finally some time

I actually made a post about our last game, but I don't know what happened to it. Been on the go a lot here lately. But the family left me for the weekend, and I have the run of the house, so I can get around to typing again.

So I will give an abbreviated commentary about the last game. Super fun night with the big crowd, and playing under the lights, and all that. I talked to the Ames coach afterward, and they had a good time as well, obviously more fun for them by winning.

The big difference in the game was their outfield play. They did a great job of hitting the cutoff man with solid throws. He said they practiced that, and executed as well as they ever had. Stinks for us I guess.

Our 5th inning was a goodie. All of our 5 runs came with two outs. Kudos to the guys for not giving up. Taylor had a good night with the bat going 3-4, Jerald went 2-4 with a double and a dong, and Alex went 3-3.

Mick had a rough pitching start, but did his job catching 2 flies in right, right after being taken from the mound. Jerald and Andy did a good job of keeping Ames off balance.


As for the gang as a whole, this was a super bunch to be around. You don't think of it with 12 year old boys, but this is a very quiet bunch for the most part. They got along well, but weren't running their mouths and annoying the coaches, which is good.

It was a different team to run, with 14 guys on the team. They are used to being on teams with 10 or 11 kids, and getting a lot of playing time. Obviously they want to play, but I didn't see anybody having a big black cloud about it, affecting the rest of the team. As I told the guys, their days of being on teams with one or two players above what is on the field are about over, as they move into Jr High, and HS.

Because I like stats, here are some. We had a .339 team batting average, which is pretty good. The stats look a lot different than my regular season team. The batters walked and struck out a lot less. I equate that to better opponent pitching, and better batters on our part.

Our pitching wasn't the greatest. We had some good efforts mixed in there, but a couple of bad innings really did us in. I am not even considering or worrying about Marshalltown tho.

I also want to thank those of you that volunteered for various jobs, be it in the concession stand, doing book or pitch counts, umpiring, being TD, or anything else that I have currently forgotten. There is a lot of stuff to make this all fly in the short amount of time, and I couldn't do it all myself. I also want to thank my assistants, Doug and Dan. It is a good experience to work with different coaches, and I learned some stuff from them as well, and they are good guys to boot.

Have a good rest of the summer!