And… we’re off!

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.

X’s take the championship!

The Atlanta Advertising League normally starts in April, and ends toward the end of August, but this year our fields (Southside in Jonesboro) were totally re-done, and then delayed due to the drought (sod doesn’t like to take if it’s not wet).  So we didn’t get rolling until Labor Day.

 We finished up our regular season last Monday, and the tournament began Oct. 30.  The X’s ended the season undefeated, netting us the 1st seed, and a bye on Tuesday.  We opened up on Thursday with Fletcher Martin and a win.  We came back on Monday night against a tough team – Mad Jacks – but kept our bats hot and steamed onto another win.  The win let us miss the frigid temps on Tuesday, and we met up with the Vagabonds on Wednesday.

It was still cold Wednesday night, and we stressed as a team we wanted to win the 7:30p game so we didn’t have to turn around and play again at 8:45p.  It was close at the start, but we pulled away and won the Winner’s bracket.  The Vagabonds had to turn around and play BBDO – a tough team all year – and it was too much.  The Championship game would be X’s vs BBDO on Thursday.

Thursday was another cold night (thankfully, we didn’t have any wind throughout, or we would have been miserable – instead just really cold), and with the time change completely dark by game time.  Having one out of four fields lit was kind of eerie.

We were all so happy to have BBDO with us in the final game.  They are such a great group of people – and we all had a great time.  We pulled ahead in the 6th and 7th, but BBDO made a run for it in the bottom of the 7th.  They came up just 2 runs shy — final score 16-14.  We all gathered at home for a double-team picture (or 5) and we all tipped a glass of beer and shared Rusty’s home made beef jerky.

The party is next Thursday and we’ll have another round of beers to another great season!