Who's On First?

After thirteen straight weekends of softball we get this coming weekend off. It'll be nice to do something different. Of course, we're still travelling, heading to "the Shore" for a day of kayaking.

For anyone who just can't live without a dose baseball/softball, here's my favorite tribute to the sport. I still laugh at this.

MD State Champions

The Lightning took home their tenth first place trophy today. They won the USSSA Maryland State tournament for the seventh straight year. Kenzie only helped them win the most recent one, but at least she stepped out of her hitting slump.


On Saturday, against her former team (Bayside Breeze), Kenzie went 3 for 3, including a double and a couple rbi's. In the championship game on Sunday, she got things started with a double in the first inning, scoring the first run of a 12-0 rout. The game ended by slaughter rule after only two and a half innings. We didn't need to bat in the third inning!


The whole team played awesome today; everybody was hitting, and the defense didn't allow a single run to be scored in either game. By my count, the Lightning outscored their opponents 39-4 in four games this weekend.


Here's to the champs!

Baseball's Done

Connor's baseball team had the best record in their leagure for the regular season. They didn't fare quite so well in the end-of-season double elimination tiurnament. After coming back through the loser's bracket after a disappointing preiliminary game, they arrived at the championship game the hard way. They were ahead for the first half of the game; then the rain came. First a drenching that temporarily halted the game. Then, after a short re-start, prolonged lightning and thunder that postponed the continuation of the game until the next day. The guys played hard the first day, and probably would have pulled out the victory. They just couldn't maintain that level of play and entusiasm for a third day in a row.

Coming from the loser's bracket, they had to play several games in a very short period of time, using up too many pitches for our top pitchers. Unlike in softball, Little League baseball has a strict pitch count and pitchers get used up very quickly in a multi-game week. On the bright side, Connor got to pitch in the last game of the year. He did very well, allowing no runs, but leaving a couple guys on base that eventually got home to tie the game up. Connor pitched a lot last year, but he didn't want to do it this year, until his coach had little choice to put him on the mound.

Anyway, they wound up with the second place trophy and that's not bad. Next year, Connor moves up to the next age group, Junior Boys (13-14). It's good to see him excited about baseball again.











Here's Connor pitching, before the rain came.









Here's the rainbow that appeared before the re-start.

Here's Connor and his trophy, another one that can go on the trophy shelf.

Have I Been That Busy?

I feel just terrible. Two weeks ago, the twins had their First Communion. I just noticed the pictures are still on my camera! I am still pressed for time, but I need to at least post some

pictures. Here's Tay and Ty all dressed up, the whole crew, and some presents.

Extra Credit for Connor

Last week I graded a History quiz that Connor took. He scored an 80%. Whenever he doesn't get a perfect grade, he goes back and checks his answers with the text book. He is a perfectionist, and is always determined to prove me wrong when he doesn't get 100%. When I grade his quizzes, I use a key, and I don't necessarily read each question. This particular History quiz had a true/false section, where if the sentence was true you write "true"; if it's false, you write the correct answer for some underlined term in the question.

Here's the question: The first European city in the Americas was Isabella.

The key said it was true. Remember, I didn't read the question, just Connor's answer. He wrote "Isabela", not "true" so I marked it wrong. Connor brought to my attention that Isabella was spelled wrong in the question so 'technically' it was false, so he fixed it. Regardless of which spelling is actually correct, the text book spelled the answer Isabela, not Isabella, a difference of one "l". Not only did I give him his 10 points back for knowing the answer was true, I gave him five extra credit points for all the obvious reasons.

43

Ugh.

Back On Track

After that surprising loss last Sunday, the Lake Shore Lightning girls got back into their winning form this weekend. Their first game was scheduled for 9 am on Saturday. It would have been against her former travel softball team, the Bayside Breeze, but that game was cancelled due to wet fields (on par with this whole season). The Lightning won their two other games, 14-0 (another Coral shutout) and 11-1, or something like that. We placed top seed for Sunday's elimination. We did stay after we were done playing so we could watch her old team play their next game. They won. And, it was fun talking to the parents and coaches I know from last year's team.

In the semifinal game, we could have played the Bayside Breeze, but they lost, and we played the Churchville Lightning. (I think Lightning and Storm are the two most popular softball team names) In that game, Kenzie got the first RBI, which turned out to be the game-winner since we won by slaughter rule, 10-0 (yet another Coral shutout).

The second, championship game, gave all us parents heart attacks. We played the Swoop, from Delaware. It rained during most of the game. Ali was having another phenomenal pitching performance, but so was the opposing pitcher. The Swoop squeezed out a run and led by 1-0 for most of the game. Once again it cam down to the bottom of the last inning. The game was tied, and I'm very ashamed to say that I've forgotten the circumstances that tied the score up. I think the excitement fried some critical memory circuits in my brain. Anyway, with one out, Kenzie came to bat. She hadn't gotten a hit yet against this pitcher. This time she stroked one to left-center field to get a single, with Toni at the plate. Toni ripped one to center that rolled to the fence. Kenzie took off, and wasn't going to stop until she touched the plate, which she did, as the ball rolled off the catcher's glove, onto the ground. Toni's dad (Big Tony), one of the coaches, now has to pay Toni a hundred bucks for that game-winning RBI. He also told Kenzie he owes her $25 for being in position to score that winning run. I won't hold him to it (and neither will Kenzie); we're just happy to part of this winning team.

For the weekend, by my count, Kenzie wound up going 8 for 11 (a .727 batting average) and was part of a few defensive plays. Several of her hits were line drives to the outfield, so that's a major improvement for the year. I only got upset at her once, when she was caught off the base when a fly ball was caught in the outfield. I then found out it wasn't her fault. She was obeying her coach's sign to steal second, was focused on that task as she should be, and just couldn't get all the way back to first to tag up. The same thing almost happened again in a later game. That's what happens when the batter is swinging away when a steal is called for.

To top off this great, but busy weekend, Alex said it was the best time he's had for a long long time. We need more weekends like this, where we can all be in the same place at the same time.