Thursday - last day of pool play - standings update - Rain in the forecast

The HrSamski's entered play today with a 4-1 record - tied for the best record in camp - one win secures a spot in the elite club of top 4 teams. We were slated to play Gotcha by the Balls and Hello Newman -- my predictions had Hello Newman one of the top teams in camp -- well indeed they are good, but actually better than advertised - a couple rookies are easy MVP candidates - so should be interesting where those individual awards go to.  Gotcha's have been hit by injuries -- their rookies (who are excellent) didn't stay healthy this week so they were sitting at 2-3 entering the game this week.

The weather was overcast, cloudy, gray -- and a bit chilly - game temp was low 60's - we gave up a run early and were down 1-0 - the Gotcha's had Johnny Moore on the bump and he ended up throwing 3 innings of no-hit ball and going into the 4th inning we were down 6-0 -- this field has been good to us as we have won two games in come from behind fashion -- well we found our bats quickly in the bottom of the 4th by getting 5 runs - including a base hit RBI by the blogger, I came around and scored a run as well.  We are down 6-5 and back into the game.  We gave up 2 more runs in the next inning and they were staked to an 8-5 game -- we were unable to get our bats going in the 5th or the 6th -- gave up one more run and now the game is 9-5.  We head into the bottom of the 7th and we get a nice rally going -- fast forward and we have scored 2 runs and with runners at 1st and 2nd (2 outs) we had our wounded warrior at the plate -- Richard Martinson, a couple of purple hearts to his credit, attended camp as a part of a 'fund raising' effort by a few campers -- him and his wife joined the camp for "free" along with another wounded warrior -- ok so back to the game -- Richard is up in a key spot -- Johnny Moore locks in and decides to show no mercy on the warrior and strikes him out to end the inning and the game -- Gotcha's win.  We (including myself) could have played a bit better defense and the game would have been a little different - a couple more hits would have been good too!

Well now we are ready to play our 2nd game against the camp juggernaut Hello Newman - they won their morning game and locked up the #1 seed in the camp - we were analyzing the standings and suddenly realized that with a loss this afternoon - the HrSamski's could fall to the #6 seed in the standing -- really?  Tied for 1st in the morning and falling to the 6 seed by the afternoon -- what?
The game started rough -- but we escaped disaster by only giving up 3 runs in the first inning (they had bases loaded and nobody out) - we struck back in the 2nd with one run and the game is 3-1 - they score another 2 and we get 2 more runs and now it's 5-3.  We head into the 6th inning when Jay launches a moon shot into left field -- he gets an RBI double and now we have the game at 5-4 and guys on 2nd and 3rd with nobody out -- the call was made to get me warmed up in the bullpen - if we get the lead, I will come in next inning to close out the game.  Hello Newman makes a call to their bullpen - stud rookie "Lott" comes in -- the first batter puts on a good battle but after fouling off 2 tough pitches -- pops out to the pitcher.  1 out.  Next batter -- 3 pitches...strike out.  One more batter -- again same result - Out.  HrSamski's failed to cash in on a big spot there.  The top of the 7th we wanted to get in out quick -- that didn't happen -- 6 runs later the game is 11-4 -- we go 1-2-3 in the 7th game over -- I ended up popping up twice in a futile effort at the plate for me today.  Ugh.

In the meantime -- all the games went the opposite of we needed and we fell to the 5 seed, double Ugh.

Unofficial Final Standings:
1) Hello Newman 6-1
2) Wildcats       5-2
3) SQL's    4-3
4) Gotcha   4-3

5) HrSamski's  4-3
6) Walking Dead 3-4
7) All Niters 1-6
8) 3 Amigos  1-6

Tomorrow's forecast looks really bad -- like, rain, a lot of rain....and games might not be played -- if that happens then we might play a doubleheader on saturday but nobody is real sure of what is going to happen -- so fun times at camp - I do not envy the camp director on this call at all -- tomorrow's schedule would normally be Semi-Final games and the Pro Staff vs. Rookie Camper game - which is a lot of fun, but really need the chance to play one more game and move on to the championship.....we will see.

~~ "You can observe a lot just by watching." - Yogi Berra ~~