Baseball Doubleheader

Baseball doubleheader

There is a dead woman lying in my neighbor's front yard. She smells nice. I think her husband sprayed her with perfume or some oil so we wouldn't know when she begins to rot. Motionless she lies there in shorts and almost topless, her pasty white skin slowly decaying in the bright hot sun. Chester barks furiously, he knows something is wrong out there. Or maybe it's just a squirrel. I know what's wrong. I'm not calling 911. I might be next.

But I digress...

The first baseball game Saturday morning and I was not there. I taught a ballet class at the studio so that by rushing out to the PYO field I just made it in time for the second game.

I parked at the top parking lot and start walking to field nine. I'm carrying my purse and my folding chair. I weave down around fields 1234 toward fields 789 I weave down around the fields looking for field 9.  Nine is behind seven and eight I'm headed down toward  a porta potty and I see Joey and yell.   He comes and helps me carry my chair.  I then have to walk through another parking lot where I could park if I had followed directions carefully. I end up at the end of another parking lot at field nine. I've definitely had my exercise for the day.

Talking to the parents I find out that the team lost about 13 to 3 or something like that. The feeling is that our team gave up after they felt we were way behind and we just weren't going to be able to catch up. I have felt that very often several things interfere with a morning game. The first thing to realize is that most of these guys are very socially active staying up late to play video games,  to talk to each other or to play basketball at each other's house and they don't go to bed early enough. This means that Saturday mornings they are not ready to play sports or they are not fully awake. The second thing I've noticed is that they don't have the determination to see things through if they feel let down. So if something happens in the game such as an umpire calls the play against them or someone making an error, they immediately lose their spirit and tend to give up. I hear that both things happened in the first game causing them to lose badly.

By the time I got there it was past noon and a buffet had been set out for them. It looked like they had fed their faces and had time to walk and talk and make a lot of jokes. Now they were ready to play.

Weslee as usual was the leadoff hitter. He got on base stole second and third and Mitchell hit him in for the first run. I think we had four runs in the first two innings. The other team had no runs, spirits were high, kids were wide awake and full of energy. I even saw kids taking sandwiches out to the field and munching on them while they were tracking balls that were coming to them. Several great plays were made. Scores went from four then  six people were hitting balls and then there was eight points, and then ten runs, then there was another run in, 11 runs.  Finally the other team made a run or two. They were the ones that were discouraged and dispirited. Our team played like they knew how to play; they won by a lot!

This is the kind of game we like to watch because our team is happy and playing with the kind of energy we know they have. But it was totally reversed in the morning with the other team energized and winning. If only both teams could learn from this turn around and see how easily both teams could win or either team could have lost depending on their attitude.