Kevin's Ramblings…

Well, that was an interesting game tonight.  We played the A-Turf Titans 14u club.  Wow, they were enormous to say the least.  Fourteen year old kids that were my size?  Please, what are they feeding them?

Anyway, we didn’t actually play all that badly but we got our asses handed to us.  It ended in 5 innings 10-0.  We got a total of 5 base runners, 2 walks and 3 singles.  Not pretty.

I also had to take two players out of the game.  One wasn’t feeling well, he looked green to me.  Another was spiked at second base.  They will both be fine.

We play a double header tomorrow against New Era Gold (in the US) and then another double header at home on Sunday – that’s one hell of a lot of baseball.

Wish us luck.

My ball team played last night against the Westerkirk Royals from Oakville last night.  This is the same team that came down and played my Major Peewees last summer, we were a 13u club and they were a 14u club – they pounded us into the ground.

So, I contacted the coach a few weeks ago and scheduled another game.  It started out really well, we held a 4-1 lead going into the 6th and weren’t even playing a perfect game by any means.  My team also uses wood and they had metal which will sometimes offer an advantage.

I was a bit short on pitching last night.  My boys have been heavily playing high school baseball and those coaches seem to be clueless when it comes to saving arms, they simply either don’t care or have no idea…  My intended starter wasn’t able to start, he’s done a lot of pitching in the last few days so I went to another starter – he lastes 2 2/3 innings which isn’t all that bad.  My second pitcher did quite well and pitched a little over 3 innings and we held the lead until the 6th when they broke through for a bunch of runs to take a 6-4 lead.  We chipped away and scored one and then the flood gates opened.

We made a few errors and didn’t execute other plays and ended up losing the 9 inning contest 14-4 or something around there – in the 9th inning I ended up using 2 pitchers (or was it 3) and we couldn’t get any outs so we scrubbed the game after they bat through the order.

I’m not disappointed mind you, the Royals are an Elite level club and a damn good one at that – they would be considered AAA where we are an A club.

On the Jeep front, I will get that tomorrow.  I am looking forward to it, very nice vehicle.  More to come on that one.

I received a call in the morning on Saturday, somewhere around 8:40am from the Convenor of the Tournament in Niagara Falls.  He didn’t have good news – the Tournament was being cancelled due to bad park conditions in Thorold and Chippawa.  Oakes Park was fine though.  Did he consider contacting St. Catharines, Welland or any of the other Associations to see if any of them had any diamond time, so, the tournament was cancelled.

I received a second call about 45 minutes later from a coach from Mansfield, the team that we were supposed to play at noon wondering if we wanted to play an exhibition game.  Sure, I said – I contacted the team and told them we were back on for noon.

Well, I get back to the park and a coach from North York had arranged a mini-tournament with the 7 teams that were remaining.  Where was Niagara Falls in all of this, other than saying “sure”, use Oakes Park, it took a coach from North York to arrange the tournament – that’s a bit insane.  The Convenor was around the park but didn’t do too much.

Anyway, we ended up playing a total of 3 games, 3:15pm, 7:15pm and 9:15pm.  Good games they were as well.  We defeated Milton in one of the best games that I have ever coached in.  We got the 3rd out at the plate (tying run) in the bottom of the last inning (5th maybe).  In the 2nd game, we played Aurora and lost 4-1, but, on a positive note after a bad 1st inning where we gave up 4 runs we were perfect – the boys played excellently.  In the night-cap, we easily defeated a select club from Mansfield, the team with the coach who originally contacted me.

So, with what could have been a bad weekend turned into something pretty good actually.  Three games, $120 from the team account and 2 wins – not too shabby.

I’ve coached for a LONG time and this team, without a doubt is the most talented club that I’ve ever had the honour of coaching.  They listen, are respectful and they WANT to play.  I am going to enjoy this year, that’s for sure.

Tomorrow, well, later today we play in our first OBA Tournament of the 2011 season.  We are travelling ALL the way to Niagara Falls.  We play all of our games at Oakes Park as well which is awesome.  I just hope that the rain that we’ve gotten the past few days won’t turn the park into a lake.

Wish us luck – I am sure that I’ll report on what happens…