Repeat! – Making History

My mother woke me up around eleven o’clock to help her mow the lawn. It takes a couple hours to mow the lawn and weed eat. It worked out that I was able to get the lawn done just as it was time to start to get ready for my final weekend of softball with the Maulers for the regular season.

I got the field about an hour and a half before game time. That was about fifteen minutes before we were required to be there. We stretched. We threw the ball around. We had batting practice.

Then we went to our field for the first of two games for the day. We were playing the Rockets. They are in first place in our division. They have only one loss and it is to earlier this year. If we beat them and win our second game we will have the same record as them, but our head-to-head record would be two and oh, so we would win the tie breaker and we would be division champions.

We started on defense as we were the home team. They got a hit, but we were able to keep them from scoring in the first inning. We came to the plate for our first at bat. Yesterday Grandpa had told me that they would intentionally walk me each time I came to the plate. I was not sure if that was the case. I was batting fourth. I walked to the plate in the with two guys on. Sure enough they walk me. I walked to first and then got a courtesy runner. As I came back, the umpire said that if they keep walking me I can just go to the dugout and have the courtesy runner go to first without me going there first.

We ended up not scoring. Then in the next inning they went three up and three down. One batter came to the plate and I was looking right at her. She was wearing sunglasses and it looked like she was looking right down my line. So I took two steps to the left and then all of a sudden the ball was hit. It was about two feet off the ground. I took one more step left and caught the ball. It was a screaming line drive.

In our half of the inning we scored one run. So the score was one to nothing. After that they broke the game open by batting around. I could see that slightly deflated us. We had been really loud and we had a bunch of people watching the game who were loud. But everyone got a little more quiet.

In my next two plate appearances I was intentionally walked, to bring the total to three straight intentional walks today. Towards the end of the game we tightened our defense up a little bit and stopped the bleeding. But we went out in the bottom of the last inning needed nine runs to tie the game. It was five to fourteen. I was a little worried. We came back from a five run deficit yesterday, but today it is worse.

I was leading off and they decided to pitch to me because even if I hit a homerun it would not kill them because there was no one on base and they had a nine run lead. I hit it to the short stop and I ran like crazy to get to first. I made it as the throw got there, but the ball was bobbled and I was safe. Then the other guys all came to the plate, and just like yesterday people were patient and made the pitcher throw strikes. We kept chipping away at the lead. We keep getting walks and some basehits. Along with an out along the way. Pretty soon it was getting back to me in the line up.

We had one out and the bases were loaded. I was the winning run at the plate. I was given an intentional walk to score a run and get on base. Now we were down by two runs and needed three to win. I was coaching third and people were still being patient, but one guy swung and he caused another out. Now we had two outs and two men on. We got another walk to load the bases. Then a basehit to score one. Followed by another walk. The bases were loaded and we had the tying run come across the plate. The game winner was at third base. Grandpa walked to the plate. They had changed pitchers. Grandpa worked the count to three and one. The next pitch was thrown and it never got more than three feet off the ground. I knew Grandpa would let it go and that would walk in the winning run. I put my arms in the air and started to cheer. Eric, who was on third base came down the line. He hit home and we won the game. The whole team came out and celebrated. It was awesome.

We shook the hands of the Rockets and celebrated some more. But we could not celebrate for long because we had one more game against a team that has a five-hundred record, but had beaten us once already.

We went out there with the fact that they had beaten us and we were not going to take them lightly. We put our game faces on and got ready to play. They did pitch to me. I had a long fly out followed by a couple solid basehits, one of which was a double. While I was playing first base in the last inning I suggested to Grandpa that John could play it and I would sit down. Grandpa said we only have two outs. I said that I would cowboy up and tough it out. Then the next batter hit a screaming show down the first base line. I missed it. After the play Grandpa looked at me and said “If John had been there he would have gotten the ball.” I laughed.

We did not have many problems beating these guys. By beating them we won the D-division championship. We also won it last year, so we won it back-to-back. We were the first D-division team to ever do this in the Seattle League. That was a great honor for me to be part of that. We did some more cheering. I told Grandpa to keep the ball that we won the championship with. I suggested that we all sign it.

I decided to go to the Madison Pub to celebrate with the team. It was also the host bar for the week so there were a lot of teams there. Several people congratulated us on the season and winning the whole thing. We had some beer and talked about the games and the season and going to the World Series down in San Diego in August.

We passed around the ball and a photo of the team that said D-League Champions on it, that Kyle had made. I took off close to nine o’clock PM to go home and have some dinner before hitting the hay.