Monday - We play 2 -- the weather is excellent! Standings update

It's Monday at camp - it was forecasted to be a sunny and 80 and it did not disappoint as we had probably slightly warmer than 80 - but sunny.

We played against the Ditch Cougars in the morning game and I was pitching against Lance Anderson (a perennial solid pitcher, if not Cy Young award winner) -- and the game did not disappoint.  Through 4 innings we had a  nice 0-0 game going - Lance was in the zone, only giving up one hit and I worked through some base runners but kept them from scoring -- so a pitchers' duel.
Well Lance hit a double to lead off the inning and later scored to give them the first run (which I predicted the first team to score was going to win) and they were up 1-0. We got two runners on base to start the bottom of the 5th -- Jason Pace came up and hit the first pitch right down the first base line to score both those runner -- 2-1 ballgame.  I get through the 6th inning clean and we don't do anything in the bottom of the 6th -- so just get a 1-2-3 inning and we get out of here with a game 1 victory.  I strike out the first batter with a straight fastball down the middle - he must have been looking for something different, the 2nd batter, I used my side arm slider and got him looking on the back door outside pitch -- 2 outs.  Looking good, feeling good.  3rd batter (which is the top of their order) comes up and I get him on 2 strikes right away -- just one more pitch -- next pitch he reaches out off the outside corner and it finds the outfield in-between our SS and 3B for a base knock. Damn...I couldn't finish him off.  He advances to 2nd on a strange passed ball play which our catcher (more or less had a brain fart) the next batter -- same situation I had a 1-2 count on him and the "passed ball" was a weak/bad swing for strike 2 -- so looking good feeling good -- I hang a slider and the batter pushes one just passed the 2nd baseman and the RF could not muster up a decent throw and the tying run scores!  2-2.  Well I will spare you the details as they add on 2 more runs -- i made decent pitches but an error and a nice hit by Lance stretched the lead to 4-2 -- we went quietly in the bottom of the 7th and we lost -- it was a really good baseball game so it's totally ok to take the loss.

We play the afternoon game get out to a quick 3-0 lead - courtesy of a misplay by my hit -- ended up getting a few runs - this game was not a good baseball game, lots of walks and 3-2 counts -- but somehow we kept them off the home plate and almost gave the game away in the bottom of the 7th - but they left the bases loaded and we won 5-3 -- so ended up being a good day - we played against a very good pitcher and the afternoon was against one of the better squads -- so 1-1 was a good day considering we played very average -- so we look forward to tomorrow's two games and see if we can win 2!

Team dinner tonight -- we take our coaches out for a good bite.

Standings after the first day --

Warriors 2-0
Ditch Cougars 2-0
Weapons of Destruction 1-1
Oreo's 1-1
Shakers 1-1
Ball Berians 1-1
Wins & Saves 0-2
3 Amigos 0-2

Some surprises -- but that always happens at camp!

We play 2 tomorrow!


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