It's thursday here at camp and we will play 2 more games to finish out the "regular" season play before the first round of the playoffs on friday. The day was cloudy and alittle rain in the morning but the rain held off and the temp was in the low 70's -- humid though but good enough to play. We obviously wanted to win 2 games today -- but in reality we wanted to get through the day without any injuries or having to pitch too many guys.
The first game we started Doug -- he pitched earlier this week with success so we rolled with him -- we were playing the Padrones who were 3-3 coming into the day -- earlier in the week I thought this team was one of the better teams in camp. Doug pitched great -- didn't walk too many guys and before you knew it - he had 5 shutout innings -- we struck for two in the bottom of the third -- a basehit for Sorney and a double for me -- we later scored on groundouts to break through for the scoring. Doug got much needed run support in the bottom of the 5th inning when we got our hitting shoes on and scored another 6 times -- we unfortunately gave up one run in the 6th inning but Doug completed what he started and finished off the game and the No-Lo's won 10-1 -- good defense, timely hitting -- and solid pitching - a good recipe for a fantasy camp win.
The 2nd game we were matched up against the 0-7 Mexican Stingers -- at this point both teams were low on energy but we knew we had to plow through this one. Ron Coomer made an executive decision and we started our spry 81 year old Curt Sampson to take the mound. The first inning went ok, after surrending two hits Curt was able to get the next three guys out -- so the plan was for him to pitch just one inning -- well one inning turned into two inning which turned into three innings......before you know it we are headed into the 5th inning and we are winning 7-0 -- The Stingers plated a run in the 5th to make it a 7-1 ball game (we lost the shutout). Curt was still dealing on the mound at this point. The catcher (Doug) wanted to take a break from behind the plate - so I stepped in and took over in the 6th inning behind the dish -- I ended up surviving a quick inning with Curt only have to throw 4 pitches -- 3 of them were ground balls which were quickly turned into outs -- what a thrill it was to be able to catch Curt - who has been to 21 (or maybe 22) camps over the years! He also had his 3 sons and 3 grandsons with him on the team as teammates!
We ended up winning the game and securing the #1 seed for the camp -- whoa -- I figured we had a pretty good team but I did not expect us to have the #1 team -- we finished with an identical record as the BruBekSki's at 7-1 -- but by virtue of the tiebreaker (runs against) we prevailed by a handful of runs over them -- but it all comes down to friday. Here at camp the friday playoff games are what matters -- win on friday play on saturday -- lose on friday and you are going to watch the games from the stands.
Today was a good day hitting -- I finally got my bat working and collected 5 hits in 6 AB's -- DS topped by effort with a 6 for 6 day -- so a lot of hits all around -- a good day indeed. I think our legs were somewhat refreshed since we didn't have to run too hard since we had built up some leads in the games as well.
Big day tomorrow!
~~ "You can observe a lot just by watching." - Yogi Berra ~~
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