Second Place!

We had a very exciting baseball weekend!

Michael's travel team played in a tournament with 4 teams - 3 from the regular season league and 1 additional team. It was a double-elimination tournament.

We lost our first game on Saturday to the Manassas Generals - we lost all 4 games to them in the regular season. The second game on Saturday was against the Virginia Young Guns, who we beat twice and lost to twice in the regular season. At the end of the 2 hour time limit, we were tied 10-10. The tiebreaking rules say that you play another inning starting with a runner on 2nd base. Well, it was 6:05 and it was clear we couldn't finish that inning before dark, so the entire inning was rescheduled to play at 9:30 on Sunday morning.

That was very advantageous for us - a pitcher who couldn't be there on Saturday could be there Sunday morning.

So we went to the field on Sunday morning just hoping to win the one inning we play at 9:30. We batted first and scored two runs, and then shut down the other team and won the game 12-10.

The boys were ecstatic, but had to regroup beause we now had to play the Manassas Generals again.

We played a FANTASTIC game. Our pitcher SHUT THEM DOWN and we won 12-0 in 4 innings due to the mercy rule. This against a team that we hadn't beat all season!

So all of a sudden we were in the finals against a fantastic team from Harrisonburg - the Valley Diamond Dawgs. This team was intimidating.

Our boys played very well and while we lost 9-5, it was very competitive and we were thrilled at how well the team did.

We beat BOTH of our regular season opponents in the tournament and came in 2nd to a great team - great results for our first season as a travel team.

Michael had a tough time pitching due to a sore arm - we were all disappointed (including him) that we weren't able to have him pitch more - but he hit the ball very well and played strong in the outfield, including assisting in a play to prevent a hitter from getting a home run by getting the ball in and eventually having the catcher tag the runner at home!

Winning doesn't always mean 1st place - as far as I'm concerned, we WON!