Last night's game went late and I figure that if the Star Tribune is allowed to say that a given game ended too late to report about in the paper, than I'm allowed to say that this game ended too late for me to blog about it.
We traveled to Veteran's Field to take on the Little Sailors, pardon me, Skippers of Minnetonka.
It wasn't exactly ideal baseball weather. In all my years on the diamond, I can in good faith say that last night was the first game I've ever played in the snow. You heard it hear, there was snow flakes flying during a baseball game at the end of APRIL. April fools, right? Wrong.
A few things that I noticed upon arrival at Veteran's: 1) Minnetonka has continued the tradition of warming up and doing their pre game routine without their uniform tops on (I suppose you could say they were topless), 2) They had a big sign on the side of their dugout that read "US" and they all touched it when they entered the dug out, and 3) There was a hole, nay, a crater in the right handed batters box.
Don't worry, I let the umpire know about the hole in the batter's box during each of my four at bats.
We jumped out to an early 4 run lead by stringing together a few walks, a few hits, and six stolen bases in the first inning. Tim Shannon got out there and pitched well despite the snow. There were a few pitches that he lost control of because of the wetball, but he managed to pitch very well through the fifth inning.
Somewhere in the middle of the game, Country Mike Larson was up to bat. With two strikes, he check swung at a pitch and the catcher dropped the ball. Not until the catcher had tagged Mike out did the umpire make the call that it was a strike. Mike wasn't sure whether or not to run, and the late call by the umpire didn't make it any clearer to him whether or not he should have ran. Coach Lerner called time, walked over to the umpire and asked if it was a strike on the swing, or a called strike on the pitch. Before Coach could even finish his question, the umpire got defensive and firmly stated, "It was a strike on the pitch, Coach! NOT a called strike!" That brought Coach Lerner's total Umpire Chit Chats to 5.5 on the year. For those of you who are interested in statistics, Coach Lerner averages .611 Chit Chats per game.
Once Tim left the game, Matt Sinderson came in and went to work. Matt has been money on the mound for us this year. He has done a great job of coming in late in the game and putting a stopper in the other team's offense. Until this game, no team had scored on him. He was money this game, but unfortunately, the last play of the game was a successful suicide squeeze by them. Matt still pitched three strong innings and managed to make a lot of Skippers look silly.
We ended up losing 5-4 in the 8th inning which makes our last 4 games all loses by 2, 1, 1, and 1 run respectively. We've been so close, but close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades. We have Wayzata tomorrow at home, a great chance to get back to our winning ways.
No comments:
Post a Comment