Here is my fifth weekly report on our summer ASBA team:
This past weekend our All Star team played in Flemington, NJ at Diamond Nation. First off, the weekend got off to a poor start because the entire time my mom was complaining to me that she wasn’t allowed to bring a cooler into the facility! Anyway, our first game we played the Long Island Cheerleaders, I mean Falcons. They were probably the most annoying team I have ever faced (don’t forget they were 14, I think). Their first pitcher walked a lot of batters and we took advantage of it and scored 9 runs. We were winning 9-2 going into the top of the 7th. We then had a rough inning where the pitchers can’t throw strikes and we can’t make easy plays in the field. After that inning the score was 10-9 Falcons. But we battled back and scored one in the bottom half and ended up tying the game 10-10.
On Saturday, we played the 14U New Jersey Super Team. I think that there was only one kid on the team that was shorter than 6 feet tall! They were really good, and you could almost say Super! Our pitchers did well, as they walked only two or three people, but the NJ team was just destroying the ball. It seemed like every batter hit the ball to the fence. It was crazy. We lost 11-2, which was pretty good considering they crushed their first opponent, 25-1.
Our last game on Sunday, we played the New Jersey Renegades. After the first inning, the score was 9-8 Renegades. Offense galore! The inning lasted over 45 minutes, which was half the game. The umpire was squeezing the zone just a bit in that inning but after that, there were maybe 2 walks all together to the 18 in the first inning! In the top of the fourth inning( the last inning) we tied the game at 12-12. In the bottom of the fourth, the other team had runners on second and third with one out and the batter squared around to bunt for a suicide squeeze. But he popped it up to our catcher, Zack Greer, for the second out. Connor Donovan then struck out the next batter to end the game with a 12-12 tie. The ASBA 16U team was able to watch the end of our game as they were playing right after us. It was a tough weekend since we tied two games that we should have won. Hopefully our pitching comes back and our hitting continues to be successful.
EBYA Games Last Week--
Last week we had 3 EBYA games, and we could have come out with a victory in all of them. Our first game on Tuesday we played the EBYA Blue team. The first few innings, we gave the other team some runners and they took advantage by scoring 6 runs. We started to come back, but never managed to string some hits together. We ended up losing 7-2, but without those first innings, it’s a 2-1 ballgame.
Then, on Wednesday, we played the Octorara Senior Legion team and once again we gave them free base runners and they took advantage of it and scored 9 runs. To tell you the truth, we were just outmatched. We got down early and never could climb back into it.....
Our last game on Thursday, we played the Crawdads. We were hanging with them for the first 3 innings, and the 4th inning came strolling along and it was one of those rough innings that has hurt us all year. After the 4th inning, the score was 7-2. Without counting the 4th inning, the score is 4-3, but it happens and you can’t get mad at losing to a team that is 2 years ahead of us. We do play some games against teams that are older than 14U and it's a good challenge for us.
Overall, our pitching was ok but our hitting pulled a Houdini on us, showing up on the weekend and then disappearing during the week. We'll keep working hard, especially on the offensive end of things.
Baseball Quote of the Week: "A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings." ~ Earl Wilson
