Well - two weekends have gone by without a post - so let me play some catch up!
Last Saturday Mallory played in a one day tournament with at team called No Name Necessary out of Zwolle, LA. Many of the girls on this team I have coached before, as they picked up with our team on many occasions. Their first game was at 9:15am - I'd like to think I could give you a play by play of every game - but they all started blurring together. I'm going to do the best I can to recollect - the 9:15am game was agains the Diamond Cats - it was a pool game so the winning wasn't a necessity - but the girls won - Mallory went 1-2 with a nice slap hit.
Then the bracket games began and the tournament was on ... Our first round game was against the Lady Vikings ... yes - the Lady Vikings - it is the next wave of Airline players - so Mallory had to play against her high school teammates. No Name jumped on top early - and dominated the game 9-2. Mallory went 1-2 again and scored a run.
The 3rd round game was another interesting game for us - we were playing the Florien Fear. This team is coached by one of Mallory's old coaches and friend Annalynn Birch. She coaches many of the girls on the No Name Necessary team (her specialty is with pitchers). She knew many of the strengths and weaknesses of the girls, so it made for a very well played game. The game was tied at the end of regulation time, so tournament rules put an international tiebreaker in effect to find a winner. The inning starts with a runner on 2nd base to better give teams a chance to score. No name necessary scored one run in the top of the inning. The bottom of the inning, the Fear failed to move the runner with a bunt and struck out for the first out. The second batter hit a shot by a diving Mallory - the right fielder fielded the ball and came up firing to home plate. The ball was cut off by the pitcher and got the girl who was on second base in a rundown between 3rd and home. The catcher tagged the runner out and fired the ball to 2nd base where Mallory was covering the bag - and tagged out the girl who got the hit. Double play - game over!
Game 3 was against the Titans - to be honest - I don't hardly remember this game ... sorry! But what I do know is that they won - and got a well deserved 1 game break. So far - all of their games were back to back.
Game 4 was against the Texas Knockouts. Another really good game - I got recruited to call pitches for one of the pitchers since I have coached her in the past several times. I was hoping to just watch and enjoy - but the coach put me to work! The girls played great - Mal went 1-2 with a sacrifice bunt - and they won 4-3 to advance.
Game 5 - by winning the last game, the girls got a 2-game rest and were playing in the winners bracket final. By this time it was almost 8pm - and I had to work, so Julie had to relay the information to me. The girls were playing the Southern Lightning out of Mississippi. Mallory, of course, saved her best game for the game I wasn't at. She went 2 for 2, and made two amazing defensive plays. The parents of the other girls all mentioned how awesome she did when I talked to them later that evening. No Name Necessary advanced to the finals with a 2-0 win.
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No Name Necessary with their 2nd place trophy in the
Showcase of the Stars tournament. |
The girls got another extended break, but because the games fell behind throughout the day, the final game didn't start until almost midnight. I snuck out from work to watch part of the final game. You could tell the girls from both teams were running out of gas - and our shortstop really struggled the last game. The Texas Knockouts came back and beat our girls in a rematch from earlier in the day 6-2. Even though it was a double elimination tournament - the final game did not require our team to lose twice (plus - another game that night would have been impossible!). The girls had a great day, and we got a 2nd place trophy at sometime around 1:30am.
Sunday marked my game in "old man" baseball. The Dodgers were playing the Diablos, and I started at shortstop. After only 1 1/3 innings, our pitcher was pulled and I got put in relief. We were down 5-0 and the bases were loaded. I got the first batter to fly out - but the runner on third tagged up and scored. The next batter got a hit and they scored another run, and then I got the next batter out. Unfortunately, we were down 7-0 and had a big hole to dig out of. I went 1-2 with a walk and scored our first run of the year. My pitching was much better today - and I didn't give up a run for the rest of the game. I ended up with 4 2/3 innings with no earned runs - AND I finally struck out a batter (actually struck 2 out for the game!) However, we ended up losing 7-2. My arm was shot - I also threw batting practice to Holden before the game to help him get ready for Airline tryouts ... it's a good thing I threw before the game, because I was out of commission for the next 2 days!
Monday and Tuesday marked the tryouts for Airline High School baseball Freshman team. Holden was out there with a group of around 30 kids trying to make the team. As you may have seen via his facebook page - the tryouts were successful. Holden said he did well, said his catching throwdowns were spot on, and his hitting was pretty good, too! Here is the official announcement -
http://www.airlineathletics.com/news/2012-freshman-baseball-team/. It was fun to see alot of the boys I have coached over the years on this list (9 - including Holden). I told Holden that was the easy part - now we need to work hard this summer to get him on the field!
Friday, Julie and Mallory left town to head to Greenville - Mallory went to participate in the softball camp at Furman University. The camp started on Monday - but, this gave her a chance to hang with the grandparents before heading off all day long at the camp. I'll get the details and post them here when she gets back.
Holden and I have been on our own for the week so far, and the house is still standing ... no major activities other than another old man baseball game this past Sunday. The game, unfortunately, was at 2pm - and here in Louisiana, it was 100 degrees at 2pm. This time, I got the start at pitcher. Our team jumped out to a 3 run lead to start the game. I struck out my first time up. The first inning, I was a little wild - really struggling to find the strike zone. I gave up one run in the inning - unearned (the third baseman made an error that led to their run). The second inning, I again was struggling with my location, and committed an error as well - but held them to 1 run again. The third inning, I beaned two guys and they scored 2 more runs on errors by our team. I hit a double in the top of the inning, but got stranded on base - so after 3 innings, we were down 4-3. We rallied back in the next inning and got up 5-4. I finally threw a good inning and kept them scoreless. I got another hit in the top of the 5th inning but couldn't get another run in. Another scoreless inning and the score stayed the same. I was just starting to find my groove - and threw a couple of strikeouts and we were still up after 6 innings 5-4. We failed to score a run in the 7th - I grounded out with a runner on third. So - we were in the bottom of the 7th - all we had to do was shut them down ... but I was tired! The first batter hit a double into the outfield. I left the pitch up too high - all game long, I was keeping the ball low - to keep them hitting balls on the ground - mainly because we had been playing all game long with only 8 guys ... so with only 2 outfielders - I was pretty happy with keeping them to minimal damage. Getting tired and missing locations cost me a run, as the next batter hit a ball to the outfield and score the runner tying the game. Both of those balls would have been caught if we had 3 outfielders, so it was a little depressing. They got a runner on base with an error on our 1st baseman, before I got the first out of the inning on a ground out. I walked a runner to load the bases - but the next batter hit a ball by our third baseman - and they won the game 6-5. A good game - but wish we would have won!
Holden and I celebrated our night as bachelors with a meal at the Japanese restaurant called Shogun. We had sushi and rice. Holden tried tempura shrimp for the first time and liked it - I had gyoza ... not as good as Mom's - but it hit the spot!
Anyways - that's all we have for now. Holden and I are going to try to head out to Dallas and go to In-N-Out Burger and maybe go to Six Flags for the day. If that happens - you can be sure to see some pictures posted!
