City Tournament - Game Three

Well, we're out of it. We lost 2-0 to the Juggernaut that is the Coke squad. They were an extremely good team. I think I graduated high school with two of them.

I'm kidding of course, but in our Little League, we have three divisions. Two of the three divide their teams into 9-10 year old squads and 11-12 year old squads. The younger teams only play other younger teams, and the older teams only play other older teams. The third division - ours - plays 9,10,11, and 12 year olds on the same team. There are good arguments for both, but the short of it is come City Tournament time, our 9 year olds are up against teams made up of only 11-12 years olds. Such was the case tonight.

And we played well. We had great pitching, and awesome defense. The fact that we held them to two runs is impressive by itself. Their pitcher was just unhittable. We got runners on, but couldn't score any runs. The pitcher finally reached his pitch count in the top of the sixth inning. They brought in a new pitcher, who appeared to be quite hittable. This was when the controversy began.

Now, I'm no Ump-Griper. We have a lot of them in our stands. No matter what happens, if the ump makes a call against our team, he sucks. These people argue the most ludicrous calls you can imagine. My take is, umps make mistakes. And they usually make as many mistakes for us as against us, so we should just take our lumps and shut up. After all, what are we teaching the kids if we insist every loss was because of bad officiating? Sometimes you just lose.

HOWEVER....

We're in the top of the sixth and we're batting. The new pitcher is in, and we have one man on first with no outs. The second batter hits one just past the infield. The second baseman takes a few steps back and the ball lands in his glove. And then rolls out into the dirt. Play continues as if it were an error and not a catch. Our runner is almost at second and the batter is safe at first. And then the ump signals an out. He seems to think the second baseman made a clean catch. Which means the runner at second has to get back to first to tag up, which is metaphysically impossible at this point. The second basemen tosses the ball to first for the second out.

We now have two outs and no one on, instead of two on and no one out. Next batter hits one clean and gets on. We would have had the bases loaded and no outs had the ump made a different call. I'm not saying we would have won, I'm just saying that ump's call reversed our chances considerably. Next batter grounds out, and that's the ball game.

The kids were devastated. About half of them cried, even the older ones. They played a fantastic game against a fantastic team. I hated for them to lose it that way.

The home plate ump told one of our coaches after the game that the ump in question made a horrible call. But....what can you do? A friend of ours was there, and his sage comment was "Well, now you know how the Cubs feel."

So, baseball is over at our house until next spring. We had a great season. Ben has made great strides and is like a vacuum cleaner in right field now. So just wait till next year....