JUST FOR FUN!

My softball team and I (minus key people) played this tournament this weekend where Paul was at also. We signed up for the Just for Fun League, the lowest league because 1) the middle "Recreational" league had 20 or more teams sign up and 2) we weren't full strength because some of our better guys were not able to play. Good thing, in a sense, because the schedule fit my weekend properly.

Anyway, we were hoping that we weren't in some squash league with guys just gathering their friends together without any semblence of softball skill. Luckily, only one of the teams wasn't very serious. The other two were competitive.

Day 1

WIN, 11-1. Wind screwed up the hitting. We manufactured runs and capitalized on their errors. Our defense was on.

WIN, 10-0. The drunk team. They were goofing around the whole time - we got caught up in it - playing along. We only played 1 inning with our real defense.

WIN, 8-4. This was an exciting game that started with some minor trash talking. During warm-ups two of our balls accidentally went into their dugout. This angered them because one of them got a bruised shin from earlier in the day. Anyway, we played good defense, but our hitting was crap all game until the bottom of the 6th. Bottom of the 6th, we were down 0-4. We rallied and when we tied it up at 4-4 our team really got energized and continued the rally to get the 8-4 lead. We cleaned up on the top of the 7th. I hit like crap. I ended 3 innings on 2 popups and one strikeout looking (it was a bad call!).

We were feeling good at the end of Day 1. I felt like crap because I didn't do much in that last game to be part of the win. I don't care about my stats, I just wanna be a productive part of the win. Didn't do much.

DAY 2

WIN, ?-?, I forgot the score. This was against that drunk team. We weren't sure if they would even show up since the game was so early (8:30am) and we figured a bunch of them would have hangovers. This game was frustrating because our defense was making mistakes. It was never a question that we'd win, but we didn't play well. It wasn't a good way to start the day especially since the other teams were strong.

CHAMPIONSHIP GAME

WIN, 14-10. This game was fun. We were able to focus and play well after our not-so-disciplined first game (of the day). We went down early 0-3 after the first half of the 1st inning. We came back and tied in the bottom of the 1st. Eventually we took the lead, but could never pull away. Our defense was solid in this game except for the first inning. We made some silly mistakes. After that though, we played pretty well. I made some plays in this game that really benefited the outcome so I was happy with my personal effort.

This was our FIRST WEEKEND TOURNAMENT and we won. We also did it without a bunch of our best guys (we lost our #3 and #4 hitters from Saturday.) Though, if we were full strength we might've moved up to the harder league. Either way, we won, we played well, and it was fun.

And we want to spend more time with Paul's coed team.