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Well after a cold wet spring (ok, cold and wet on my scale here in GA), we have finally started ramping up softball.
The Drafted women’s team has played in 2 tournaments – we took 4th in our first tournament at Metro. We played6 games — we were NOT ready to play that much in our first tournament! We were all soooo sore after that. In our second tournament at Lovejoy we won 1st – yeah! We play again this weekend.
Last weekend we played our first co-ed tournament at Conyers. We played four games and came in 3rd – yay! Great outing for a co-ed team.
I’m playing in a co-ed league at Al Bishop, and occasionally at Hunter Park when they need me. The Atlanta Advertising League will start up May 7th.
Having fun so far — it’s great to be back in the softball groove!
Had a great time playing co-ed softball this past Saturday in Conyers. I kind of gauge success by how late we stay — if you make it to dark and playing under the lights, you did ok. We came in 4th and left around 10pm. I hit the ball GREAT until the last game, and we all sucked that game… lost 6-3. You can’t win many softball games scoring 6 runs, much less 3. The score was 1-1 until the 6th.
This weekend there is a Jack and Jill (co-ed) tournament scheduled for Al Bishop which I kind of hope makes, even though our women’s team needs to play soon. If it doesn’t make, we’ll play women’s at Metro. Al Bishop is closer to the house, but Metro isn’t too much farther (compared to Conyers and Lovejoy).
No pictures – didn’t even take the camera. Maybe next time.
We have played in 3 tournaments, and it’s rained in all 3 tournaments.
But, we only had one small delay and just a little rain on Saturday.
We started out with the Lady Rebels — great team, and they jumped out to a 10-0 lead on us early. But we kept just chipping away and actually got pretty close at the end. Final score was 15-11. We were happy.
Next game was against the Lady Roadrunners, and my family came to watch! My mom, dad, brother, his wife and their little girl all came to watch my game. We won, but I can’t remember the score. I know we scored around 15 again.
Our 3rd game was against Birmingham Extreme – another really good team, and we won! Again, forgot the score, LOL, but we really hit well and had a great time.
Our fourth game was against the Lady Roadrunners again, and this time they scored just a few more than we did… but that pushed them into Sunday. And it rained ALL night Saturday night and most of Sunday morning, so I don’t think they had much fun.
We got our new shirts (pants should be arriving shortly) so we had to take a team picture… we look great! We also have white ones with black letters lined in that royal blue, and a black shirt with royal blue letters lined in white.
Front row: Michelle (Scrappy), Amanda (A), Tonya, Stacey, Cindy, Tracey
Back row: Anje (J), Amy (Amos), Shannon, Kristi, Sheron, Sherrie (Bear)
Drafted has now played in two tournaments. And both were cold and rainy. But, we’ve had fun, we’ve played ball, and we’ve laughed a lot. It’s good to be back together with this group of women — they’re all fun to be around, and we all are playing a game we love to play.
Our first tournament at Metro was The Spring Fling on March 29th. We lost our first game 9-12 to The Bounty Hunters, and then lost to an Alabama team 14-13 in the 8th (extra innings for softball, we only go 7). The rain started some time during that game.
We had a couple of hours until the next game so we headed for dry grounds and a bite to eat. While we were gone “the bottom dropped out” and the fields were flooded. But ball was still being played. I wish I’d gotten a picture of Field 1, it was definitely the worst. Here’s a sample of how our field looked for Game 3:
You could run around the water unless there was a play, then you had to go right through it. Oh fun. Field one had a mud puddle (more like a lake) that went from 5 feet past 1st all the way to 2nd. The 2nd baseman had to play in the middle of it.
They moved the tournament to a one pitch, and we lost — don’t remember the score, because we were actually kind of happy to leave — it was still raining and didn’t look to be ending any time soon. I know at one point I walked to the plate and asked the catcher if she smelled what I smelled and she did — it smelled like lightning. ick.
We were hoping on April 12th we’d have better weather — if not warmer, at least drier. Not to be so — the high was in the low 60s if we were lucky. It started raining some time Friday and was still going strong when we arrived in Conyers at 9:30am. Our game was supposed to start at 10, but we knew there was trouble when 1 field wasn’t being played on – was totally under water. So the 9am game from that field played on our field before we could play – so we started around noon.
I played first and those are my cleats after the first game — AND after I’ve cleaned some of the mud off. I had mud up the inside and outside of my pants to my knees. We beat the Lady Roadrunners and didn’t have another game SCHEDULED until 4:30pm. We were guessing we’d play around 6 and we were wrong.
We got cleaned up (i.e. changed clothes in the parking lot) and went to Applebees so Shannon could have a Perfect Margarita (or two). Then off to the mall for a stretch of the legs and back to the fields. To sit and wait…and wait and wait. We actually wound up playing after 6:30pm. We played Ladies in Action (used to be a B team) and lost 16-5. We had a couple of bad innings in the field but otherwise didn’t play as bad as it seems looking at the score. And so then we got to… wait some more!
We wound up playing Fully Loaded (another used-to-be B team, with an A team player) at 8-ish (the sunset was amazing, but I was coaching 3rd and didn’t get to take a pic!). We were winning 3-2 for a while, but wind up losing 3-5. We came in 5th place — pretty good for our 2nd tournament, and up against some strong opponents!
We’ve opted out of playing in Cumming this weekend, and look forward to playing April 26th in Lovejoy for Flag City.
Baseball is starting up. Softball schedules are being emailed out. The kids are losing teeth on such a regular basis that the Tooth Fairy may rent out the spare room (Buddy is starting his molars, Sweetie is moving to remainder of front teeth). Twee’s top came down last Sunday for a wonderful sunny ride about town. Yep. Spring is in the air — and in my sinus cavity.
Buddy, Sweetie and I hit some balls on Sunday, but they only had baseball. They both hit 40mph, and did ok, considering they’ve only been twice, and I hit 40 and 50mph, and did ok, considering I’ve never played fast pitch in my life. The 60mph button was dark, and I chickened out going for 70mph. Maybe next time. And, I hit with my 30 ounce softball bat, so yay me!
I’ve got my Women’s C Team schedule up as well as my Atlanta Ad League schedule, although until we get all the interested teams in and the league drawn up, I won’t know opponents or times until later. I hope we can bounce back from the sad short season we had this past fall.
I’ve changed my desktop picture to a more seasonal theme. This great blog I’ve just found – Shorpy - has some incredible high definition pictures. Just amazing stuff. I think I’m getting the mlb.com package for my birthday, so I’m really getting into the baseball frame of mind.
And on a totally unrelated to the rest of this post, we surprised the kids and took them to the circus 2 weekends ago. Through pulled strings of our CRO’s exec admin Kim B. (rock on, Kim!) we got seats in the VIP Suite our company owns. It was a nice surprise for them, and 2 bags of cotton candy (with 2 hats), 2 souvenir sports bottles of lemonade, and 1 spinny toy later, we were $62 poorer (yes!), but a happy family.
Drafted took 1st place in the Warm Up to Nationals tournament Saturday!
We had a great time… went 4-1 (the one loss took us to the “make” game), and left the fields around 12:15am late Saturday night.
Our first game at 9am was against the Bounty Hunters… quickly becoming semi-bitter rivals of ours. They’re great people, but we just can’t beat them!!!! Once again we got more than halfway through the game with the score close — 2-2. Usually this is where they have a break out inning and pull away for the win. But this time we had the breakout inning!
The win brought us back at 11am to play the only B team in the tournament. Ladies in Action… they would have to spot us 4 runs (it was an equalizer tournament). They would have, if they had showed up. We win by forfeit! And get a break until 4:30pm. I took the break and went home to spend time with EGlenn and the kids for a bit.
Back at 4:30pm we meet up with Georgia Lightning. Another tough team that we’ve played a lot this season… we’ve beat them only once before. After a shaky start we came from behind to win the game, and THAT bought us a break until 9pm!!!
Instead of going home again, several of us went up to Longhorn to get in the cool and have a place to sit for a while. We ordered mostly appetizers and sat around and shared pictures of kids / pets / vacation and the like.
Just as we pull up to the park for the 9pm game the thunder and lightning starts. Expecting quite a storm (it put the Braves into a rain delay) we settled in to watch Fully Loaded play Georgia Lightning for 3rd place. At one point Fully Loaded was down 12 runs, and on the verge of losing the game by run rule (10 ahead after 5 innings ends the game). They battled back to within 2 runs, but GA Lightning came to the plate with 2 outs and about a minute left to play. The batter called time out. Stepped in the box, and then the coach called time out, to get her to switch bats. They purposefully let time run out — it wasn’t a very clean end to the game, and several people were upset. One close call by the ump in the field was over-turned by the home plate ump in the last inning, which didn’t help the ill feelings either.
So GA Lightning stays in their dugout, and we move into the dugout Fully Loaded was in. In their unhappiness and anger they give us rounds of “Good Luck” and “beat them bad” and other things I won’t print here. We responded ”thanks” and “We’ll try” and “great comeback” and “good game, too bad” in return.
The game started probably around 10pm without it ever really raining, but the breeze cooled us off a little, so it wasn’t too terribly hot. In the 3rd or 4th inning they drilled one right up the middle… one bounce and right into Autumn’s knee. She went down hard and you could tell she was really hurt. Her knee started swelling, and there was already a small bruise forming on her knee cap. She decided to stay in and continue pitching, and we had a rough inning or two.
They hit up the middle a few more times, each time saying “Oh we’re sorry we’re not doing it on purpose.” and finally I kind of flipped and told them they needed to cut that shit out. And again I got the “but we’re not doing it on purpose” and my response was we’re playing competitive ball and you sure as hell can try to hit it somewhere else.
They wound up winning by a good margin. On to the “make” game. I wound up pitching, which can be shaky, at best. But, I did really well – I think I walked 2, and a lot of inside pitches.
They still hit 4 or 5 at me, and one I leaned away as the line drive hit off my glove wrist. I was not really happy about that one. We had one inning where we turned a double-play to end the inning, and they bitched and moaned to the umpire to ask for help (remember their game against Fully Loaded and how that went?). Now, as a rule, an umpire won’t ask for help on a judgement call. If your argument is someone came off the base, and the ump couldn’t see, then sometimes, only sometimes, can you get them to ask for help on a call. This dude did it twice in two games. They call her safe at 1st and they go on a huge scoring spree… all after the changed call. I was really unhappy about that one, and threw my glove into the dugout. Later GA Lightning was “talking” (they jabbered the whole damned tournament, it gets so old… you just want to say “shut up and just play ball” but it’s a part of some team’s M.O.) and said something to the fact that I was upset because they were hitting up the middle at me, but I was really upset that all those runs had scored after the changed call.
So, we score, they score, back and forth. It’s down to the 7th with the tying run at bat — two outs and two on. She hits a hard grounder back up the middle, I knock it down, and throw her out at first — game over and hitting up the middle is what ends the game. I also struck out 4 batters (in slow pitch softball!) and only made 4 outs at the plate all tournament.
So, Autumn and I got tournament Co-MVP, and we got a qualifier for Nationals, which are September 1st.
Drafted takes 3rd at the Ian Thomas Hales Memorial tournament in Cartersville this weekend. Our first game was at 11am. Alex and I picked up Autumn at her place at 9:30am (Amanda decided not to participate – it was raining), and hopped on I75 North.
Construction signs told us either 1 lane or all lanes were closed ahead, so we jumped right back off at Barrett Pkwy and took Hwy 41 all the way up. The ride was pleasant, but wet — it rained all the way, and got harder as we got closer. Alex however predicted it would stop once it was time for us to play.
It slowed to a sprinkle when we got there, and by the time we started warming up it had indeed, stopped raining. But then the sun came out it got hot as hell. Nasty, wet, humid, muggy hot.
We played Trouble the first game and won. I traded off with Karrie at 2nd as the Extra Hitter, while Alex and Austin immediately dove into the DS world of Pokemon.
With our win, thankfully, we had a break until 3:30pm. Most of us went to Chili’s for lunch – it was air-conditioning and not too heavy, so it was good. We then went over to Hibbett’s Sporting Goods and then Publix for some beer and water (staples for every softball tournament).
We played the Bounty Hunters at 3:30pm, and once again – one bad inning and we lost. I’m getting so tired of losing to them. Really.
Our next game was supposed to be at 5:30pm, but the rain had returned and had slowed things down a bit. We started closer to 6:30pm against the Lady Roadrunners. We won – I don’t remember the score because by then the rain had returned with a vengeance.
At one point I was under a tent with the boys, and it was raining as hard as it could rain. And still they played. There was a good 1/2 inch of standing water on the infield. And still they played. Finally the ump’s stopped our game, but the other game was in the 7th inning and they were trying to finish. Fully Loaded gave it their all and tied up the game with the Lady Rebels (a B team playing with our C teams — it’s an equalizer tourney so they had to spot each team 4 runs). They went into extra innings, which triggered one-pitch. You walk to the plate and get one pitch — you walk, strike out, hit or foul out. The Lady Rebels scored several in the top of the 8th and Fully Loaded couldn’t come back twice.
In the meantime, our game started back up, and the rain started slacking off a bit. But there were giant puddles all over the infield. I went in at 2nd for a couple of innings and I had one ball hit right to me — nothing I could do but “take one for the team” and I got a face full of water as the ball hit the water then my glove. Somehow I was able to see through long enough to throw to 1st for the out. By now, our game and the rest of the tournament has moved to 1 pitch.
So it’s down to us, the Lady Rebels, and the Bounty Hunters. Even spotting us 4 runs, we lost by quite a bit to finish 3rd. The puddles on the infield were so bad that people were coming into the dugout, taking off their cleats and wringing out their socks in between going back out. The puddles were too big to run around, so you had to just plow through.
Was still fun – and the Lady Rebels were pretty good sports – they still played hard, but didn’t rub it in like they have in the past.
Yay! My Thursday night Co-ed Team Media360.com won the Rec League Championship game tonight 19-9!
I went 4-4 (whew!) and they had a couple of bad innings (luckily we had our bad inning in the first and they only scored 5).
A couple of our guys were a little tense at the beginning – nerves I guess – but settled down and we did quite nicely.
Autumn and Amanda from that team are joining my competitive women’s team and we’re headed down to the Redneck Riviera (Panama City Beach) tomorrow for a tournament.
Unfortunately because of work, we’re driving down getting there late tomorrow night and playing ball all day Saturday. If we’re lucky we’ll get to see the beach Sunday morning before turning around and making the 5 hour drive home.
Holy cow! With only 8 players (8!) we won 20-18 for our first victory in the competitive league! We were home, and they scored 3 in the top of the 1st and we answered back with 13!
Amanda – lead-off – batted 3 times in the 1st, it was great!
We then played ok – they figured out how to hit the gap a few times, but otherwise, they didn’t even try to hit the holes. When a girl came up to bat, Amanda would come in from right field to play 2nd base — we’d have a left field and center and zero right field, and they didn’t hit to right a single time. When the guys batted we’d have Eric play 1st if no one was on base, and then play 2nd if there was.
I got one ball at 3rd all night. The 2 really good hits I had were caught and the 3 not so good got through. It happens.
But it was great!
