A tour(ney) to remember...

Like every other year, I played in what I (apparently rightly-so) nicknamed the MCBC "farm league" for softball. Like I tell my friends all zee time, not as an excuse, but merely a report of what is simply the truth: I always lose in the Quarter finals! Ever year, without fail!

But this year was a little different. We had to play with a 5 guy to 5 girl ratio... so I played 1st base for 90% of the tournament. It was also the first time in 6 or 7 years playing in this tournament that I won all *3* round robin games and also went more than 5 innings in quater finals. Usually it's 5 innings for quarters, 6 innings for semis and 7 innings for the final game...

My co-coach/captain (depending on what league you play for) always likes to be the away team. Even though it's a small league with only 11 teams, we ended up facing this team a total of *3* times. The first time there were apparently some thunderstorms or something and the game was cancelled. This was good in a way, because that weekend I was away at summer retreat and I had really wanted to face his team this season. But turns out the first time we tried to schedule a make-up game, it didn't work out, plus that weekend, it was his turn to be away at summer retreat. Luckily we were able to do the Saturday after that, but it rained yet again, so since there was no thunder, we just played right through it.

BUT again, at the round-robin pre-tourney games it was again raining during our round-robin game *3* when we faced them. So I joked to the other Captain "How come every time we play you guys it rains?" It turns out that the way the round-robin standings worked out, we ended up playing their team yet again right after in quarter finals. They actually made it all the way to finals too, but that's another story. I joked to myself before the game, "Game *3*, the game of Destiny..." also because we lost the make up game by one run and beat them in the round robin, so this was kind of a tie breaker. Also since it was sunny, I also said to myself "at least God PARTED THE CLOUDS..."

So as the game progressed we were getting pretty tired since we most of us had been playing defense for the majority of the last 20 innings of all the games so far that day. I played 19 out of the 20 myself, with my age kicking in and not being able to sleep the night before, I knew I was just about done... But destiny would have it that we were tied at the bottom and end of the 5th inning (5 inning quarter final games), so we had to take the game into 2 extra innings to determine the winner. Never before have I experienced 5 half innings of no score and what I consider a miracle that one inning they had 3 consequtive batters not able to get any fair hits. It just so happens in the last inning, it was still scoreless, but we had to hold them down yet another half-inning. But we were only able to make one out and they pretty much had 3 batters make 3 consequtive singles... so in other words...

"BOTTOM OF THE SEVENTH, BASES LOADED..." ROFL... "I wanna be like I _ _..." :P but it was only 1 out... There is a rule against moving in front of the batter in our league, in other words, before the ball is hit, we're not allowed to play the bottom half of the diamond unless we're the catcher... So basically our only hope was to try to make the play at home for the most part... Never before have I felt like there was really nothing I could do... They had a girl go up to bat too, but she wasn't like one of those who couldn't hit...Albeit she might have been under a lot of pressure... Since the majority of my team moved up as much as possible on her and the ball was hit just to the right of the batter, I made a dash for home to back up the catcher, but I turned around while running on the baseline only to witness what was an error made at the very end when two of my other teammates tried to go for the ball.

It was over, but on the bright side, it finally gave me a chance to rest, not that I intentionally threw the game. I lay myself down on the grass just outside the diamond like some of my other teammates and looked at the clouds for a bit, they were all scattered in small little bunches, kind of like popcorn...

I was tempted just to end it at the last paragraph, but it's too much of a cliff hanger... I went home for a bit after tournament, to try to get some more sleep before our traditional post tournament outings. There's a more personal reason as to why I was pretty disappointed this year was like ever other and I got eliminated in quarters yet again; but then I was reminded of the real reasons why I'm there. I'm not just there to try to end my 7 year tournament drought, but to also have fun and enjoy the compananionship of my fellow teammates. At this point I was in tears, I did have that and it should be enough, plus I was really proud of my team, they all worked really hard and improved so much this year. I didn't expect to make it as far as I did at first, but we all did our best and we all really wanted to win and I've never seen a team play with so much determination. There were just some factors that worked against us such as the missing players and I think under different circumstances we likely could have won, but perhaps I'm just not meant to win just yet...

There has been an interesting and ironic follow up or BALANCE to the "BOTTOM OF THE ______, BASES LOADED" thing which I shared about with that same friend on the other team previously mentioned. In fact I didn't even think about the "BOTTOM OF THE..." thing till after these other events. Maybe one day, if you want to, I can go old with you...

PK