a different tall kid who made the comment. Trey does not start off well walking the first batter on four pitches. They are able to once again take advantage of Everett getting the runner to third. Joey steps up to bat. On the second or third pitch, Trey makes a bad pitch which bounces in the ground in front of Joey. Joey then takes a step out towards the mound and makes a threatening comment to Trey. The umpire warns him at that moment. Frankly, I think Joey believed all his trash talk and thought we were a bad team that they could roll over and has been surprised that we have held him to singles, not homers, and that in fact his team is losing. The next pitch is a play back to the pitcher. Trey looks at the runner, and the runner is clearly going home. So what does Trey do? Throws to first for the easy out, conceding the run. Given the situation I am OK with it, but I hope Trey realized that the point of looking at the runner is to make sure he doesn’t score, either by throwing it home or keeping him on third. Anyway we record the first out. ON the next play Trey does indeed hit the batter, who promptly steals second. After going down 3-0 on the next batter TG fights his way back and records the strikeout. The inning ends on a grounder to short. They score 1 and it’s now 6-5.

I point out to the team that if we score 7 runs, the max, then we don’t have to play the field as we win. Unfortunately, Fuller starts it off by striking out. This means 3 of our 4 kids with lowest strike out percentages, Jesse, Trey, & Fuller (with the absent Kelvin being the fourth) have struck out. Jim then gets on first after hustling out a play where it once again bloops over the right fielders head. On the second pitch he takes off and steals second. Avi then hits it back to the pitcher advancing Jim. Unfortunately, Percy strikes out to end the inning and our insurance run stranded at third.

The bottom of the inning starts with a single. Bobby almost makes an incredible play, catching the ball on a hard hit line drive, but instead it just gets knocked down and unfortunately the other kid wins the foot race to the bag. Before there can be any steals Garrett hits a ball right at Everett, who is at short. Everett should have plenty of time to pick up the ball and so I yell for him to get the out at second, as I would like to get the lead runner out. Unfortunately, Everett just can’t pick up the ball and both batters are safe. They steal third base, with Jesse throwing in plenty of time to get the runner, unfortunately the throw is just enough off the bag that we can’t get the tag in time. At this point Steve and I pull the infield in. And here’s where Trey proves why he’s a great pitcher. On 7 pitches he strikes out the next two batters. This then brings Joey up to bat. With two outs we now just need to get the out and so we set the infield and outfield deep. Trey seems to have Joey’s number as he hits a not particularly hard grounder to Everett, who muffs the ball again. This scores the tying run. At the time I was just furious with him. However, in retrospect I am not nearly as upset. The kid had pitched for two innings and caught for three. He’s going to be dead tired. If I hadn’t been creating lineups on the fly we almost for sure do not put him at short there. Of course, if I hadn’t been creating lineups on the fly he’d have only caught for two innings. Anyway, Everett has not made one clutch play for us, either at bat or in the field, especially in the field, which is frustrating. We try and do a trick play to get the runner on third to go with a throw to the shortstop when Joey attempts to steal second, but it’s no dice. But we needn’t have worried as Trey takes three pitches to end the game with another strikeout. And we end up with a very hard fought tie.

Looking Forward

Steve and I are VERY upbeat after the game. The team is clearly exhausted but we tell them that we played excellent baseball. Were it not for either of Everett’s errors, or for the bum call in the second on the play at the plate, we win this game.

Looking at the scorebook I worry, however, that the game on Wednesday is not going to go nearly as well. If I had to pick three kids to miss the combination of Brendan, Ethan, and Kelvin would be pretty high up there as Brendan and Ethan aren’t great hitters and Kelvin is not a very good fielder. Furthermore, not having to sit any kids was a major plus for us. I also think they were missing none of their bad kids and a couple of their good kids based on where good hitters were in their lineup in relation to others. So we’ll see. This tie, all things considered, was as good as a win for us psychologically. Once again the other team was mopey and we were upbeat at the end of the game, so that part is good.

I think the parents would be hard pressed at this point to criticize us, as we have the team peaking at the right point in the season, just like we said we would. The game was a very well played game of baseball. The good news is that they made about 1 stupid play and we made 3. So even that augers well in our favor as I am not convinced that they are fundamentally a better team then we are. We also have the advantage of knowing they are going to run hard against us, so it’ll be something we focus on Tuesday.

Speaking of Tuesday, we want to save Trey, Everett, and to a lesser extent, Percy’s arm. Jim and Bobby have both been told they’re pitching. Basically we’re going to talk about having fun with our last game. The less pitching we have our pitchers do here the more we can save them for the playoffs. Hopefully the other team will have the same philosophy.